Daily Wahnsinn

Ah, LinkedIn and the wankiness it provides…

I mentioned previously that we’re going through performance reviews right now and that part of these performance reviews is determining who gets promoted and who not. I’ve worked my ass off during the last year and I’ve got the mental health issues to prove it.

I just saw that J, a girl who I worked with on my first account has been promoted to a senior role. We were at the same level and I’m currently hoping to get promoted to a senior role. J and myself had the same manager on the account: S.

S never liked me, probably still doesn’t. S has done a fairly poor job at hiding the fact that J was her favorite and S never was an advocate for my career growth or even took interest in my career. Whenever I asked her for feedback on where I could grow and where I could improve, she had nothing to say, yet at the same time, I wasn’t considered for promotion, so clearly she thought there were things I could have done better.

Finding out now that J and another girl who worked under S both got promoted, despite the company recently laying off 9 people, and even promoted outside of the regular performance review cycle makes me so, so angry. My first manager D, wasn’t around long enough to see my progress after I had settled into the account. My second manager S, disliked me and would probably rather cut off her leg than take an interest in my career. My third manager B, who just left, was a blithering idiot/all talk, but never actually did anything. So while he always praised me, he never actually said to his managers, “hey, I think we should promote her now.”

I’m getting extremely frustrated and concerned about the promotion. With the company letting people go because they have to downsize the department and just having promoted a bunch of people, what does that mean? Does that mean they’re done promoting people and I’ll be overlooked again?

I know my manager situation makes me sound like I’m making excuses, but I truly believe that I’ve been working very, very hard the last 12 months and that I honestly deserve a promotion. Maybe more so than the people I’ve recently seen getting promoted. Am I stupid to worry over this?

I can’t believe it’s March already. Where’s the year going?

My week was awful and the only good thing I have to say is that I’m glad it’s over. And that despite all the challenges I faced, I did manage to meet my deadline (somewhat) and that I still managed to be social.

I’m presenting two big campaigns to the client on Monday and I was struggling all week to finalize said plans and put together a recommendation deck. Going into this week, I knew it was going to be busy, I nearly had a heart attack when I realized on Tuesday that my Assistant Planner hadn’t completed all the work I had asked her to do - basically leaving me with having to finish her stuff on top of mine. I’ve been doing my job for almost five years and I’m confident in my skills. Managing somebody else is something I haven’t done a whole lot before, so obviously I’ve been asking myself why she didn’t complete all of her tasks despite saying she did. Was it because I’m not good at communicating to her? Am I not clear in my instructions?

She was on vacation this past week and I know she was struggling very hard the week before to finish the tasks I had given her as well as the tasks that her other manager had given her. She was constantly complaining about how much work she has to do. We’ve had issues with her in the past and her not being thorough in her work, not being proactive and quite frankly, causing more work for the team as she doesn’t double check her own work and others then have to fix her mistakes in retrospect. I’ve been assured that her not completing her tasks before she left on vacation has nothing to do with my communication skills but more so with her listening skills since others have had the same issue with her.

It wasn’t a very comforting thought though when I realized on Tuesday. On top of being stressed at having this extra work in addition to everything that’s already going on, I was upset because I want her to do well. I want to be a great manager to her and I want her to be recognized by the more senior people on our team. I want her to stand out and be noticed and I want her to strive and be considered for promotion. I want her to have a career because I know she wants (and probably expects) to be promoted this spring. We’re going through our annual performance review cycle and I know she’s not going to be offered a more senior role. It upsets me that I’m trying everything I can and yet she’s self-sabotaging by not listening to instructions, not following through and basically having a poor attitude. This whole thing is so frustrating to me.

My frustration showed on Tuesday. We had a team outing and went to this country club in Union Square to play mini golf, pool and a bunch of other board games. And drink. Lots to drink. I kept myself in check with the food by bypassing the pizza and dessert, instead sticking to raw veggies with hummus. But not the booze. By the time we got there, I was so stressed and upset that I drank my feelings. I had 2 glasses of wine and 4 shots of tequila. I haven’t been that drunk in a really long time and I’m not proud of losing control like this. But it happened.

I’m happy to say though that I’ve been struggling less with thoughts of disordered eating lately. While I wasn’t proud of myself the next morning, I also didn’t beat myself up over it. I did get up at crack o’ dawn to run the next day (and I was possibly still drunk as I did!), but it wasn’t a punishment run for losing control the night before. It was a run that is part of my regular routine and that’s making me feel good, just because running tends to do that.

Other than that, my exercise patterns have been awful this week. I took my regular rest day on Tuesday and yesterday, I sort of did an active rest day. Whatever that means. I was supposed to run yesterday, but I couldn’t get up in the morning. The week was taking its toll on me. Of course I worked late yesterday, so by the time I finally got home, I was so exhausted. I did 30 minutes of very, very gentle yoga that was more of a stretch than a workout. I think I burned less than 30 calories, so I’m not counting it as a workout per se, but I still did something.

I’ve got lots of plans for the day. They include a run, picking up my race bib for tomorrow’s 5k race, baking bread, doing my laundry, catching up with TV shows, reviewing my February goals/posting March goals and responding to a couple of emails. It’s gonna be a busy day. But it’s a Me day.