Tag Archives: working mom

ADHD, Career, Mental Illness

Looking Ahead to What’s Next and Getting Through the What’s Now

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I really, really, really want to stay in my job until at least the end of this year. I know it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it that far (even a few months into the year and I’ll have earned more than every single prior year of my life with the exception of 2020) — but, BUT… I really want to do this. I want to somehow, in the middle of a pandemic, in the first year as a mom to my second child, while trying to ignore the gnawing sensation of my ego being constantly ripped apart by a boss who has banished me from any semblance of leadership and telling me, flat out, that I will never, ever be a leader, hold on and get through it without any more wounds along the way.

But I’m also–exhausted. Sad. Upset with myself but also at the system that’s just… against working parents and especially new moms. I’ve got too many issues, I guess. If my mental health alone wasn’t enough to destroy my hopes of job stability, then we add in my having children. I don’t regret having children. But it does make it harder. Having to wake up every few hours to feed my child with my own body, well, that makes it harder. And I wish I could have stood up for myself more–but I’m not sure how that would have helped. Does anyone care why I’ve struggled? That’s just more reason to say I’ll never be a leader. So what if I tend to babble more on my worst days? I babble enough on my best ones. I’m not a leader. Not this type of a leader. Maybe not any type. I don’t have that kind of energy. I’m not consistent. I’m a ball of energy that can come in and explode and then need time to pick up the pieces and inflate again.

Maybe there could have been a little more support? I don’t know. On one hand, I’m completely to blame. I don’t expect anyone to hand hold here. On the other, some companies went out of their way to support working parents. To cancel performance reviews for the year. To provide time off and flexible hours. Others, like mine, expected us to just keep up. When I failed to meet a deadline there was no discussion of how I’m doing the best I can in a global pandemic while parenting a toddler and dealing with the exhaustion of pregnancy. I mean, who cares, right? I missed the fucking deadline. That I set. So, that’s on me. All of it’s on me. I shouldn’t have set an unrealistic deadline. And any deadline would have been unrealistic because my anxiety made it impossible to get the work done until I already was late and had failed. I can only do good work when failure is not only imminent, but it’s a sure thing. I can’t blame anyone but myself for that.

I don’t think the work was good anyway. But I guess it wasn’t bad. It seems some people thought it was ok. It doesn’t matter. I’m a never leader. And I cry about this every fucking day. Because she’s right. Because I can’t hold it together.

But my problem isn’t that I’m a never leader. Well, it’s that. But it’s more I can’t be relied on to do anything when anyone else is relying on me. That’s not a leadership issue, that’s an ability to keep a job issue. That’s an issue that has plagued me since I was fired from my first job as an admin assistant to every single job where I found myself too panicked to get work done. Why? I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t feel confident in the quality of my work. It wasn’t perfectionism, it was being embarrassed by how bad I was at my job because I didn’t know what I was doing. Sometimes I put out good work but in the grande scheme of things I never know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t have the confidence or ability to fake confidence so people lose trust in me. They move on. They aren’t on my side, they’re against it. They say shit about me behind my back. They wonder why I’m still employed. Until I’m not.

This is a problem.

I could have been good at this job, too. I mean, I’m a never leader but at the very least I had some decent ideas, if anyone cared to listen. I had my hands tied. I tried to be collaborative, as I was told I was working in a silo and this was bad. Then I was told I was too collaborative, which is not leadership either.

It’s hard enough trying to navigate all this not as a tired pregnant mom in the middle of a pandemic, you know?

Is this an excuse or reality or a little bit of both? How much harder could I have worked? There was too much spinning and I was spun out. Off to “lead” a function that no one wants to fund properly and I must wait to be told what to do. And even in this role I managed to already mess up in a meeting where my former boss basically was on the verge of firing me at the end of it because I was a babbling mess.

I don’t think it’s this job. I think it’s my inability to do well in any job. So I need to fix that. But how? I have no fucking idea.

