The Many Languages of Kacco

Vous savez, j’ai parlé dans un posting précédent du fait que j’étais heureuse, que je me connaissais et que ça m’aidait à être solidement planté sur terre même dans la tempête.

 Et bien tout ça n’empêche pas d’avoir un peu peur parfois.

I did it… I just got promoted! I will be starting a new job in about a week. I am excited, yet I am a bit scared of what’s ahead. That reminds me of yet another posting from my friend (see link Mélou on my page). She was talking about big shoes to fill with her newly appointed duties to replace someone she had a lot of admiration for.

I have had a multitude of work experiences. Some good, some very ordinary, and some damn right nightmarish. I actually went through a period of grief after leaving a prior job. It was the biggest one I had had so far. I thought I was going to make my career there. But I guess there were other plans waiting for me out there. I got burned with ambition in an environment where I had people playing hard against me. I got all the stupid reasons for not getting the job I applied for 3 or 4 times. I even got the You are too young. Little did it matter that I could actually do all the tasks of the people in my department. One time, they actually refused me the job… but in turn… asked me to show how to do it to the new person they had hired. Now that was a slap in the face….

Alors j’ai fini par partir. J’ai mis du temps à me trouver un autre emploi parce que le marché du travail me semblait bien sombre tout à coup. Et puis, après quelques détours, j’ai trouvé cet emploi, que j’occuperai jusqu’à vendredi prochain. Je retournais dans un centre d’appel… que j’avais si joyeusement quitté pour aller ailleurs dans la compagnie dans mon emploi précédent. Je me disais que c’était temporaire, que c’était une porte d’entrée et que je filerais vers autre chose très bientôt. Et bien, presque 2 ans et demi plus tard, voilà, je bouge. Et vous savez? Je ne m’attendais jamais à rester là si longtemps, mais ça ne me dérangeait pas du tout. J’étais bien.

For much more money than a job with bigger responsibility that I had before, I had a great, motivating, challenging job, where I did not have deadlines pending on me. Where I did not have to take decisions. Where I did not have to put things together for executives to approve. Where I was not in charge of anybody. Where I was not doing pieces of projects for others, but only my own things. I had clients calling me with a problem and I would solve it. That was that. You might wonder where my challenge was, but trust me, in taxes, every calculation issue can be quite the challenge. I’d have to figure out what the client did, why, and how our software should respond… And if the expected response was not happening, or if something was actually happening that should not…. then why??? So there… that was my main challenge.

The most responsibility I ever got in that department was to become a contact person. I then had to assist my co-workers with issues they could not solve and I had to be in contact with the team making the software. And that was that. And for once, as driven as I had been in the past… that was way sufficient for me. It was like a period of rehabilitation to the workplace. And I found that place to be the best I had seen so far. I checked… I searched for inconsistencies… for traps I could fall into… for conflicts ahead… for deceptions… And I could not find them. So I started to appreciate a workplace again.

This time, I did not have to push harder and harder to get ahead. Someone noticed me, someone came to get me. And now… I will be back in those shoes. I will have responsibilities, deadline, executives following my work, hundreds of things to learn… And it scares me a little. I have never been so confident about myself and my capacities. I have never been so well, so serene about life in general. Yet, there is that little squeezing feeling in my stomach. How will it be with my new team (of 3 people)? How will it be with my new boss? What will they expect from me? Too little? Too much? Or just the right amount I can give? Will I discover that it’s just like that other place afterall?

That’s what happens when you have experience…. You know more, so you are more competent of course… but not only about the good things. You have been burned, you have been hurt. So, aside from having all the new things to assimilate, I think my next big challenge is to let go of my apprehension. I must be able to recognize if it becomes unhealthy for me, but I should not be going in backwards trying to look for things that might go wrong in advance. Otherwise, like any other being who is scared, I can actually make it be that awful thing I am scared of by focussing so much on what I don’t want instead of seeing what I have in reality.

Wow… that sounds a lot like relationships… This time, it’s for a job. Next time?