I’ve been feeling tired nearly constantly for months. It’s starting to drive me mad. What I would love, more than anything in the world, is a good night’s sleep. One where I wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead – not grouchy and exhausted like I do every single morning in reality. I’ve no idea how I am supposed to achieve a better quality of sleep. I’ve tried going to bed earlier at 9, 10pm – that can sort of help sometimes, but not always, and never entirely. I try keeping the window open to air the room at night, as it can get a bit stuffy in here; that just creates noise with the blind moving back and forth in the breeze all night. I don’t know whether the problem is noise, heat, or stress. They say lack of sleep can cause increased levels of stress, and I do believe them. But how can I ameliorate my stress levels when I can’t sleep properly?
An undeniable factor is the problem I have of being unable to think of anything apart from work, from the moment I wake to the moment I doze off at night. At least 90% of my waking thoughts must be completely occupied by work and the issues relating to it. My recent promotion to team supervisor has definitely not been great for my mental health on a number of levels. The times when I feel myself getting particularly tense about it, which happens about once a week, I try and find a moment to sit down and list in great detail all the things I’m feeling anxious about. This usually helps a good deal; but then a few days later I’ll probably be feeling tense again, and it’s like nothing’s changed.
Oh, and the number of Diet Coke cans I get through every day can’t be helping. The difficulty there is that they have this drinks fridge just outside our office which is stocked full of all the fizzy liquids you could ever want each week. Hardly lends itself to healthy living, does it? If it wasn’t free I wouldn’t touch it. When it’s permanently free, you can’t really say no to it.
If they were offering free beer I’d say no, so why can’t I approach Diet Coke in the same way? I guess I haven’t got there yet. I haven’t become desperate enough.
There’s lots of important stuff going on at work which would naturally occupy a significant portion of anyone’s thought space. I’m being asked to reconcile the huge financial loss that our department has engendered in the past few years. The cause of the loss is fairly simple; recouping the loss is another matter. It would be a lie to say I don’t enjoy the challenge. It’s a great responsibility, and if I actually manage to contribute in any way to the improvement of the company’s finances, it will go down well with the powers that be. I wish I had a little more time to apply myself to the task entirely. There never seems to be enough time.
As well as that I’ve put myself forward to run a training session next month for our customer service department, on how to handle customer complaints. For someone who used to break into a sweat at the thought of picking up the phone, this is a step forward. My manager seems satisfied with the basic structure of the session that I want to run, so from now it’s really up to me to plan and organise the whole thing. At the moment I think I’m reasonably confident about doing it, but there’s every chance that could change. As the time draws nearer I’m sure those cold sweats will start to haunt me.
I’d like to rest assured in the knowledge that my manager feels really confident in me, but as ever, it’s impossible to tell what she really thinks. When I was presenting to her today I got the same impression that I always get when I’m speaking to her: that I was taking up her time unnecessarily. A lot of this fear is undoubtedly me reading too much into the limited emotional signals that she gives out. That said, my expectations of having a supportive manager are not being realised. Before today I hadn’t spoken to her in two weeks, and I doubt I’ll get to speak to her again until next month some time. Yes, I get it: she manages over fifty people, she has a lot on her plate. In my heart I just can’t help wanting more from her.
This issue forms a major portion of the thoughts about work that keep me up at night. I’m playing what I think is a key role in my department, with everything that I am trying to do and achieve, and my contributions aren’t being recognised in the way I would like. I’m stuck with this half arsed job title that makes me feel like I am in-between roles for some reason. ‘Team supervisor’ is too ambiguous for me. I just can’t get used to it. All other department heads get to call themselves ‘team leaders’. I’m doing the job of a team leader, but so far I have not been recognised as one.
I’m aware that the role is up for review next month, and providing nothing goes wrong, I could be made a manager. Or they could decide that things are working well as they currently stand, and make me keep this uncomfortably ambiguous job title for another year. It’s in the company’s hands. I want so desperately to know what they think of me. I need to find a way of breaking through my boss’s icy exterior. But how? She never even says ‘hello’.
I’m being told by the voice of common sense that it’s one of those relationships I’ll have to work at. Like with managers who’ve gone before, I’ll need to be patient with this one. Even though I’ve seen the benefits of being patient before, I can’t bear to just let this one be, with so much seemingly at stake.
Maybe it’s the job title that I need to get over. If I could wholly accept being a mere supervisor for the rest of my life – let’s face it, it would hardly be a bad life – then the need to get into the boss’s good books would immediately become less desperate. I’ve got it into my head that becoming a proper manager is the only way forward; anything else would be a step back. Since my first day at thje company I have been making slow but sure progress. I feel as if the status quo is holding me back. I’ve come to feel stifled by my in-between job title and my boss’s unresponsiveness. If I were better at accepting things for what they are, none of this would be a problem. If I decided to focus on the positives, of which there are many, I’d be OK. Only that’s not my style, really, is it?
