Away for a while now!

I’ve been away for quite a while now from blogging. It’s not something that I have had an opportunity to think about as life took over for a long while. I’m sure a lot of you’ll out there understand what I mean.

I’ve had to adjust to a new job which I got in January last year. I actually found out that I got the job just after writing my South African Holiday post on here. Since then, it’s been a roller coaster ride of training and learning for the new job – a steep uphill learning experience.

I’ve dreamt of having this job for a very long time, probably since I was in my teens. Never thought of any other career but this, I’ve literally struggled for this opportunity for two decades. Since getting the job, there has been 6 months of training, in procedure and protocol. I have had to pass fitness challenges, written exams and find solutions to daily problems. Through it all I’ve never thought that this job was “too much” for me, despite the stress. But the people at the job, I think that’s what makes or breaks any person. Where there is a strong team spirit and a good leader, there will be achievements galore.

The people in my team are good, they answer questions when asked but there’s not much beyond that. There is nothing that keeps this team together. Fostering good will between team mates is surprisingly hard to do. With the stressors of the job, I don’t communicate as much as I should with my team mates. I tend to sit focused at my desk trying to complete my work which is never ending. Some of my colleagues may potentially think that I’m not interested in them or am not a fun person – the truth is I’m struggling to keep my head above water.

My boss is not very supportive – quick to criticise and never has any words of praise for me.  It does not matter how much I try to show improvement, there’s always something wrong in what I’ve done. He sometimes make different decisions about a given situation at different times/days which has led to me getting in trouble. I would have backed his original decision and then next thing he’s done is made a totally opposite decision to his original which then makes me look really stupid to other people. In one situation, he told me a file was not going up to management as there were some mistakes on it that could not be hidden. I took this as a decision. Few days later he has prepared that file to go up to management, asked me to add a few documents to it and send back to him. After I added what he wanted, I had to send the documents to my other boss and told them that my boss said it would not be going to management. When the other boss checked the file, she looked at me and asked me “what made you think that this was not going to management?” I said that’s what my boss indicated to me. She said “well according to what’s written up by your boss on this file, this is definitely going up to management for a decision.” This took me by surprise but the worse thing is it made the other boss look at me like I was a liar. This is just one small instance in many, some changes have made me look stupid in front of people who are not part of the company. This is the frustrating part of the job.

I don’t know what about me brings about such bad luck. Sometimes I think that maybe one day, my luck will change but I have no idea when that will be. I keep hoping but so far nothing yet!!! I will probably blog a lot more about my ‘difficult’ boss just to vent here and also to keep some kind of record of my trials. I hope that all you people understand that this does not make me a negative person. All I want is to be in a supportive environment to grow, learn and progress. But I’m not – its hard and stressful, I’m in a job where I get to help people but perversely enough there’s no one to help me.

Till the next time I write, please comment on here. Would like to hear your thoughts if you recognise a similar situation or have helpful ideas to mitigate the above problems.