Junior level jobs still require you to be good at communication. Get shit done on time. The basic things I am bad at. What I’m good at is strategy and planning. But you don’t get to do a lot of that at the junior level. I just wish I knew what the fuck I was doing. Will I ever? Not when I’m this tired.

I go back to work in 2 months. That’s a world away but then it will be here in the blink of an eye. It all goes so fast. If I’m as tired then as I am now then I don’t know how I will make it. If I’m WFH that’s a good thing as I don’t have to drive half asleep commuting to the office but I do have to keep my eyes open on long zoom calls and try to appear alive when I’m clearly not. At least I’ll be too tired to physically appear jealous or sad or whatever when my work friend who is now in my former job is saying shit in a way that shows just how good someone can be at sounding like a leader as a reminder how I’ll never ever ever be that.

She’s right.

I don’t know what I’m good at. If anything. I just know I’m tired. Tired of constantly walking smack into walls. Tired of living on little sleep. Tired of being tired. Tired of reading articles about how working moms are not supported in society and feeling all righteous and angry for every other working mom out there but then when I turn to myself I feel guilty for absorbing any of that anger against “The Man” for me because I don’t deserve any of that pity or sympathy or empathy or whatever support should come with it, right? Other moms, they deserve to be provided something to get them through this but me? I’m failing for some other reason. My own reason. My own messed up issues that aren’t going away even when the pandemic is long gone and my kids are grown. I can’t ask for help because I don’t know what would help anyway other than maybe a personal cheer squad that tells me my work isn’t shit so I can just get onto the next thing and the next. Is it shit? I don’t know.

And I was on a performance plan a year ago and my boss clearly did that as a safe way to get me out and then I briefly was doing ok and that saved me for a short while and she was all excited that I managed to turn things around until I turned into a pile of shit sandwich on the floor. I feel and about it. I wanted to prove her wrong. Instead, I proved her right.

So I’m sad. And tired. And what’s new?

Career

Never Get a Promotion Again: I Can Only Hope

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Along the lines of my post the other day “Why I’ll Never Ask for a Raise,” today I decided I really don’t want an increase in job title ever again. While I’m sad that my earning potential is likely at its plateau for the rest of my working career, minus a few cost-of-living raises here and there, I’m fairly set on the reality that my abilities stop at this level.

What I’m not is a manager of a big team. I’m not someone who sets strategies and has other people do the work. I do the work. And that’s ok. It’s ok, because I feel in control of the output. And I don’t want to take credit for anyone else’s contributions. The best way I can help an organization is by getting shit done. My biggest challenge is not overcommitting, and focusing on adding value doing what I do best. Continue reading Never Get a Promotion Again: I Can Only Hope →

Parenting & Motherhood, Pregnancy, Working Moms

So how does this whole working mother thing work again?

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I have no idea what I’m in for this summer, but I do know it’s going to be the hardest year of my life. With the reality of maternity leave (and lack there of) settling in, I’m starting to play for 4-6 weeks off from work (4 weeks are fully paid, 2 would be at ~25% of my salary.)

Today I ran the numbers of taking 4 weeks off prior to my due date and 3 months off after (12 weeks.) Even with some paid leave, I’ll be losing $20,000 worth of salary…. enough to put the baby IN DAYCARE for the entire year. As much as I’d love to stay home with baby, it just doesn’t make sense. Continue reading So how does this whole working mother thing work again? →

Parenting & Motherhood, Working Moms

The Cost of Childcare: Year 1

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As our “being pregnant-ness” sinks in, hubs and I are starting to discuss childcare – you know, keeping our child alive when we’re at work. My husband plans to be going back to school during our kid’s first year of life, being in class from early morning and not getting home until after 7:30pm. I’ll be working 8-7. We definitely need a plan for baby watching.

At the moment, I plan to take 12 weeks off from work. I believe 4 weeks of that will be fully paid, and another 8 weeks will be covered in some part by short term disability. I’m still not sure how that works. But then once those 12 weeks are up, I’m back to work. Continue reading The Cost of Childcare: Year 1 →

Adulting, Married Life, Parenting & Motherhood, Working Moms

When to tell work you are pregnant…?

