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I have been fighting off a series of attacks by self doubt recently, centred around work and (lack of) relationship as usual. Today has been particularly bad. Dammit I did not need an existential crisis right now.
~~~
I'm not unhappy with the amount of time I'm spending at work, I just feel like I should be there more. Every week I aim to do more - only a few hours more that's all it would take to be hitting my self-imposed maximum - and every week it somehow just doesn't happen. It's even possible I'm actually spending more time there than is good for me. And I sometimes feel that although I'm making steady progress on whatever I am working on, it's far slower progress than I should be making given my level of ability.
It's not imposter syndrome - I know I am good at what I do, I know I do good work, I'm just questioning if I'm actually managing to do good work *right now*.
There's a project at work which I can only assume is now well over budget and we'll be taking a loss on, with about 30 of my hours on it. some of it I did over up to 3 times through repeatedly misunderstanding the designer's intent (which is pretty but also kind of user-unfriendly) and because the best way to implement some things in the design (which from the designer's perspective had purely been put in in a pretty layout) so that they wouldn't break the first time the client touched them was to write a couple of new modules. Which particularly seemed to take much longer than it should.
Thing is I know either of the other programmers (who get most of these types of projects recently because I've been working on an internal project - which has also been going on far longer than was ever anticipated) would have comprehended what the designer wanted first time and probably been able to achieve it with less messing around. While they would still have taken longer over the whole site than usual simply because of the complexity - it wouldn't have been as bad.
I am left wondering (not for the first time) if the only reason I still have a (great for me) job is because it is less trouble to keep me than to find and hire someone who can be consistently productive and efficient and value-for-money over more hours. (I don't actually know that I'm *not* value for money for the company but I am *feeling* that I am not - I also believe management doesn't actually have a way of quantifying that even if I were to ask.)
And that brings on whole waves of unnecessary, unresolvable, spoon consuming uncertainty about what the heck I would do if I did lose my job.
~~~
In other not-at-all-unusual news events over the past few weeks have continued to remind me that no matter how awesome my friends think I am I'm still not the sort of awesome that anyone wants to make out with. To be fair anyone making out with me at the moment probably risks triggering the unasked for release of a lot of pent-up emotion that I wouldn't want to dump on anyone I wasn't *certain* was willing to deal with it, and maybe people sense that. But more likely it's just a continuation of years of not being the right kind of good enough at whatever it is people are looking for.
Thing is I don't a) know what that is and b) want to be any more. I want someone who wants to be with me for the kind of awesome I am now - which is a kind of awesome I am happy being but still takes a lot of energy to maintain. (Yes I've thought about being less-so, but I can't break the habit. Besides, what would I replace it with?). Or I suppose better yet would be willing to peel away the layers and want me even without the extra helping of awesome.
I know angst isn't attractive, but I didn't *ask* to feel like this and I can't *choose* not to (have tried). I want someone who wants me, who will help me set the load down for a while, who I can curl up in bed with and forget about the world for a while, whom I trust is OK with me just letting everything go and literally crying on their shoulder for a while.
~~~
I'm not unhappy with the amount of time I'm spending at work, I just feel like I should be there more. Every week I aim to do more - only a few hours more that's all it would take to be hitting my self-imposed maximum - and every week it somehow just doesn't happen. It's even possible I'm actually spending more time there than is good for me. And I sometimes feel that although I'm making steady progress on whatever I am working on, it's far slower progress than I should be making given my level of ability.
It's not imposter syndrome - I know I am good at what I do, I know I do good work, I'm just questioning if I'm actually managing to do good work *right now*.
There's a project at work which I can only assume is now well over budget and we'll be taking a loss on, with about 30 of my hours on it. some of it I did over up to 3 times through repeatedly misunderstanding the designer's intent (which is pretty but also kind of user-unfriendly) and because the best way to implement some things in the design (which from the designer's perspective had purely been put in in a pretty layout) so that they wouldn't break the first time the client touched them was to write a couple of new modules. Which particularly seemed to take much longer than it should.
Thing is I know either of the other programmers (who get most of these types of projects recently because I've been working on an internal project - which has also been going on far longer than was ever anticipated) would have comprehended what the designer wanted first time and probably been able to achieve it with less messing around. While they would still have taken longer over the whole site than usual simply because of the complexity - it wouldn't have been as bad.
I am left wondering (not for the first time) if the only reason I still have a (great for me) job is because it is less trouble to keep me than to find and hire someone who can be consistently productive and efficient and value-for-money over more hours. (I don't actually know that I'm *not* value for money for the company but I am *feeling* that I am not - I also believe management doesn't actually have a way of quantifying that even if I were to ask.)
And that brings on whole waves of unnecessary, unresolvable, spoon consuming uncertainty about what the heck I would do if I did lose my job.
~~~
In other not-at-all-unusual news events over the past few weeks have continued to remind me that no matter how awesome my friends think I am I'm still not the sort of awesome that anyone wants to make out with. To be fair anyone making out with me at the moment probably risks triggering the unasked for release of a lot of pent-up emotion that I wouldn't want to dump on anyone I wasn't *certain* was willing to deal with it, and maybe people sense that. But more likely it's just a continuation of years of not being the right kind of good enough at whatever it is people are looking for.
Thing is I don't a) know what that is and b) want to be any more. I want someone who wants to be with me for the kind of awesome I am now - which is a kind of awesome I am happy being but still takes a lot of energy to maintain. (Yes I've thought about being less-so, but I can't break the habit. Besides, what would I replace it with?). Or I suppose better yet would be willing to peel away the layers and want me even without the extra helping of awesome.
I know angst isn't attractive, but I didn't *ask* to feel like this and I can't *choose* not to (have tried). I want someone who wants me, who will help me set the load down for a while, who I can curl up in bed with and forget about the world for a while, whom I trust is OK with me just letting everything go and literally crying on their shoulder for a while.
