I have had a really shit week at work. The thing that made this week so shitty was not that it was a lot of hard work. I am happy to put my nose to the grindstone when needed, it was that my boss and those above me understood I was working long hours to try and meet demand, and they believe it's because I wasn't working efficiently enough. This is following two weeks of overtime work and already I am tired and starting to sacrifice commitments to my girlfriend to make sure my work gets done. So needless to say I was not in the accepting mood of my superiors "criticisms". That being said I trudged along hoping that at some point the workload would lighten. That brings us to today, The work load has not lightened by my spirit has. The straw on the camels back broke, that being the workload got so large that my boss had to get involved and he admitted that I was actually doing much better than he realised. This was little consolation for saving his ass over the last two weeks until his boss came in and started praising me for the work I was doing. This may seem vain but this honestly made the hard work, feel a lot less shitty.
This story from my girlfriends perspective is very similar. She is wonderful and supported me so graciously. But during this time I had neglected caring for her properly. I wasn't cleaning up or cooking I simply went to work, came home late, went to sleep. Rinse and repeat. All the while she had just started in a new position at her job working her ass off and also supporting me. I realised much as I had felt a weight off my shoulders hearing some gratitude for my work, my girlfriend also had some much deserved gratitude. I wrote a letter to her expressing just how she had helped me through this time and that I was so proud of all that she was doing. The look on her face was priceless.
I think this week has taught me two things. Gratitude is free to give and genuine heartfelt gratitude is something that is irreplaceable. Despite being so available to everyone, many of us are much too self absorbed with what is going on in our own lives. We fail to even consider the possibility of looking over the fence into someone else's life. Much like I looked down and drilled into my work, I failed to look over and see that I could only do so because of the support of my girlfriend. This is a lesson that I am afraid I will learn again. In the meantime I will make sure that my efforts are spent looking at other peoples lives and how I can improve them.
Secondly, effort is intrinsic. No one can force you to put in effort. Sure there may be consequences for a lack of effort, but no one can actually take over your autonomy or drive. This is a double edged sword. My intrinsic drive to meet my goals (career success, healthy relationships and growing community) are always going to compete with each other. I care about all these things deeply but managing their needs is something that I need to closely monitor. In my pursuit of career success I let down my girlfriend and therefore starved my goal of healthy relationships. This was not forced upon me. Many times myself and others fall into this trap of blaming their own driven decisions on external factors. When in reality our efforts will always pursue what is rewarding us. Effort is so easy to spend on things that reward us. This is why short term easy goals are much more tempting than longer term larger goals. It took weeks for me to receive any kind of reward or gratification for the work I was doing. But I truly believe that was only possible because I was being fed rewards from another goal and using that reward to drive me. I was stealing rewards from my relationship and spending them on work. In hindsight this is super dangerous and is honestly my biggest lesson from this week. Just as it is important to prioritise and manage my goals, it is important to monitor where my effort is being spent and how it is being fuelled.
This post is a little bit more abstract than I am used to writing. I love a good essay. But discussing how my goals interrelate in a pragmatic day to day isn't exactly my strong suit. I hope that opening up about my own human struggles will help me overcome a fear of failure, but also help others know that kind of sucking at juggling everything all at once, is normal. If this article resonated with you I don't have a comments section but I do have an E-mail and I would love to hear from you, It doesn't have to be about the article either the conversation is yours to make!