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The start of my last menstrual period was Oct 30, 2017, which makes me 4 weeks, 5 days pregnant. Other than the cold and bloating and occasional bought of nausea (no vomiting yet, luckily), I don’t feel pregnant yet. Well, I feel different, not necessarily pregnant.

Assuming my first trimester is successful (no miscarriages), I have less than eight months until I’m sitting at home with a tiny little fragile baby on disability from work. It seems rather unfair that I can’t even warn work of the impending time off for two more months. In planning 2018, now all I can think about is how I can’t commit to projects in the fall — but I can’t actually say that or plan around this likely absence. It doesn’t help that another woman on the team is currently on maternity leave — and while everyone seems quite supportive of this — it’s clear the team is hurting without her. We don’t have redundancies and our roles are specialized, so when we leave, even for a short while, the impact is definitely felt.

Had I been with this employer for years– or even one full year — before going to on maternity leave, I’d feel a bit better about how this is going to progress. As it happened, I got pregnant the cycle that started the same week I began my new job. That means I’m giving birth at 9 months into the new gig AND not eligible for FLMA. FLMA is the federal law that requires employers (with 50 or more employees) to give you 12 weeks off (unpaid) and guarantee your job will be there when you come back. Now, I don’t foresee my boss deciding to replace me for a 12 week period of being out, especially since I have a fairly good relationship with him – but stranger things have happened in the world. At the moment, I just feel like I’m lying to him. Trying to get pregnant and the possibility of being pregnant while planning was one thing – actually being pregnant is another.

I’m not sure how to approach this. I wish my company had a very clear “this is our maternity policy page” on our intranet, but it doesn’t. There is a portal to ask questions to a rep, but that rep is likely based in India and hasn’t been able to answer any of my questions appropriately. So the next step is to actually talk to HR. Do I tell HR I’m pregnant? Do I ask in the hypothetical and let them assume? Do I wait until I’m 3 months and then deal with announcing and figuring out what the policies are?

I know we do have short-term disability coverage, paid for by the employer, which is hugely helpful as it covers 66% of pay when you’re on disability, for a few weeks. I believe I’m eligible for this regardless of my start date (and I have proof I wasn’t pregnant AT my start date, in case that’s an issue.) Then there’s the California disability coverage, which is 55% of your paycheck, up to a certain amount that is not 55% of my paycheck, but it’s still something. I’m unclear if I can have both of these at the same time (or if I should.) Then, I believe my company offers 4 weeks paid for leave… but I may be making that up. I can’t find where I saw that in writing.

The other concerning thing about my company (and many companies these days) is that we have “unlimited vacation.” That sounds great and all, but what it really means is that I have no ability to save up / accrue PTO to take off in addition to any paid leave I get. I’m planning on taking minimal – if any – time off before having my kid (unless I have to) and hoping my one trip to a family wedding (now in my third trimester, yikes) will be a week I can work remote. But – how do I make the case that I haven’t taken any time off to date so I should be eligible for X days/weeks. I always assumed I’d just accrue the time and take it as needed once I give birth. But that doesn’t work with this unlimited vacation concept. I really don’t understand how with unlimited vacation as a policy a company is allowed to cap your paid time off anyway, since it’s “unlimited,” but when it comes to maternity leave they have a law that lets them work around it. Nothing against my company in particular — this is just an issue with the “unlimited vacation” that’s so popular these days, that I loathe.

I’m not quite sure what to make of all this. My boss knows I’m 34 and he even brought up how great this company is when it comes to having a family in the interview process, in an effort to recruit me. Maybe he didn’t mean “get pregnant immediately” but that’s the way it happened. At this age, I really can’t afford to wait for the right time, especially with my infertility issues. Even now, there’s a high risk of miscarriage and there’s nothing I can do about it. We may be back to the drawing board – or we may be buying a drawing board… for a toddler in two years.

I don’t do well with unknowns.