Moving Up?

If I were to have a bunch of counters, let's say like the pieces you use in Connect 4, and then stacked them up for every week I've had since I last wrote anything here, a yellow one for every good week and a red for every bad week, it would probably look like this;

Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y R
Y R
Y R
Y R
Y R
Y R
Y R

... or something like that. Which is good. (I know that isn't the right number of weeks, but you get the gist.) I changed jobs. I've office-hopped to a new place. It's better. But not ideal. The money is definitely better which is a big Y, and I feel we get paid well for the skill set required for the job. I'm working with smart 40-somethings with diverse interests and a lot to say about most things. That's a definite Y.

Then there are the Rs. That stack has been rising fairly steadily of late. Quite a lot of these people seem to be very unhappy and several are in the midst of a divorce, which is sad. At least one person in my office has cried for about 75% of the time I have been there. One day 3 different people cried. They sent around an email last week to say someone's husband had left her and she wanted the manager to let everyone know so she didn't have to explain to tell everyone herself (even though I had heard her telling all her work friends through whispered tears that same day). I thought it was strange that I was included in the email because I don't actually want to know those details about a person who scarcely says hello once a week and, honestly, doesn't seem to like me that much. That doesn't mean I can't be empathetic, it just means I don't actually want this information. This is my just my job.

I started thinking about an email that I might like to have the manager send out about me. 'The Daydreamer has asked me to send this email to annouce that, despite having only recently joined us, she is currently grappling with the black dog at her heels as the winter eats her up and she continues to die a very slow death on the inside. With all that said, she hopes you will all respect the fact that she would like to breeze in and out of the office with a smile on her face and would prefer no-one mention her gradual disintergration, gross sense of hopelessness and constant desire to scratch her way through the office walls to an imagined outside world where there is no-one lying in rubble or getting stabbed on the way home from work. Cheers, Beverley.'

So, it's better. But it's not ideal.