Rants Are Sometimes Required For Sanity

I'm tired.

I'm frustrated.

I'm overwhelmed, to be honest.

In the last 9 months, I have had a major career change at my company and I welcomed it with open arms.  It came with great perks, and a huge workload but I welcomed the challenge.  The term, 'be careful what you wish for' is coming to mind.

Initially, I was swept off across North America for 8 weeks of intensive training.  My daughter was at home and needed to quit her job because I was unable to support her.  For the record,  McDonald's may be an excellent starting-the-workforce place to work, but a requirement of 1 midnight shift during a weekday for students is a bit much.  The requirement that she be picked up by a parent after 8 pm was too much to accommodate.  She asked for weekend hours (a cut in hours) in order to allow me to support her; it was refused.

Learning my new territory was daunting.  First of all, for some reason, the person who should be in the know of issues affecting said territory, is the last to find out.  The territory itself was huge!!  I mean, 12 hours driving end to end.  There were the problem spots everywhere; a circle, if you will, of constant babysitting. This was taking away from other pressing issues that were outside of the circle, but I slowly became able to prioritize things better.

I was being micro-managed and this was damaging a formerly good working relationship.

Then out of the blue, me and my counterparts were all reporting to one person out of Dallas, TX (head office) and this was a good thing.  But more changes.  Lots more.  Different expectations.  New learning curve. Within weeks of that, my 'Problem Circle' exploded and I was frantically attempting to resolve all of those issues and suddenly, my further-most east location decided to quit.  This takes me away from everything as I attempt to save a sinking ship.  I'm on vacation at the end of that week; I need a vacation and a NEED to solve my sinking ship before I go.  I can't.  It dissolves in front of my eyes.  Who has to clean up this mess???  Fortunately, I have an Ally in my back pocket and I am so grateful for both her experience and willingness to rescue me.

I returned from vacation to a full territory re-alignment.  This is welcome news.  But, new territory, new learning curve, new expectations... again.  (I am screaming inside!  Already there is so much going on in my old territory and now to take on a new one and learn all of it and WHEN WILL I LAND ON MY FRICKIN' FEET?????)  Now I have The Ally stuck in the Sinking-Ship location and unavailable to complete things in my old territory.  I have my northern counterpart on vacation for 3 weeks with no pow-wow on where things stand in her old territory, which has become part of my new territory.  I have a new Problem-Circle for which I have little details on and I still have the Old Problem-Circle.  I have a pissing match going on with The Ally, because she thinks I'm stepping on her toes (well if you are unavailable, who do you think Problem-Circle is going to call?  And FYI, Problem-Circle was hers to start with, so... just sayin'!) Just add to that the plethora of expectations from Dallas to 'finish what I started' in old territory without stepping on The Ally's toes and to immediately move steadfast into position in new territory of which I know very little, but really, I am essentially running the whole gad-dam province (over 150 locations) since vacations and Sinking Ships also need to be accommodated.  I just had vacation.  I'm exhausted!  I missed a conference call yesterday because the call-in info was incorrect plus I was battling with cell coverage.  Man, did I catch shit for that one.  Man, I'm tired of being in shit!  I'm tired of making these excuses!  Screaming, I tell you, SCREAMING for the ability to land on my feet!!  I don't want to fail!!  Am I being fair in my rant?

So I sit back and breathe.  One can only do so much.  I am only one person.  Breathe Jules... breathe deep, slow and easy.  Faaaaccccckkkk!!!!!!!

Rant done.  Resume peace.