Moving on

I didn’t get the job in the end, and I guess I’m not so bothered. It means I can switch back on without worrying whether anyone finds out about my alter ego, and continue chasing rainbows through the window that always opens when a door closes.

So now, I get to stick with Plan A – the dreamer plan – the one where I go back to uni and write that book. Never mind that I got great feedback on the job application; that they will keep me in mind for future opportunities, and the only reason I didn’t get it is because they gave it to someone who’s been at the company a lot longer than me – and in a positive move, to someone who’s just had a baby. In fact,  all of this makes me feel even more positive about the place I now work, where people are reasonable, efforts are made to redress wrongs and collective responsibility is taken for issues. But it’s also killing any creativity I may have once felt I had.

Next week, I speak to HR about flexible working – a full month after I first put in my request – but hey, at least I now know what my options are.  It may have taken a while to get here, and there’s no guarantee I will be granted it, but when you’re running from pillar to post five days a week, there’s little time to catch your breath, let alone have any good ideas. It takes silence and solitude for that. And,  I found in the past, anger and injustice – perhaps that’s what I’m missing?

Since going on the pill, I’ve been feeling pretty well balanced – too well-balanced perhaps? Oh, I still sometimes trip over the ruins of shattered relationships, many the result of mood swings past – the odd shard still spikes me into tears. And I’m still grumpy with those lower down the chain – no, not my cleaning lady, who I’ve been treating with kid gloves since vacuumgate – the one where Tom bought me a Dyson for Christmas, the significance of which rather spoiled the day; and then, hoping our cleaning lady would at least get some joy from it, he was horrified to discover she’d penned a two sided envelope in broken English as to the V8’s demerits – notably that it only runs for 20 minutes before it needs a recharge – and I thought it was only my first world millennial entitlement that had given me grounds to be so upset about it. Not even not the fact of not having to use it very often could make up for my disappointment, which I made Tom make up for in the January sales with faux diamonds, which probably just about sums up the state of our relationship – along with the therapy (to plumb the, um, depths of why a vacuum cleaner is not a suitable present for Christmas – even as a sort of joke  – which he’s not yet got round to booking. Perhaps if I’ve had my PMT- it wasn’t just PMT –  curtailed by synthetic hormones beforehand, he needn’t have bothered. But it’s not as if I’ve turned into little Mrs Sunshine since, either.

No, I’ve been grumpy with the physio who wasn’t allowed to touch my permanently aching muscles and clicking joints , but instead gave me a set of pointless exercises I already know how to do, compliments of the beleaguered NHS, but actually the result of a working culture that has me chained to a chair five days a week (until HR deigns otherwise) (oh, and possibly all the drugs prescribed on the NHS while in my twenties – but that’s another story.) I guess that’s enough to put anyone in a foul mood, but why take it out on the Thai girl with terrible English (and possibly, should I choose not to close my eyes to it, the victim of some kind of nail bar slavery (quite common, apparently) who failed to leave my eyelash dye on long enough, having dragged my sorry ass up the road in sub-zero temperatures in an attempt to feel more positive about my post- festive appearance by taking the glare of my albino eyelashes. Yet, despite asking in ever louder, more rounded vowels for her to leave it on a bit longer, she whipped it off before it could possibly had a chance to develop, and so she felt the rough side of my tongue, when lo, as expected my eyes were still fringed by something approximating gold. I left glowering, without paying, feeling about as entitled as it possible to feel in two day old trackie b’s and yesterday’s hair, and realised, as I mulled it over later, how much shit trickles down, if we let it, and why we should all take care not to take out our stress on those less powerful than ourselves.

In any case, I may be on a more even keel, but it appears to have left me permanently a bit shirty, with post-partum boobs, rather than the two weeks of sunshine and flowers followed by two weeks of eye twitching hysteria that had become the norm of my usual monthly cycle.

Rather than sucking up everyone else’s ire with a martyred smile and unleashing on those I know will never leave, I am learning to address my issues at source – the chap who sits opposite me has been told in no uncertain terms when his manspreading crosses over into disputed territory. I may have earned the nickname ‘Margaret’ at work, for my iron will, but he knows now that I’m not for appeasing should he feel the urge to stretch. But perhaps that comes from knowing my own foot is safely in the door of my current office.

But I also seem to be settling into a sort of hibernatory inertia that could become terminal – at least to any grander ideas I may have had about my writing career than the rather dry one that’s currently paying the bills.

At least I feel comfortable in the workplace for the first time in ages – never mind it might not be my dream job – even the new one that I didn’t get wasn’t one I’d really wanted until the opportunity arose. I may have missed out this time, but there will be other chances and in the meantime, I feel they appreciate and trust me enough to make it possible to have more freedom, in time to wave goodbye to my children’s childhoods.

It is, then, the end of an era for all of us. I’ve realised that an office with nice people can be preferable to a vipers’ nest of a school playground, and a trendy agency full of egos. And a job that’s dull but where you feel valued is worth much more than one that’s more dynamic but where you constantly feel undermined. And feeling just about okay about everything most of the time can be better than feeling up one minute and down the next. Even if it means I’m treading water, going nowhere, creating nothing –  if I am kinder to myself and others because I am less miserable. Well, most of the time at least.