I'm going to found an asphalt company called "Good Intentions"

[mousme]

I haven't posted as often as I told myself I would. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I've been struggling a bit lately, and a long time ago I got out of the habit of processing this stuff on LiveJournal. Probably it's because I got into a new habit of processing on Twitter, where I don't have to compose my thoughts in long paragraphs, and usually get an almost instant response from the people who follow me. It's like therapy, only cheaper. Of course, the disadvantage to Twitter is that you can't really go into depth there. I doubt I'll go into much depth here, either, but certainly a bit more depth than 140 characters allows for.

The short version is that, after many many months of being a newly minted supervisor at work, learning an entirely new job (on top of learning the supervisor stuff), taking on responsibility for managing our schedule, training several newbies, and working a lot of overtime, I'm pretty sure I burnt out. Actually, I think I burnt out in March and just kept going anyway. I've been telling myself that I like my job, that I like the people I work with, that it's not actually possible to burn out if both those things are true. Before, when I struggled like this, it was because I was being actively harassed at work (both sexually and otherwise), and because I didn't find the job particularly stimulating, so I dreaded going into work. This is an entirely different kettle of fish. I don't dread going into work because of the people or the boredom, because my work is interesting and my coworkers are pretty cool overall. I'm also not depressed, if that makes any sense. There are no dark thoughts, no suicidal ideation, nothing like that. This seems to be manifesting itself mostly in the form of varying degrees of anxiety. I find that, every work day, I find myself resisting leaving the house. The idea of spending another 12 hours in the office (I work 12 hour shifts) makes me feel like a weight is being pressed on me from above. So far I've forced myself to go every time, because my coworkers depend on me, but the more I do it, the harder it gets.

I've never deliberately taken time off work before for burn out. When I was struggling with mental illness (I was diagnosed Bipolar II, for those who are new to this LiveJournal, but I haven't had to take meds for it since 2006 and am basically symptom-free now), I was already unemployed, or self-employed (same thing when you're too ill to actually do any contract work). I've always encouraged my friends and family to take the time they need when they feel overwhelmed by work and life and whatever else might be happening, but it's a very different story to take my own advice. Other people require nurturing and care, but I don't and I shouldn't, is how my internal narrative goes. I am here to make sure others are okay, and I am supposed to remain fine all the time, because that's just how things are. I mean, of course, intellectually I know that this is ridiculous, that, all things being equal, I am also human and fallible, and sometimes need to take time to take care of myself.

It doesn't help that I internalise every little thing that gets said to me, and believe it like gospel. A couple of months ago, I made a joke about everyone going on burnout leave when the supervisor who's currently on maternity leave returns, and let her take charge for a while. It was a throwaway comment, and I didn't mean anything by it (except for how maybe I did), but the other supervisor (I really need to find a nickname for her) picked up on it. "Hey, I had the schedule for nearly a year. You're not allowed to burn out!" And ever since then, that's stuck in my head. If she had the schedule for a year, I have no right to feel overwhelmed, right? She totally has all this shit under control, which means I should too. From a more logical standpoint, though, I know this isn't entirely true. She's been a supervisor longer, and while she too has the same responsibilities as I, they were given to her gradually. I had them all dumped on me in the space of two months or so: new position, new secondary (but still full-time) job, the schedule, and four newbies to train (not all at once, but often they overlapped). Not to mention that, much of the time, she refuses to do overtime (and rightly so, before you say anything!), except when we're completely in a bind. So, yeah, maybe I should be "allowed" to burn out, even though I haven't had the schedule for a year.

I'm also having trouble with my current newbie. She's having a very hard time learning the basics of the job, three months in, but that's not the part that bothers me the most (although it's kind of exhausting to constantly be watching her so she doesn't make critical errors). We are a small department (currently we're ten employees and four contract workers, as well as my boss and his boss, for a total of sixteen people), and she has already butted heads with two other employees. As a result she's asked me to not schedule her with either of those two people. Which... okay, she's on my shift, so it's unlikely she'll have to work with them much, if ever, but we're losing another employee in three weeks, and two more by the end of the year (transfer and two retirements), so that will make us even more short-staffed. We can't afford to have people who refuse to work with others. She has such thin skin that she takes everything directed her way as a criticism, and claims that these two employees were "mean" with her. *hands* I don't know what to do with her. I don't want to have to talk her off a ledge every month or two because she can't cope with a tone that's anything other than completely warm and fuzzy. I've seen it in action: one comment from someone else, and she shuts down entirely, rather than speak up and address the issue. So far I have encouraged her to assert herself politely if she feels someone is being "mean" or "unprofessional" toward her. No, it's not acceptable behaviour, but her perception of what's happening is so skewed, that I don't know where to begin unpacking her issues. I'm her supervisor, but I'm not her therapist, and I can't be a one-woman self-esteem-bolstering team. That's not my role, here. So, there's that, on top of everything else.

