Frustration
I haven't wanted to say this outloud, yet. So by blogging it, I will keep to not saying it outloud.

I am frustrated with my job.

I haven't been there a year, yet. And in comparison to my last job at the homeless shelter (I have to say "job at the homeless shelter", because if I just say "when I was at the homeless shelter" people think I lived there), the job I have now is 108 million times better.

Truthfully, I like my job.

But, the last few weeks have been really frustrating. And I don't enjoy going to work everyday like I did for awhile.

Don't get me wrong, I like what I do well enough. It's not a career choice or something I see myself doing longterm. But for now it pays the bills, is a comfortable, casual work environment, and comes with great people that I get to work with everyday. Overall, it's nice.

But lately it's become increasingly clear to me that I don't know what I'm doing. I know the basics of the job and can get through my daily tasks well. But when it comes to words like "strategy" or "marketing" or "margins" or anything other than just doing the things I do to make things move forward, I am completely lost.

I don't have a marketing or business degree, and to be quite honest, being a go-getter to find more business, upsell, figure out how to make the company more money, or improve the way we do things so that we come out ahead is just really not my thing. I'm more the worker bee, keep things moving, I'll keep things running here while you go make us more money.

Lately the big-wigs at work have been pushing all of us to do more, think more, bill more, be more. I don't have energy for more. This morning we were greeted with a meeting scolding us for mistakes that have happened recently. As an Account Executive, any mistakes on a job fall onto me. Even if I didn't make the mistakes, I'm responsible for making sure no one else makes mistakes. Now I'm more paranoid that I'm missing mistakes.

I want to do well for my company. I like it, I like the people, I have respect for what we do. I just don't like the pressure of the job lately. Some of the fun is gone. I'm tired.

And I'm frustrated that I'm already frustrated with my job. I thought I'd left this feeling behind when I left my job at the homeless shelter. I was frustrated there for 2.5 years, and it was good to feel something better at a new job.

I'm still dreaming of that career where I can just write novels all day, and people will buy them and read them, and this will pay my bills. Then if I make mistakes, they are my own. And I can call them "creative inconsistencies" and market it as something unique.

C.T.