[Brick Wall]

A brick wall is exactly what I’ve been wanting to run myself into, constantly, for the past some months. Even more so in the past few weeks – now that I don’t have study to worry about and can fully concentrate on exactly how badly the team I’m running is going.

And sadly, it’s only going from bad to worse.

I still fail to comprehend how a young working professional finds it okay to turn around work, that should take no longer than 5 minutes, 2 or more weeks – and still get it wrong. I struggle to understand how someone can name correspondence from the same John three different ways, being – John, Jon and Joseph, and still give me a reason for doing so – he was thinking of his brother, Joseph, who had a similar surname as John – rather than just amending it and leaving it be. I quietly imagine throwing heavy objects on my desk at him when 4 requests – the latter 3 in bolded font – for a letter to be fax goes unheeded…

I dread getting work for review because I can feel the cynical side of me preparing to go over it with more scrutiny than it deserves. I find myself losing sense of where I stand.  I find myself searching for fault in every little illogical step taken, task completed and time charge – even when there is none or it is one to be expected. I also find myself becoming pettier and pettier complaining about it.

More importantly, I’m losing confidence in what I do.

I took up this role with some reluctance and after a lot of thought. But I wanted to move ahead and I thought the challenge would pull me out of the dreary days of last year. I thought I could handle it with a few late nights, a few meetings and … a lot optimism.

But it seems I couldn’t.

It started with my quiet fuming, to my manager’s not so subtle hints, to the partners pointed requests. And accumulated in his performance review of today.

I get to hear the outcome of it tomorrow.