Reflecting on the future

I am finally starting to feel like myself after that thrust into negativity land. I have had a challenging week (really the past couple of weeks) and it has forced me to think about where this energy could be coming from.

As I have mentioned before I am an empath and very intuitive. My intuition has told me that there is someone (or more than one person) working against me which is why I am having to work harder than I should. When I thought it about and started to piece things together it was clear who these people are and why they feel the need to set me up for failure. I tell you if you listen the universe will tell you everything that you need to know. As I said, I am pretty intuitive and my intuition is always right. Some people think I am paranoid or concoct conspiracy theories about events but as we saw with my last work environment everything that is suspected was accurate. People asked me how I knew and it was because of my intuition. It tells me what I need to know so I can know how to navigate in the world. I know it might sound crazy but it hasn't failed me yet.

So, back to my current situation. Like New York, the city where I live now is highly competitive. As a matter of fact there are probably more type A personalities here than there were in New York. Everyone here wants to be the best at whatever it is that they do. Healthy competition and drive is great. However it is unhealthy here to the point that people are critical to the point of dragging down others so they can be on top. Mind you all of these people do not necessary do the work to be on top, but they all feel entitled to be the top dog. People here also LOVE to self promote themselves in the same way that people in New York. In New York they might work for XYZ company in ABC industry, or they might have appeared in HIJK production in 1992. Here, people walk around bragging about their top tier college, and in some cases high school! They all seem to have graduated with a 4.0 g.p.a. Yet, there are about as mediocre as they come. White bread, neurotic, and hypercritical.

I don't socialize here so a lot of what I experience I internalize because I don't have anyone to mull it over with. All my confidants have passed on. My godmother, my aunt, my mother, etc. The other people left don't understand my intuitive nature and are always trying to make me doubt myself.

My thoughts are kind of scattered so bear with me while I try to sort it all out. So, I came here because I felt stagnated in New York, and I wanted on opportunity to grow. And I understand that growth can be painful, but it can also be wonderful. I have come to realize however that my growth is a threat to others. There are people who don't want to see me succeed simply because of who I am. I am a black woman. I came from humble beginnings. I am educated. I am dark skinned. I am confident. I am competent. I am independent. People who are insecure are threatened by my self-assurance and independence. Sadly, I come into the contact with too many insecure individuals.

What I have come to learn about people working against me in the work place over the past week:

Evaluator:
I had an evaluator walk into my work space the other week to spend half an hour observing me doing my job. I was prepared. Everything had been well-thought out and practiced ahead of time so it should have been a near perfect evaluation. Well, when I received my evaluation a couple of weeks later it was NOT a near perfect evaluation. This person said that I was not doing my job effectively. I cried. I cried for days. I worked so hard to be my personal best. I invested time and energy into making sure that I was doing what is above and beyond and it hurt me to the core of my soul. I am also working in an environment where the expectation is that you are not just effectively doing your job but highly effectively doing your job. I was downright embarrassed. I had just come out of a mediocre work environment where you couldn't even expect an effective rating and moved into one where you were expected to exceed that expectation and I had failed despite my best efforts. I was crushed.

After I finally pulled myself together and had a talk and coaching session with my coach I was ready to face the evaluator. We met and discussed the evaluation. It became obvious once she started talking to me that she realized that I wasn't who she thought I was when she walked into my space that she had pre-conceived notions about who she thought she was observing. Once she sat down and had a one-on-one conversations with me and learned why and how I implement that practices that I do she looked like she was ready to cry. It it wasn't the first time. It happens every time one of these evaluators come in to give me a rating that determines whether I will keep my job or not. They look at me and think they know my story. But they don't. It really makes me said because it is a result of a system that is rife with -isms. It is why my field is so dysfunctional. They are always people who don't have even half of the experience that I have. Yet, they are evaluating me.

The Assistant:
So, once again I have a self-important assistant. I thought I could work with him but it has gotten to the point where he is now undermining me and trying to set me up failure. I thought about the reasons why and a few thoughts came to mind. 1.) He had just received his degree and I think he thought that he was going to be offered a position in the new role. Mind you A.) they don't like him but they tolerate him (I will elaborate on why later), and B.) He didn't have all of ducks lined up to make that happen. So basically he is bitter, but he is trying to make it work. He told me his half of the story when I first met him and I pieced the rest of it together after seeing his interactions with colleagues. Bottom line is that he is all talk and no action. He claims he has "branded" himself as being a highly effective assistant but every time I ask him to do something he does it wrong so I wind up doing it myself. I came to realize that he is being passive-agressive and I will have to deal with at arms length because I don't trust him at all. I think he is waiting for the first opportunity to throw me under the bus in the hopes that it will cause me to lose my job with the hopes that they will consider placing him in my role. Some of things that cause me question his motives:
-Sending me emails on official letterhead with information he has been collecting and his thoughts on how I should proceed.
-Telling me how I should do my job when he doesn't agree with the way I am doing something without clearly understanding the hows and whys of what I am doing, nor having the experience of having to do my entire job unsupported.
-Talking to colleagues about things that are happening in our space.
-Messing up simple tasks which result in the loss of resources and time.
-Lately calling out and leaving early.
-Inattentiveness: Walking away while I am speaking to him, asking me how to do something that I just spent 5 minutes explaining to him, and carelessly putting things together.

