Maybe its the rain, I am Welsh after all.
I've been annoyingly introspective and yet I've known I needed to understand myself to move on. Feel like I've been walking the line between sadness and hope, sanity and despair. Logically all along saying so many other people go through worse and so forth so trying not to feel sorry for myself. As Mr Stephen of Fry says it may be just to feel sorry for yourself but it serves no purpose at all.
So here are the possibly contrary conclusions I have come to. I do wish they weren't so tied up in my personal experience of the situation as felt by my personality, I wish they were universal and gave you all some tips or hope or insight. Maybe for one of you they will.
I was losing my role, my status, my place, my ability to be competent in a job I had worked hard to be competent at because expectations changed and were not delivered. I have always learnt and adapted but a part of the organisation was seen as not to fit and rather than ask it to change again it was lopped of. So I left that role feeling that all the effort to glean what was needed and try to achieve it was futile and yet for the years I did it I tried as hard and as creatively as possible. It was like losing a lover and realising you had been holding up the relationship all along.
I try less hard now. Sometimes I'm trying and trying and being determined and then I think, pfff what's the point and the desire seems futile.
I used to dream and hope and strive and that elusive future that I could work for, be lucky to get, knowing I would keep trying in different ways, seeking opportunities, not pissing anyone off, being polite and helpful and honest and hardworking and reliable. I discover that wasn't as easy for me as I thought. I'm worn in places, my ability to build bubbles of hope has mostly gone.
I also motivate by guilt and duty. I feel grateful even in situations where I was giving. is it fair, is it balanced is it enough? I know now only fixing on what you should do is a route to resentment and feeling that things are a drudge. Learning is so much fun when you can go at your on pace but cramming for job applications or writing starts as a lovely challenge and ends as homework on a sunny day, and these days a sunny day I should be doing other things.
When I had my responsible job I was in a tunnel of work and no play. Family time and I went to all the events I should have, little money and little time for going to the cinema, seeing exhibitions, hardly any holidays, not asking people to babysit because I needed them to do so when I needed to work. I put the job first and it put me last, what a selfish relationship that was.
So I know I feel embarassed that I have nothing to show for all my efforts, well yes some things, but no ability to announce oh I do this now. EGO. I should get over it, I think I almost have.
I asked for advice recently as I took seriously an application for a job that woudl fascinate and challenge me and which I genuinely think I can do well. It's part time, pays badly and is a short contract, it's loads of responsibility for the money and when it ends it will look great on the cv, may one day score me a small point to a bigger job but the theme I'm getting is that I can get small experience to aid my career and at the current rate it will take 10 years to get a foot in the door. Maybe I'd enjoy it along the way? Maybe but how we are to live in that time I do not know.
It's also clear that I'm not fully formed for any role I want. I feel part in and part out.
Everyone in seems to have an idea of what I want, but they don't know. So it seems I am not making my desires understood.
I can do serious and responsible things, I can be diplomatic, empathetic, read people and know what is best to say and nudge people to think so that they come to form ideas and solutions I can see are there. But I'm read as a gallumphing childlike playful person and frustratingly my words are taken to mean the exact oppossite of what I mean and when this happens it is always that the oppossite is silly and I feel embarassed and angry and so say nothing to not offend. This is when I have been corrected. I hate being corrected. I try not to do that to other people and it seems childish to say "I KNOWWWW" like we did when we were ten. no-one ever believes you anyway. Maybe I should record myself and then analyse why people just don't understand me. but really its a lot to do with them, so maybe I'll never know. Bit frustrating that.
So what do I want? I want to sever the feeling of duty. I haven't found out how yet, a person's expression can make me feel like I should do something, I need a new response.
I want a job that I can feel competent and useful in that leaves me with a work life balance and an ability to pay the bills. Maybe even a chance to build on it and I want time to spend more on my interests and my friends and I will always make the arts a big part of that mix.
Jobs in the arts is an option in that mix for now and for the future.
That's my manifesto and stated aim from now on.
Jen
