Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I’ve Misplaced My Ugly Betty, Has Anyone Seen Her?

A couple three of years ago, it was during the first season of the TV show Ugly Betty, around New Years, some channel ran an all day marathon of the entire season todate… possibly ABC Family, as it would have been a cable channel owned by ABC and that’s the only one that comes to mind. Anyway, I had read in the TV Guide that Ugly Betty was such a good show, and took this opportunity to give it a test run and get hooked. However, something else happened while I watched that marathon….

It may have been the post-Christmas blahs, the winter blues, the seven-year (sort of) itch or some other cliché, but I was not happy in my professional life. Looking back, I cannot recall the specifics and I truly doubt there was anything horrible going on, but I know that each day it was a struggle to force myself to come in to the office and each day I spent eight hours, with an hour in the middle for lunch, waiting for 5:15 to come along so I could go home. It wasn’t pretty.

But as I watched this Ugly Betty marathon and fell in love with the show, I saw this unfashionable frump of a woman, working in the fashion world with people who looked down on her and treated her as though she didn’t belong there, go to work each day with a smile on her (braced) face and never let them get her down. She looked at each day as a new challenge and did not view even the smallest task as being beneath her. She appreciated her job and the opportunities it provided to help her get closer to her ultimate goals.

I don’t know that it was a conscious thing, but somehow, during the marathon, I realized that Ugly Betty should be my guide. After all, unlike Betty, I work in my chosen field, for people that appreciate me and treat me well, and although they do seem to come and go, I have generally always gotten along with my co-workers (and if I just can’t stand them, the good Lord smiles on me and helps them find a different position, either inside or outside of the firm.) There was very little about my job that I could complain about and if Betty could find fulfillment and challenges in her job, so could Rose! After the marathon (and the long holiday weekend), I returned to work a new woman.

Now, three years later, the Ugly Betty series finale is set to air later this week and I’m in my mental slump again. In the past four years, Betty’s life has had highs and lows, but as always, she’s met every challenge and has persevered. There have been some situations that she should have avoided though, like the bumble bee Halloween costume… that was just painful. What was my point?

Oh, my slump. Back in late January, or early February, I snapped. I think I wrote about it, but can’t be sure. I broke down in our office manager’s office, she called in my boss, and suddenly it was “Operation: Relieve Rose of Some of This Pressure!” I had high hopes for this operation, but the pessimist in me – and I only let her loose on occasions, but unfortunately she snuck out about that time – said that nothing substantial was going to change. We made a list of the things that I felt were overwhelming. A big player on the scene was my subrogation duties, but although it was a lot of work, it was mentally stimulating and I got to do more than just do dictation and file time tickets.

Well, the pessimist (Bitch!) was mostly right, but she was wrong in one big way, there was one thing that changed – the one thing that I really didn’t want to change, all of my subro duties were distributed amongst several other people and I was no longer involved.

In the beginning, I didn’t mind the loss of the mental workouts. Frankly, I was burnt out and I had a vacation to look forward to, so I coasted through the days until it was time to head out to the beach. And of course, post-vacation it took a day or two to get back in the groove. But I’ve recovered from my burned-out-ness, the butter knife of vacation having scraped off most of the burnt crusty bits, my toast is back to normal and ready for some butter! (I know, weak finish to the metaphor, but, see, I need mental stimulation) There are the occasional projects where I’m creating this spreadsheet in Excel that just sends jiggles of excitement up my spine at the thought. But in general, the projects I’m working on take little to no brain power… my sisters who made far lower SAT scores than I made, might find them a challenge; but, me, being the genius of the fambly, my thoughts tend to wander and then I’m distracted, and there isn’t even a chicken to blame it on!

Now my daddy (Hi, dad!) once told me (in regard to my whining about being given a project where I stood at a copier all day, every day, for an entire week – boy! do my dogs bark at that memory!) that they could pay me to do “paralegal” work or they could pay me to stand at a copier to be “makin’ copies!” all day, but either way, I should just imagine that I was doing the job for the Lord and do as good a job as I possibly could. He also pointed out that if they were foolish enough to pay me, at my salary, to do copy work, then it was their loss. It was also their stupidity to let me go 9 years later, but that’s another blog.

My point here is that I know that I owe my employers my best in exchange for my 8 hours wages and all the free tuna I can smuggle out in my bra. But the last six weeks have been hard. Again, I’ve gotten to the point of having to force myself out of bed and go to work because if I call in today, tomorrow might be worse and I can’t call in too many days in a row. After all, I only have so many PTO days in a year and I just took a 5-day vacation!

In addition to the lack of mental stimulation, part of my malaise may be due to the whole Sophie being sick thing. But she’s better now. Part of it is also due to the fact that I don’t have any playmates sitting near me. My peep in subro with whom I could commiserate is still in subro and too busy to play with me. Carrie, Boss #2 was moved over to the other side of the building to work in a different area and although I still do her work, she mostly does research and write memos, so my only involvement is reading and editing for her. I miss her. I know I could wander over to see her, but she’s busy, and hell!, if the bathroom weren’t on the other side of the building I wouldn’t go over there at all! The two girls I sit with are nice, but frankly I feel sort of guilty because they are two of the people who got part of my subro responsibilities and I know they are just as busy as I was and didn’t need the added duties – they don’t talk to me much anymore, but that may be more in response to my moodiness than any peeved-ness toward me.

The thing is, during this economy, and with my general low self-esteem (really!.. I’m a complex mess of a confident, outgoing-introvert with self-esteem issues. Freud would have a heyday!)… oops, lost my train of thought there… oh, yeah, it’s not like I’m going to go grab the nearest paper and start sending out the resumes, but it’s hard for me not to remember that approximately ten years ago, at a time when I felt similar malaise about a job/workplace, the next thing I know they’re doing away with my position and I’m looking for another job. I know the Lord will find me a job, and it’s not like I’m living on my own anymore, living rent-free with the momster and all, but I don’t like change and my life has seen way too much change in the past year, so Betty, get your butt back over here and resume inspiring me! I may have to get Season 1 on DVD, since that was when the show was at its most Betty-ness. Help me, Betty. You’re my only hope.

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