I have seen these behaviors before and they are all passive-aggressive ways of telling me that he doesn't want to do what I need him to do to support me. So when he called out the second Friday in a row I was actually relieved because I found it easier to work alone rather than the constant push and pull that I was feeling with him there. I would set something up one way and he was go behind me and do it another way. There is an undercurrent of "I can do your job better than you can." My boss even said to me the last time he called out that they have been trying to convince him to "go out on his own" but he won't. His peers have already done it but he stays behind thinking that he knows more than everything around him and feeling as if he is irreplaceable. And while he is a skilled individual in many regards, his personality flaws are what keep him from progressing. When he finally leaves there will be a camp of colleagues that say good riddance and another that says finally. He has outgrown his role and he needs to be brave enough (as my boss said) to step out into the real world so he can get a slap of reality like the rest of us who came into this profession disillusioned. He has all of these impractical ideals about what is and what is not. One of his flaws is that he sees things as either black or white, right or wrong.  He came from a small town in the south and that is exactly the way he navigates through the world. I have lived in cosmopolitan cities, overseas, and I have worked in various fields. How do we find a mid-point? He doesn't understand or care to understand the complexities of people or circumstances that don't fit into his box.  I find him to be narrow minded and judgmental.  I know it may sound hypocritical for me to say that but I have been working with him for about 6 weeks now. I went in with a fresh mind, an open mind, and slowly he has chipped away my respect for him through his actions. I am still trying to understand him and have an amicable working relationship, but I can't afford to have his baggage weigh me down because I am trying to dump my own baggage from my last few work environments.

The Insecure Colleague:
She worried me to death about every little detail. I have shared resources with her and tried to assuage her concerns. Then when the evaluator came the colleague received a better rating than I did. I realized that this was by design because within the first week of working with her she made a switch that wound up costing me my rating. I was warned that she was setting me up and I tried to fight it but I lost the battle. Now people see clearly that it was an obvious set up. I now have animosity towards her and I said some things that were hurtful about her that probably either got back to her or that she overheard. It was immature of me but like I said I am still carrying baggage from my last job and I was angry and hurt. She knows that she is guilty which is why she kept trying to scamper around like a little mouse. She would come in and interrupt what I was doing to ask me questions that I sometimes had already answered. Then she would ask someone else then ask the same question in a group setting while looking at me as if I gave her misinformation. She would also have side conversations with my assistant. She is pretty pissed with me right now but I don't care because she didn't contribute anything towards my growth. She was always coming over asking me for something but she never had anything to offer. I got one resource from her and I had to ask for it. I am a generous person to an extent but I will be taken advantage of and placed under the bus while everyone else is off collecting their bonuses. I also noticed that whenever someone would compliment me about something I was doing her face would screw up. I think in her past position she was riding the coattail of her colleagues and I also know that they were glad to be rid of her in their department. I think she wanted to do the same thing in this role but obviously I am not the person to grab hold of because apparently after a decade I still don't know how to do my job. So, there's that.

Remember I said there would be a rainy day when I would need this message. Well, that day is here both literally and figuratively.

So basically I don't trust anyone on my job. Our coach said we can't trust everyone and to find that one person who we can trust who will help you grow and reach your full potential.
I say all of this to say that I think this will be my last year in this field or at last in this role. Emotionally it is too much. I feel like I am always fighting for my job. It could also be part of my ten year plan as well. I think I felt that after ten years I should be moving on. I just wanted to leave on a high note. I don't know what will be next. I am so disenchanted with my field that I pretty much want to go in a whole different direction. Perhaps my work here is done. A colleague came in yesterday and said that I was there at the right time. I always feel as if God has placed me where I need to be at that time. It isn't always about me being there for my personal growth (and I am growing!) but sometimes it is about being there for other people. As hellish as my last work environment was I know I was placed there to support the people who I encouraged and helped. It seems the same is true in this place. Maybe I should turn my focus away from myself and focus on how I am helping others (even if it is at the expense of my own career.) No matter what happens God will have my back. For that I am so grateful. And then I saw this message and knew I was on the right track: http://greatday.com/motivate/151003.html