Faltering stamina

My stamina with the whole self promotion thing might be flagging somewhat. It’s not helped by feeling generally uncomfortable with attention, yet having to shirk that feeling. 

It’s not my natural habitat, but I’ll do it if called upon – which isn’t a great approach for somebody starting out.  You need that labrador-like energy and zesty willingness to hurl yourself into stuff and bleat on about how brilliant you are to anyone who’ll listen. 

If you can deliver as well, that helps, but ostensibly it often seems to matter less.

Just not sure I can be arsed even trying to do that anymore, the shouty twittery thing.  I’m finding it a bit of a drag maintaining the will keep checking my work Twitter feed and all these relentlesly moving and shaking people of apparently indomitable positive spirit who I suppose should be termed my peers.

Am I falling out with the subject of my trade – that is, if I was ever “In” with it (for there are plenty of things in this short life which interest me much more), or am I simply tiring of the loudest people who work in it because I have too much time to listen to them?  Both perhaps, maybe one slightly more than the other.

Either way, I’d just like a job please  Preferably one with decent conditions, flexitime, 9-5 if possible, not too many outside demands.  One which ensures I don’t starve and I can still live in relative comfort, even if it won’t afford me lavish wheels, expensive champagne and posh Mayfair clubs. 

Don’t think I’m going to be VC of ReallyImportantStuff at GoogleSoft anymore, and I don’t care.  But now I’m getting financially twitchy and a bit mad, so I’d like a job of some kind please.

job hope punctured

It's difficult not to get mentally carried away when you secure a job interview.  To envision the potential future, actually getting the job and all the differences it may make to your day-to-day life.  The exciting things you could do if given the scope and responsibility, and authority.  How it, and the new people you'd work with might change things: attitudes, outlooks, personality, character.

Yet it can all hinge on a single person.  The one person who you engage with in a preliminary vetting interview.  The person the successful applicant will report to.  Your relationship with them is critical.  If first impressions are bad - and initial, instinctive ones are often the strongest which we can't help but lead with - then everything changes. 

This person who appears distracted, cold, straight, uptight and doesn't even attempt small talk - you think you can work with her day-to-day?  Reckon she'll be open to new ideas or just want to fit you as a cog into her wheel? 

Oh dear.  All premature hopes of change and predictions of brilliant new difference are suddenly slashed and punctured.  Hope hisses out and you wither back to square one.

Resigning ambition?

I’m considering giving up the freelance efforts earlier than anticipated.  End of September had been my self-imposed deadline.  If sustainable work wasn’t coming in by then…  Yet I’m not sure how much more of this I can endure: the fretting and excessive self analysis.  Can I really do this?  Am I good enough?  Do I have enough to offer?  Do I care enough?  Neverending questions maddeningly grind and tear and sneer and accuse.  The unknowable indefinite transience causes psychological saggyness. 

So I’ve begun to look more closely at full time roles.  Public sector ones.

The brother stayed and was maddeningly insensitive in his interrogation once again.  In the same way as he takes jokes that step too far, when they’re beyond funny, the same way he’s almost offputtingly direct and focussed, he blathered away with questioning and thinly veiled rhetoric about not doing x and y.  What was stopping me? 

At length.  Most people can read body language, sense when they’re pressing too hard or somebody has become defensive, sensitive to such aggressive, direct or personal questioning. 

Not him.  He’s a highly successful reporter.  But could equally be a highly successful salesman.  We had a short period in our teens working for different double glazing firms.  He kicked arse.  I didn’t.

It’s the almost absurd lack of self consciousness and empathy which beggars belief.  He never tells himself, “oh, maybe I should just leave it there.  I’ve planted the seed at least.”  No, he drills it in.  Stamps up and down on the little bastard until it’s cowering.

Yet nobody has ever made me feel quite as insecure as my brother, as low on confidence, vulnerable and generally useless.  I imagine nobody ever will.  He has that hold.

It’s wrankled, evidently.  Caused temporarily deep gloom which has led to dark thoughts.  Made me think he’s right.  There are things I could be doing which I’m not.  Some of which I’m not prepared to do, which require more balls, aren’t quite my style or in my skill set.  Perhaps this freelance thing isn’t for me.

The sector I work in is full of quite overwhelmingly driven entrepreneurial sorts who thrive on typical notions of success, money, glamour.  I’m becoming more attracted to the idea of divorcing myself from all that altogether.  If I can, returning to the public sector, somewhere reasonably safe.  Public sector offices I worked in were much homelier, comfortable places than the paranoid private sector.  That’s appealing now.  A less explicitly ambition-driven, go-getty environment.  Comfy jumpers rather than sharp suits.  Although I daresay even middle-of-the-road public sector jobs are more competitive than ever at the moment.

