Managing expectations

Since starting a new job at a global multinational just a few weeks ago, life has felt very much like one long endurance test – whether it’s entering one’s password for the umpteenth time to log on, or listening to someone drone on about ‘values’ despite the organisation’s questionable history – it often feels like the hurdles one must jump in order to even set oneself up for the day can feel more onerous and more numerous than the task you’re actually there to do.

Certainly, being employed these days seems to be more an exercise in adhering to a set of policies and procedures than achieving much of value – but perhaps this is the modern world – there actually isn’t all that much to do. In order to get paid, we must all look busy, and be ‘on brand’ – even, these days, in private. It’s as if – at a time when humans are so much messy and complex than the robots who are soon to be stealing our jobs- we have to become more robotic to survive the corporate world.

Weeks of learning programs my brain’s not evolved for, working solo amid myriad new faces and learning the ropes of a role for which I’m largely overqualified (isn’t everyone?) – except for getting to grips with ever-more complex and unreliable technology – means I’ve been sapped of energy for doing much out in the real world.

Indeed, my last update – a post-shopping diatribe about finding oneself after having children – got deleted (probably for the best) as I finger typed it on my mobile, due to some glitch in the system, semi-hungover and baby-woken early, on a train back from my sisters’ in Sussex. It would be the last time I go there, for she moves – her sixth home in 15 years, in August, and once again, I get a sense of how disrupted our lives are – what with mum, who I’ve seen all of twice this year, away again for a three week vacation to North Africa, and soon to move herself – down to Devon where we’ll see her even less on her six-monthly sojourns back from wintering in the States, since we’re likely to get down there twice a year at best.

Does it matter? These broken communities; and the terse, professionalised connections that have replaced familiarity and love? My personal well has all but run dry from the shallow, fractured lives we are all expected to lead. But getting on as I am, I am becoming resigned to this brittle existence – lifted only by ever-rarer catch ups with friends whose lives are as busy, and often as toxic, as my own.

As dreams and ambition evaporate up in the face of rare and dwindling opportunities, I question the point of it all: the trying, the exams, the exercise, the effort of making myself look acceptable day in and out. These days, even washing my hair feels like hard work, not least my thrice weekly workouts which are doing little to stem the flow of middle-age spread,  and contraceptive pill-fuelled water retention – it hardly seems worth it when no one is really looking. Since my cellulite is now being matched by hot-weather induced inner thigh chafe, perhaps this is a good thing.

Having said all that – and I am not depressed, merely disillusioned – Tom and I are in a better place than we were a month ago. We are being kinder to each other, and making more effort to look after ourselves, which is fairer on the other in the long term. But then, it’s easy to be in cahoots when you stop squabbling amongst yourselves and find a common enemy, as we have in only our second Airbnb guest to stay in our lovely Devon cottage.

To para-lyric Taylor Swift, I knew she was trouble before she showed up. She’d threatened to cancel before even arriving – something to do with parking, which actually hasn’t been a problem (as we told her it wouldn’t). But she’s found plenty else to gripe about. As soon as she arrived (bringing with her a geriatric father-in-law she’d failed to mention when booking) she was complaining – the garden isn’t as big as it looked in the pictures and has steps we’d not mentioned in our description; we didn’t have stairgates or plug covers so her precious almost three year old (seriously, you should see the pictures of this unassuming looking child on Facebook, dressed up as a fairy, or a butterfly or a cupcake – I rarely take out my bile on small children but this woman takes the biscuit).

Our seven step stairwell, of which there was a clear picture on the website – is, according to her, a health and safety hazard because, despite having two walls, it has no handrail. We offered her a 50% refund, which she declined. But the issues kept coming: The toilet was blocked, she said – it turns out she hadn’t flushed it properly – did I mention the property, not least the plumbing, isn’t exactly modern. The wifi – which we had recently installed and tested – when we finally spoke to her husband over the phone (this is terribly inconveniencing us, she’d messaged, in, I imagine, a grating South African accent), he said, having waited 40 minutes for Vodafone to pick up, ‘I’ll just plug this in shall I?’ But it was the threats to call her ‘attorney’ on us, because she said that we were ‘arrogant and evasive’, despite answering all her messages in good time, doing our best to solve her problems, despite her own slow and erratic responses, that finally saw me crying on the phone to someone from Airbnb in what sounded like Poland trying to sort the whole damn mess out.

In any case, Tom and I bonded over our mutual vilification of this guest from hell, while I picked up some excellent psychopath management skills (stay polite, leave the ball in their court, be clear – in writing – on what you’ve done to help, reiterating if necessary). Bt I do hope this isn’t a taster of what to come. Hell is other people, according to John Paul Satre, but for managing unrealistic expectations that are particularly devilish. Perhaps this generation has been raised on unrealistic expectations – for their careers, holidays, body image – and that leads all of us to be chronically dissatisfied with anything that falls short – even if the fault – (over-indulging in booze or chocolate; having children at an inopportune time, failing to mention an additional guests with mobility requirements) lays squarely with yourself. We can all complain about the way things are, but it needs to come with a side order of recognition as to how we’ve contributed to the problem – otherwise we end up with a vitriolic, litigious society where we see blaming others as the only way to meet our unreasonable demands.

That’s why, rather than blaming my current weight gain on the pill (it’s definitely not helped though), I’m doing something about it – the hardcore gym sessions notwithstanding. Yes, I’ve investigated 3D lipo at the clinic where I went for electrolysis following a hormonal imbalance diagnosis. But having done my homework, I’ve managed my expectations about what it can achieve.

Booking in for just one session of ‘Cavitation’ at £100 a pop (fat-melting, basically, look it up), I’m not expecting my thighs to regain their 14-year-old smoothness, but I will settle for being able to wear shorts at Camp Bestival later on this summer. And rather than be disappointed that ‘fat freezing’ is unlikely to achieve the  results I want it to at near £350 for my lower stomach and just one of my inner thighs (the chafing’s pushed me to it), I’m doing it for nothing with ice blocks at home (half an hour under an ice pack watching Wimbledon is rather a treat) where I can be disappointed for free (there is some science that it works, but I remain to be convinced.) I know what I should do is refuse my midweek red wines and opt for fewer squares of dark chocolate as a treat, but I really don’t want to. But at least owning this much is mea culpa means I can only feel so depressed when I look in the mirror and a corn on the cob looks back at me. That and blaming my parents for bottle feeding me formula as an infant and ALLOWING MY JUVENILE FAT CELLS TO SWELL and hormones to get out of whack, causing me a lifetime of thigh-based dissatisfaction.

There are always myriad reasons why things are the way they are. My cottage in Devon (it’s Victorian, doncha know – the stairs have been handrail-less for over 150 years without anyone complaining) can’t be fitted out as an old peoples’ home for the sake of a two week stay in my home and no amount of crying ‘Lawyer’ will change that.

Just as our dear (soon to be departed) guest needs to accept she’s not staying in a five star hotel, and is paying a £100 a night for a property that sleeps up to 8 (she eventually gave us a totally unjustified 1 star review) – I need to accept that we live in a modern age of technological innovation, and will my evolutionary incapacity to keep up in a workplace that I’ve chosen for convenience and salary over prestige and burning fascination with the subject matter. I can live with these things – even if sometimes they do sting. Probably less than having my thighs melted with lasers, but I’m doing that voluntarily, even if no one’s really looking. Well, you have to please yourself sometimes, even if there are less hi-tech ways to get what you want.