Up And Down and All Around

And the festivities continue: my maiden voyage at work was a disaster, and tomorrow I get to meet with the bigwigs and the trainers for the postmortem…..oops, I meant performance review. I’m looking forward to that about as much as I would my own execution, but in a sense it’ll be a relief to find out exactly where I stand. Which is probably somewhere out in left field.

I have so many conflicting emotions about this job. It’s such a noble undertaking, but there are literally millions of details and I’m not so hot at being detail-oriented. I can’t remember all the steps of the computerized documentation—I who otherwise am very computer literate—and have to be coached through it like a little kid who’s just wet her pants. I’m not retaining what I’ve learned. I’m having trouble organizing what I need to do in a short time span because I get panicky and my brain vapor-locks. And I can’t put it all together because the pieces are scattered from hell to breakfast.

In essence: I completely SUCK at this. I know it, the brass knows it, everyone knows it. I’ve never been so far in over my head in my entire life, at least as far as work is concerned, and I don’t have the slightest idea how to fix that. I do know that it’s not likely to get any better, because it requires the ability to learn very, very quickly and I obviously don’t have that ability anymore. I’d thought I was doing better; my memory, while never great, has sharpened over the past few months and I’ve been able to remember some things without needing visual cues (e. g., sticky notes). But it’s not anywhere enough for a job that requires being able to absorb massive amounts of input, let alone put it to good use…..and that’s just in the training phase.

Needless to say, the up-and-down mood I’ve been experiencing over the past few weeks has not improved with these latest developments.  As I think I said yesterday, it’s not the kind that can be medicated away; it’s purely situational, and only resolving the problem itself will resolve the mood swings. I know some of my friends are concerned about me; but the truth is, I just need to figure out a way to wiggle out of this as gracefully as possible, and right now there doesn’t appear to be any.

I have a sneaking hunch that it will resolve itself, though…..maybe as early as tomorrow morning. Maybe not. But no matter what happens, I will never regret doing this. I knew I was taking a big calculated risk when I took this position, and yeah, I’ve pretty much fallen flat on my face. Okay. It doesn’t make me a loser. It just makes me someone who needs a much less-complicated, less-stressful, less detail-oriented job.

I just hope I can remember that the next time I interview for one during a spell of hypomania……..that’s how I got here in the first place!