My African excursion could easily be perceived as ill-judged, given my circumstances.  And I'm still affecting effort and work at the freelance thing, however much I may or may not care about it.  But in taking the trip I’m just trying to offer myself a reminder that life isn’t always so hard and serious, full of tricky problems, stress and crap.  There's no single person who can remind me of that, or effectively illustrate it.  That life is capable of providing fleeting moments of wonder, awe, which makes you realise that you’re not that important, none of all this stuff is really.  That you probably shouldn’t take it that seriously.   Nobody to remind me.  My seldom seen nephew probably comes closest, but not through his deeply incisive mentoring.  Just by being two years old.

While “something will work out” might not hold much weight or meaning, perhaps the level of worry and stress you’re relentlessly whipping yourself with isn’t all that justified either.

being bitter and professionally plastic

Today saw the completion of a professional event which was just over six months in gestation.  It was born of an idea which needed to be forced through after internal company meetings with nervous, careful colleagues unsure how much value organising an event would give our technical company.

It would give us exposure, I argued; exposure of our company, brand, our expertise and the services we offer – especially by having a chair of the event as well as a speaker who could present a session.  It wouldn’t take up too much of my time: I could arrange a couple of speakers, a secretary of the organisation would arrange logistics with the sponsors.   I assured them it was really no big deal.  They grudgingly, tentatively agreed. 

Or I accepted the outcome of the meetings as agreement, even if it was never given explicitly as such. It certainly wasn’t a no.

Then, about three months later they made me redundant. 

Thanks very much.

Because I retained my duties for the organisation, which weren’t dependent upon my employers, I saw the organisation of the event through.  Unfortunately I could hardly retract the offer of the Chair, or speaking slot at the event to my former colleagues.

The strangeness of professionally encountering the employers who made you redundant a couple of months before, yet still having reason to be amiable towards them, is one which could be compared to feeling obliged to hug an ex who cheated on you. 

Hello, you utter bastards, you feel lke greeting them. 

But you don’t, especially as there’s the faint, outside hope that they *might* provide you with some freelance work at some juncture. You smile, shake hands, ask how it’s all going, and continue the charade of being awfully professional. 

(You would do this anyway of course, even if there was no outside incentive.  Being starkly hostile is harder than being civilised.)  

Before my former line manager gave his presentation, I had taken pleasure in quietly cackling at his predictable clunkiness.  Similar in age and experience, we never shared the easiest professional relationship – possibly due to the level of testosterone between us, and he was likely instrumental in making me redundant. He was Old School within the company, having been there for almost as long as the company and practically his whole career.  I was comparatively new but had equal knowledge of the space, if not slightly more.  You could argue he felt threatened by this, which led to a tricky relationship.  So, looking forward to a clumsy, nervy talk from him wasn’t too hard.

During it though, I felt such a sense of empathy with the nature of his discomfort: uncertainty, constant errrrring, and the jagged nature of delivery – that it was actually sympathy I felt more.  I identified with his hesitance and self consciousness.  I would have been extremely similar.  What surprised me was my instinctive sympathy and encouragement to him afterwards, when he confessed that he thought he was rubbish.  Perhaps I’m not such a bitter twat after all. 

However, it does shame me to admit that I personally bottled addressing the 150-strong crowd. The opportunity was presented to me in an indirect fashion, left open.  I could have easily claimed just a few minutes to introduce the day and open the event.  It would have only been right as the day was my brainchild and much of its organisation and promotion was down to me.  It wouldn’t have needed much at all.

But I failed to grasp the nettle, grow bollocks, address my fear, and weakly allowed my colleague ahead.  I could try to justify it using a rationale that people who do what I do should never be the story, should always sit back and facilitate – but I know that essentially, I just bottled it.

You might not have been aware of this phobia and nervousness had you seen me on the periphery, orchestrating, arranging speakers, or in breaks, chatting and joking with the attendees.  I maintained a confident-seeming air one to one, or one to a handful, as well as in the potentially awkward face of my former colleagues.

Did I imagine slight embarrassed guilt behind their shiny smiley, unknowably plastic eyes?  Who can say?  But I like to think I carried off the whole performance a mite better than them as I flitted around during the breaks.  Shameless about my apparent uselessness to them.  Unbowed.  A delicately subtle waft of, And Fuck You Too.

Ah, no.  There's that bitter twat.  Still there then..