Somewhere around March (right around when I think the burnout started), it felt like I didn't have time to get anything done anymore. I was always at work. I would stay late to get the scheduling stuff done, come in for a few hours on my days off, and spent a fair bit of time on the phone trying to resolve problems. Something had to give, so first I stopped going to the gym. That freed up a bit of time. Then I stopped volunteering at the soup kitchen, because six hours every Monday started feeling like a lot. The only thing I've mostly maintained has been going to Meeting, and even that has taken a hit except for when I'm in charge of First Day School. Basically, my life has been reduced to eating, sleeping, and working, with the occasional foray into watching TV or playing a game online. It's not quite all work and no play, but it's damned close.

Right now I'm six days into a more or less spontaneous vacation. The aforementioned supervisor... um... let's call her geeky!coworker (because she and I have bonded over geek stuff, and she's one of the few at work who enjoys many of the same things I do), moved her schedule around so that I could have time off, without my even having to ask her. She seems to have figured out that I needed it. I won't be back to work until next Wednesday (so, June 29th, if I remember my calendar properly), but even the thought of going back to work in 8 days or so has been filling me with dread and making me break out in a cold sweat just at the thought. I spent the first three entire days of my vacation sleeping. That was partly because I was exhausted, partly because I was trying to sleep off the tension headache that never quite seems to leave me for more than a few hours at a time these days, and partly because, well, sleeping was the only thing that felt even vaguely appealing to me.

I went on a teeny tiny road trip on Saturday to Montreal (about a 1.5 hour drive or so) to see Captain America: Civil War, with my two amazing friends toughlovemuse and owldaughter. It was so much fun and I'm glad I did it, but I came back and was basically useless all of yesterday, too. I skipped going to Meeting, and didn't even get out of bed to get food for myself (although I did get up to feed the pets and let the dog outside) until 4:00pm. If one day of mildly strenuous activity in order to do something enjoyable can take that much out of me, I can't even imagine what a full day of work would do.

As a result, I am almost 100% decided that I am going to call my doctor and work up the nerve to ask her about taking time off work to regroup. I haven't had proper sleep in about six months, if nothing else. I'd like to have the time to actually rest, rather than snatch a few hours of sleep here and there in between shifts, or in between shift blocks, while trying to get all the stuff done that I couldn't while working overtime. I need to work on myself a bit, too. Get outside more, take pleasure in walking the dog. Clean my house (because you can tell how badly I'm doing by how gross my house is, and it's pretty gross these days). Do some quiet, but creative stuff.

I'm not going to see a therapist, because I have such horrific trust issues that there is no point whatsoever in paying someone to talk to, if I'm not going to talk to them about the important stuff. I've tried it before, and I go in with the best of intentions, and then I clam up and talk about everything except the actual issues that are bothering me, complete with a smokescreen of smaller issues that I don't find as hard to deal with, so that the therapist feels like they're making progress with me, when nothing of the sort is happening. Yes, even when I go to therapy, I can't turn off the part of me that wants to keep everyone around me happy.

In conclusion, the idea of stress leave is stressing me out. ;) But I think it's a necessary evil, in this case.

Comments

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I have to have a talk with my boss about what kind of remedial training we can do with her. Her problems are such that, due to the nature of my work, I can't really even discuss them more than incredibly superficially here. I need to discuss with him (my boss) whether we need to set an end date for her to improve, or else seriously consider terminating her employment. Which would totally, utterly suck, but might ultimately be necessary.

[kiwano.livejournal.com]

At least imposing the deadline sounds pretty necessary from what I can see here. It sounds like she's sucking the life out of you at work. I don't know what kinds of contractual obligations for progressive discipline or the like exist in your workplace (the suggestion about remedial training having been more of a nod to the possible existence of such obligations than a belief in her ability to shape up with some earnest effort). It might even be something that you want to call or write your boss about while you're taking your break--mainly if you notice that you keep thinking or worrying about it when you're supposed to be resting and relaxing.