Hello blog

Some thoughts on work and how things have been faring.

Hey there blog.

It’s been a while and I’ve been neglectful.

Sorry.

Life has been going on at a pace and with speed. Work has been crazy. As we discuss a University merger there’s been a reorganisation, a new team structure, the loss of an old team and a reprioritisation of work. Not at my choice or behest, but so it goes.

I’ve struggled with this round of changes, and I had to question myself about that. I feel like I’ve always been working on the edge of change, in that ambiguous state between new and old. If I’ve worked in the innovation space for so long, where I live and breathe change – why has this time been different? I think I understand it now, but it took a while to work through it.

A large part of my experience has been around grief. A lot of what has happened has been the end of things:

In general, the work I’ve been doing hasn’t evolved in the way that I expected. I imagined riding the wave of developing these new online programs through to a more senior role. I poured a lot of myself, energy and time into that idea and outcome. But things haven’t worked out that way. Decisions have been made, or not, to pursue things in differently – one that doesn’t seem to include me.

And my grief is connected to that. That loss of professional self, one that I’d been working so hard towards. From moving to a new city to working through the pandemic to going through the stress of hard deadlines and deliverables, to trying to manage the toll on my team.

I’ve wondered if the effort was worth it. I’ve played through the “What ifs?” I’ve asked myself why and come up blank.

This spawned grief over my effort and my time. I now acknowledge that there was a huge waste of effort. A lack of acknowledgement of what has been achieved has rubbed salt into the wound. The lack of recognition of the expertise I’ve spent years developing has been hurtful. Recognising that the organisation doesn’t care has been challenging. I’ve cared. I’ve probably cared too much. But the organisation doesn’t have feelings.

A 360° review demonstrated how little care there was. How little appreciation and recognition had been shown to all that work. I focused too much on getting things done that I didn’t see the impact that was having on me, or how others perceived me. From my team, peers and managers — I barely lived up to my own expectations, and I certainly didn’t see much recognition of what’s been achieved. But this is something I’ve been dealing with for a while – the invisibility of my work.

I’ve felt frustrated at work for most of this year. Frustrated and ignored. When the future is a version of what I’ve just spent four years working on — I expected to be acknowledged and included in the decision-making. Instead, I was ignored. I get that not everyone has been on the same journey, but when you’ve been the pioneer, trailblazing and encountering all the ‘firsts’ – you’d think the organisation might want to hear about that. To learn from it. I guessed wrong.

So I fumed.

And I smouldered.

And then it went out.

That frustration just left one day. I accepted what was, and what had been, but now is different. I can make this what I want to be. Nothing has made it better. I don’t think anything has changed at all — except me. The one thing I can control and affect and change is me.

So that’s the aim. To stop doing what I was doing because it didn’t work. To look towards opportunities and to create my own. To embrace change again. What happens will happen, and regardless of how things have been perceived — I know the truth. I know what I did, what I achieved and what came out of those actions. Even if no one else can, I can see it and I’ve felt the difference.