Hi everyone,
I hope that wherever you are, life is going easy on you, but if it’s not, you are not alone. This week was incredibly hard for me.
It’s not worth going into the details, so if you thought this was going to be a heat-of-the-moment tell-all, I am afraid you will be disappointed. Instead, I feel like it makes sense to come back to my “I Hate Learning” series.
In my few short years experiencing the working world, I have learned some things.
Before I go any further — lets do the housekeeping.
First, if you are not already a subscriber and you resonate with any of the following descriptors, consider joining the cooperative: (1) Early-career professional; (2) Feminist; (3) Do-gooder; (4) Former Gifted Kid; (5) Overachiever; or (6) Capitalism-hater.
Second, if you like what I am saying and it makes you think of someone in your family/office/friend group, send it their way.
Third, I say some personal and vulnerable shit every week. Say some vulnerable shit back. It’s called a community.
Okay — back to it.
Thing One: People are not their best selves when they are stressed and you might not even know when they might be stressed.
This is one that I feel I should have learned earlier in life, but it really clicked for me once I started working. When you are working with a team, everyone thinks that they understand other teams’ work flows and pressures. They don’t. Every team has its own rhythm and there will always be periods of stress and periods of ease. You might have a good guess of when those might be, but you will never see everything. You don’t know when another team is experiencing stress unless you engage with them directly.
Stress tends be be reflected in behavior. For me, when I get stressed, I get worse at checking my work and I get so much more passive aggressive. I am not proud of it. It is not how the best version of myself behaves.
I am working on reminding myself that people can have reasons for their bad behavior that are external to their basic character, just like I do. I am not innately bad because of that passive aggressive email that I sent, and they are not innately bad because they didn’t respond to my question. On top of that, just like me, they can be a worse version of themselves and that has nothing to do with me. That behavior is not something that I want to grow okay with, but something that I want to be able to manage when I need to.
Thing Two: Sometimes, when you are stressed, you will feel like you are totally alone facing your demons. Then you will look around and notice that you have slayed so many demons all by yourself and beside you there are people battling their own demons and still checking to make sure you are okay.
In the past, I was taught that there are some people who will place their own demons in front of me, walk away, and then wonder why I show up bloody.
Am I stretching this metaphor too far? Ultimately, feeling like you are the only one who cares sucks, but it doesn’t always mean you are alone—even when past experiences have taught you the opposite.
Thing Three: Caring is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.
Caring is inherently emotion-based for me. When I care about a project, I feel determined. I feel excited. I feel curious. When I hit a road block, I feel surprised. I feel a lack of control. I feel fear.
Feeling is okay if you don’t let it get the best of you. The next thing I need to learn? Mastery of emotional regulation.
I write all of this while being really frustrated that I am struggling to apply the lessons that I have learned. I am struggling to keep my cool and to not let other people control how I feel.
In the last couple of weeks, I have heard from a few of you pushing back on some of my musings. It is a nice reminder that, despite me being generally eloquent, I am writing from a place of struggle as I figure out how to do this living thing.
I hate learning, but I love getting better.
I hope you stay with me on this journey.
Best,
Zoe
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