Day 42: The Six Week Mark

Still going to PT 2x a week, banging out close to 2,000 footsteps daily. By 1 pm today I achieved 1,771 footsteps—the day is still young. 

After PT, I went to Wegmans (which no doubt added to my step count), and then to the post office to drop off a letter. Then back home.

Today I am off medical leave and technically working. Basically today will be email inbox housekeeping, setting up new agency laptop & packaging the old one to be sent back to IT. Hard to believe it is nearly 900 days since the shut down in 2020. In some respects ties sure flies, but for me, for the most part, time has stood still. I struggle remembering what day of the week it is, and an always ama ed it is now 2022. 

I am still waiting on the results of my psych eval; however, I am reminded that at the end of 2018 I had a meltdown at work due to a debacle someone else created—and I was the one who was lectured on my attitude, which then had whatever hope I had just plummet—hope that my (then new) boss would usher in a breath of fresh air in my office, and instead, left me with the oh so familiar message that I am a problem. The same message that was conveyed to me by my mom for five decades of my life. 

At the end of 2018 when faced with this mess, it not only fill me with despair, but had me re-evaluate everything and I came to the conclusion to discontinue talk therapy sessions with my therapist after nine years of just stagnating.

My annual eval was the week before I went out on medical leave, and suddenly after 20 years of being in my job, suddenly there is some respect or regard given to my capacity for institutional knowledge—and after 20 years of basically having my arms tied behind my back, suddenly my input is wanted—YET! at the end of 2018, I learned first hand no one wants my input because it doesn’t align with what they want to expect to hear. 

So, I can’t help but see my seeking out a psych evaluation as just an extension of the 2018 bullshit messaging, that I’m a problem. 

My mom is no doubt to blame for this as well as my problem with most older women and women in positions of authority over me. But right now? I am the common denominator. 

I was hoping to use these past six weeks to start devising a plan of escape from this job. I started (and stopped!) reading What Color Is My Parachute. I lack the focus to sit and read and do the exercises in the book Maharajah found so useful last year during his career crisis. 

Periodically, the agency I work for runs retirement workshops at certain times during the year. I got an email this week about the next workshops & I let HR know I was interested. So that is a step in the right direction, I hope. By the time I am literally back in the office, it will be 11 more months until I am able to (I hope) retire from this job. 

Waiting for the results of the psych eval is like waiting for a baby to be born. So much anticipation and uncertainty, but I hope my life will be positively changed as a result.