New Years Resolutions

To say I haven’t had a great year is an understatement. The last part of the year I have spent not only worrying about the never ending list of family members testing positive for coronavirus and also I have now left my job due to stress after being in it for a year.

I’m now at a point in my life where I’m at a bit of a crossroads, I’ve always had goals and I worked so hard to achieve those. Now for the first time ever in a long time I’ll be starting again with a blank page and clean slate. I’m now thinking about all the possibilities that is next for me. For the first time in 3 months I’m hopeful about what’s next.

Stress is not my best friend, some people thrive with it whereas I can only deal with so much. My job was one of those you could say that needs to be consumed through and through and while I admire people who can push and go the distance on very little help and training. It just wasn’t for me no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t embody the very qualities that made people successful and make stress my best friend.

In the middle of the year, I was put on what we call in the UK as furlough. It’s a leave of absence from work, however the government gives grants to companies to prevent mass redundancies where the pandemic has left most companies able to pay their staff. I was off for 5 months, while I enjoyed the break from work and lack of routine in lockdown. When eventually I came back to work I just couldn’t settle back into that routine again, to make matters worse the fast paced environment that stressed me out before was twice the speed with less people to help out. Looking back, it was a recipe for disaster and quickly I became overwhelmed again. I started making mistakes I never thought I would make which knocked my confidence. To make my anxiety worse, I was then put on performance review, I was given 6 weeks to improve. I then had to come to realization of few things:

1) This just wasn’t for me: in the environment I was working in not a lot of training is provided unless things go wrong, so it’s a very on the job figure out yourself job. I learned to accept that it was okay for me not to fit in that mould, I learn differently. Some learn by handing them a blank canvas and they’ll tell you everything about the page like in that role. For me, yes I’m proactive but I do need to be shown from a-e before I start looking at x-z.

2) This role wasn’t for the long term: I pushed for this goal and I thought when I got there great. However, when I did and also thinking about how the last 3 months shown I couldn’t mentally keep up with the pace. I’m a youngish woman (late 20’s) with a partner, I knew I couldn’t do this job feeling how I was and think also can have a family alongside it.

3) Leave: I talked myself out of it so many times, when I got the job I said see how things go rather than leave a few months in (I was scared how it would look on my CV). Then lockdown happened, I said I’d have a think what I wanted and casually look. Also, where companies had stopped employing I thought it would be sensible maybe I should stay for a bit. While all those were sound reasons for staying, they were all wrong in this case. I wasn’t happy and ultimately led to things being worse for me.

It’s led me to the below resolutions going forward:

-It’s okay to not be okay: I spent so much of my working life trying to fit a mould and appease managers. I learnt its okay not to fit that mould and admit I’m not okay.

-If something doesn’t feel right try fix it or move on. I learnt it’s okay to work and learn differently and I need to do what feels right rather than the other way round.

-I need to focus on myself and my work life balance: I spent so long going to work early and staying late, I no longer had time to relax myself.

With the resolutions in mind, I’m hopeful what 2021 will bring.