CW36: I said I made up my mind!!!
"He wondered if he was going to go through each year of his life thinking about how stupid he'd been the year before." - Maggie Stiefvater
08.09.2024
There’s two things happening today:
A year ago today, the movers were coming to pack up my life in Scotland and drive it back to Italy. On Tuesday, it will have been a year since our return, and I honestly cannot believe that. I promised myself I was going to be OK with this being a “transition year”, and I was, I am.
I guess things ARE starting to fall into place now (I have my driving license, new friends that I would miss, new projects I want to help with). I expected, however, to have more answers by now, more definite truths. That is not the case yet.
I am re-reading my favourite series, The Raven Cycle, and it is strange how comforting and revealing it is to once again cross paths with a character that has been your most beloved character since you were 16 years old.
I have always been the same, afraid of the same things - both about the world and myself.
THE OUTFITS
Day 1: one thing about my Italian colleagues that I will never get used to is the casual sexism displayed by everyone, women included (women especially).
Our office is made up mostly of women and there are endless comments made - by female co-workers - about how this creates a problematic environment. In my year in that place, I have heard them saying it’s because women are competitive with one another, they are not collaborative, they are too vapid, too emotional.
These remarks are made by (mostly) smart and competent women, who are good at their jobs and would be appalled if anyone implied they are less worthy of their positions because of their gender.
Sometimes I have the energy to challenge them, sometimes - like Monday - all I can bring myself to do is make a note of it for my newsletter…
Day 2:
Dear readers,
you know very well how unfulfilled I am by this job I complain about every change I get.
One of the main reasons why my complaints are so frequent is that - for now - my day-to-day mostly consists of putting together PowerPoint presentations for other colleagues. These are presentations one would need no background to come up with, and the task is mostly just grabbing photos and information from previously made PPTs in order to create one final Frankenstein PPT to defeat them all.
As you can imagine, I come home ready to scream into a void. So, when one of the bosses introduced me to the three newcomers as “Vittoria, she works in marketing strategy and is mostly responsible for the PowerPoint presentations for the department” I felt my soul - my bright, young, determined, passionate soul - leaving my body.
Right at that moment I decided this can no longer go on. I need to do something.
Day 3: I went out with coworkers and did not make it to bed by my usual curfew (10 p.m.)
The not-getting-enough-sleep anxiety was REAL!!! My routine is so complex, so strict, I wonder if it actually helps my mental health or hinders it with its rigidity.
I am 26, why would it matter if I go to bed at 1 a.m. on a school night once in a while??
It made me think of this piece by Dia Becker.
Day 4: I was already ruminating on the idea thatshouldn’t just deprive myself of chaos in pursuit of contentment, when I had another connected realisation.
I forgot my phone at home and spent the first 4 hours of the day having to actually just simply stare at the big screen. I was losing my mind, but I somehow convinced myself that it was good, that it was healthy, to not fuel my notification addiction for at least half a day.
When I finally got my phone back, though, I had to tell myself to not take everything so fucking seriously!!
LIVE A LITTLE, SCROLL A LITTLE!
I am practicing a form of denial of pleasure that can only be explained by my catholic upbringing… however else can I explain the joy that I get from being miserable about not ever doing anything just because?
Day 5: for a whole entire day of working from home I did absolutely nothing. Well, not true: my incredible contrubution to my company’s profit maximisation efforts were saying hello at the beginning of a call, sending a meme to my colleagues in the middle of the call, and closing off the call by waving goodbye and saying thank you ← polite girl behaviour!!!
Here’s the thing… I realised I just have to accept I am not the kind of person that can do a job they hate….. at 26, today, this is my big revelation.
Some people are happy to do that.
I am not.
You have a lot more to offer the world than power points ❤️