I Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Make Decisions Anymore

Let me explain. About a year ago, I sat down in my boss's office. I could tell he was stressed about something, but I didn’t have a choice. So I waited. “Are you ok?”

“You don’t want to be a product manager, do you?” He asked flippantly. 

“I don’t know. How much are you going to pay me?”

He turned to look at me. “Are you serious?”

“Sure.”

“How much do you want?”

I threw out a number that I thought was reasonable and he responded with “we could probably do that.”

That simple conversation started a series of events that has led me to believe that I shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions anymore. 

It took months, but I got the promotion. I was so proud of myself too. I rocked the interviews. My boss and his boss told me I would be the perfect person for this job because I have a reputation for being very straightforward with people. Won’t take no for an answer. Difficult. Will do whatever it takes to drive results. Extremely difficult. And that’s exactly what they wanted. 

That’s 100% true. That’s me. Difficult. I wear it like a badge of honor these days. 

I was the person they wanted not in spite of my personality, but because of it. That’s a massive win for me. I’ve been told my whole life that my personality is THE PROBLEM. It needs to change, to be fixed, corrected, because obviously it’s broken. I spent years trying to find out what was broken and how to fix it. That’s how this blog came to be. I was trying to find the problem, but what I found was that I wasn’t broken at all. My personality was not messed up. It was just that people didn’t understand me, so they assumed I was broken. I wasn’t like them, so I must be wrong. 

I should be over the moon, right? I’ve FINALLY found my people! It turns out that a difficult Midwestern INFJ does pretty well around the gruff, assertive Bostonians. I can go head to head with any one of them and those who know me respect me for it. 

But when you get a new job, you’re working with a bunch of people who don’t know you and have no respect for you. And when you’re a bit too honest and a bit too assertive, it gets sticky. And all of the sudden everyone thinks you’re an idiot because you said too much about something you don’t fully understand, and whether you’re right or not is irrelevant. You’ve found a sore spot and they don’t like being called out, because let’s be honest, who does? 

Then, the feelings come out. It’s bad enough dealing with everyone else’s feelings. It’s really bad. But then mine get overwhelming too, which is completely disgusting and unacceptable. I like to pretend I don’t have feelings, but when there’s so many of them that’s really difficult. Now I have to fight with my own head about whether or not I can do this job and work around these people and learn all of the things and what am I actually doing here anyway??? Wouldn’t it just be better to pack up and start a new life somewhere else where I don’t have to deal with feelings??? I’ve been in Boston 7 years next week, which is longer than I have been anywhere, save for the town I grew up in: Wichita. 

I can’t shake this feeling that taking this job was a terrible mistake. Yes, it’s been all of 2 months since I got promoted, so perhaps I need to sit with the feeling a bit longer before I accept it. There are 2 people I work with who are on my side in this battle. One of them is my mentor, who decided to go on vacation for a whole week like a total asshole. My whole world fell apart while he was gone. I managed to piss off about 15 people and had to suffer through my boss telling me to get my shit together. So many feelings. Painful week to say the least. I went to seek advice from the other guy who’s on my side. I told him I was on the verge of quitting, that this is just too much and I can’t and what’s the point. 

He said, “Don’t quit!! You haven’t even started yet!!” 

Is 2 months enough time to tell if you’re going to hate a job? Is it intuition that’s telling me this? Or fear? 

By the time my mentor came back from vacation, I had a few days to breathe, despite the rampant allergies and asthma attacks. The feelings I was so engulfed in had subsided. I told him all eight of the things that had happened in his absence. He said, “It sounds like you had a rough week.” I could only laugh. That was so true. 

He went on to tell me that everything I was feeling was valid. I had 3 months worth of shit happen in 6 working days and of course I was overwhelmed. He said this is one of the hardest jobs in the company. Of course, it’s difficult to learn. 

I feel like he probably told me that before, because he was the first person that I went to when my boss asked me if I was interested in the job. I asked him if he thought I could do it. He said he thought I would be great at it, but I’m sure he said it was a hard job as well. That’s why I wanted the job. I like doing impossible things. I like the hard jobs that no one wants. I want the impossible problems, the ones that everyone tells me I can’t solve. Because deep down I know that I can and I’ll do it twice and take pictures. 

Right now, it’s just sitting with the feelings that this could be a mistake and that I feel like an idiot. I hate both of those things so much. But that’s the only thing I can do right now. Sit with the feelings, try to learn all the things, and wait for the day when something starts to make sense. I know it will because it always does. I just have to trust the process and try not to panic too much. It’s so much easier said than done. 

Remember, we can't do easy things, but we can do hard things. We love hard things!