I am only just getting around to writing this difficult post; well, I have written it and then edited it and then wrote it again and edited it some more. This is a difficult post to write because the result of it is that I have been messed around, and I am disappointed and have been let down. So, bear with me while it unfolds, but I cannot go into too much detail really. I wanted to write it down to vent, and I figure that this will help me. It all started earlier in the year but escalated in the summer.
The summer has flown by as life slowly opened back up after eighteen months of having one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. This summer, I had been "making up for lost time" and have a lot of entries to write and post from the past few months, so I have been behind a lot of the time. Despite life opening back up, this year has always felt to me as though something is "out of alignment". I know that we are still in a pandemic, but something did not feel exactly "right" a few weeks into the year. I guess it started with bad news in mid-March, but I tried to remain positive. Then, I had more bad news at the end of August, a day before going on holiday, regarding my role due to the company seeking to replace the technology stack.
I wrote a post in mid-March (A Year in Pandemic Lockdown) just before I had the bad news about my role at a company that I loved. Work was one aspect of my life that I appreciated and was grateful for, especially after many years of contracting and not having a break or stability, and then the pandemic hit. I felt that I'd got the perfect job and that things would go easier in that area of my life. I was looking forward to 2022 so that I could use my work benefits and finally travel again as I wasn't able to when I was contracting and then since the pandemic. I really thought that I'd found a place that I would stay at for several years. The past several years have truthfully left my exhausted, and that goes for this year and last year due to the pandemic.
The last three months (the end of August through to mid-November) have come with the worst news and is one of the worst periods in my life so far.
Work was not the only thing wrong. COVID also ravaged my home area at the same time as my role was being made redundant this autumn, and in a very short space of time (roughly a month), I have had a few family and friends die or become very ill. So far, three have died (including one close family member), and others had gotten very ill and were in hospital. I am worried about the rest of my family and friends. I've become mentally exhausted with everything. So, obviously my mind is not in a great place. I've felt depressed and anxious, which hit the worst in the autumn. It did not help that others were not pulling their weight at work and that others had been made redundant in June, meaning that there was a lot more on my plate.
The ordeal with the redundancy is particularly cruel because most of the restrictions on our lives for the past 18+ months were lifted in early August, and just as things started to reopen and as soon as I start to take annual leave, the news comes, and my life is turned upside down. As if the pandemic and COVID hitting my family and friends in the states where I'm unable to do anything is not enough.
The redundancy has impacted my plans completely. I was originally due to see my friends and family in the states in 2020, but then obviously that didn't go ahead. From the autumn of 2020, I planned to use a lot of annual leave at the end of next March and beginning of April. I had nearly twenty days of annual leave to use until the end of March. These plans to see my family and friends has cruelly been taken away from me in the decision.
Readers of this blog will know my sacrifies over the past several years with freelancing and not being allowed to take holiday and lacking stability. The reason for me going permanent was to have that stability in my life. I was tired of short "rolling" contracts and not being allowed or able to take time off. On top of that, a few of the contracts required working evenings, weekends, and bank holidays, and I even worked on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve a couple of times to meet the deadlines. I'd put work above myself.
Of course, the pandemic meant that I and others have not had much stability anyway. All in all, I had about six months of "job stability" from late summer 2020 until March.
I have spent my annual leave and waking moments worrying and depressed (I think I've become quite good at hiding it) with everything going on and feeling helpless. I feel emotionally exhausted. For this to happen to me after all of the difficulties in the past few years and just as the majority of pandemic restrictions were lifted earlier in August for life to "return to normal" is just wrong. Particularly as I worked very hard and had put in far more hours, often working overtime to help others out.
Generally, life has made me feel that I "cannot catch my breath". I remember the reasons I went contracting originally, and that was because I had been screwed over previously with redundancy and with a direct offer of "a dreamjob", which turned out to be all hot air. However, contracting was the same way. You are always at the mercy of the client or company. A few people I have worked with previously have tended to be extremely lucky and ended up in long-term contracts and contracts that are long-term without tight deadlines.
Contracting (not that I would want to do that again, but if I really had to) is not even an option now as I had started the process of closing my company in early March, and I couldn't have backed out. So, I am not able to create another company for two years from that date. I don't want to anyway.
I had absolutely loved my previous job and the team I worked with; I had helped to evolve and create that time and I had hired one of the people on the team. There is a lot more going on than I can say, but in short, I was treated very poorly. This has tainted my feelings of the job, and I have become disillusioned with employers now. I was appalled at how I'd been treated despite all of the great feedback from colleagues and all hard and extra work that I'd put in, and I genuinely thought that I was appreciated and valued. Obviously, it is the topmost managers and HR making decisions, and they really do not know, but the way they handled me with everything that I was going through was horrid. I have realised that it is not the good employer that I thought it was.
I started a new job in mid-November.
Generally, I am still feeling exhausted about everything. Settling into a new role and new company, especially during a pandemic and in the run up to Christmas, is not easy.
I am hoping that things look up for me. That's all I can do, HOPE.
If you've come to see the photographs, I am sorry to rant. I was in a far worse place not long ago, but I feel that I can type it out now without saying too much, but it really is worse that I've let on. Anyway, if you have come for the photographs, I have included the following:
- LOVE sculpture discovered in Mayfair in London
- Parrots decorate Annabel's night club in London
- Pink flower display in Regent's Park
- Ilfracombe harbour
- Colourful bollards at Covent Garden
- A visit to Sheffield Park in October near the height of everything bad happening to try to clear my mind and see autumn colour.
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