The year in purgatory...

I feel as though I'm finally coming out of a long dark tunnel that I entered when I left Missouri last year on October 8th.  I can't believe it has been a year.

Last year when I left, I felt I was leaving a good place to come to a good place... it just took me a lot longer to find my good place than I thought.  But sometimes those journeys  make you appreciate the before and afters a bit more... make that a whole lot more.

Callaway was a wonderful place with the best of people... and I so miss them all. I wish I could tell them how much they have truly been a wind beneath my wings.

I had to journey to a very dark place before I could get back to a good place... I have travelled some interesting by-ways, and met some great folks as well... the nurses at the Highline School District were wonderful.  So despite the depths and the negative people I encountered in one place, it has been almost universally refuted by every other person that I have met... and by all the other experiences that I have had. Sadly, sometimes it takes reaching the end of the dark journey to realize the gifts that have been given along the way.

However, being on uneven ground in terms of employment and everything else made for an unstable year.  I think all I had was my anger and desire for revenge against those who wronged me.

I have now been in my new job for three weeks, I cannot even believe it's gone so fast.  I am loving what I'm doing, I'm loving the people, I'm loving feeling like I'm doing a good job.  My confidence is growing with my knowledge.

My feet feel like they are on solid ground and now I can move forward and leave all the bitterness and anger behind... and really embrace forgiveness for them and solace for myself.

I wrote this poem at possibly my darkest, lowest time emotionally:

They start out so kind 
You let them in 
But then you disappoint
And they are in your mind 

By opening that door 
You allow them to destroy your peace 
Your confidence 
Your hope... that anything will work again 

You run over & over - 
Details that are done 
Things you cannot change 
(Though you wish you could) 
You defend yourself to the destroyers 
The cold, stone cold, mouths
Who you could never have had hope of pleasing 

And the fear seeps in 
-ice in the veins
-sickness in the stomach 
And all visions of the future dim 

The door is shut tight behind you
You are in a pit, feeling for handholds
Fumbling, blind, with no plan 

There is only pain, darkness
fear illuminated by angry flashes

Fumbling for a handhold to open a door forward - anything to get out of the pit. 

Time ticks by 
You drown in the accumulating minutes - the only sound is your breathing and the rush of your blood in your ears. 

You look back and the wound that had barely begun to heal is ripped open afresh by circumstance 

The dry leaves of what was swirl up in a bone dry dance if pain,, darkness, and fear... repeating the cycle you worked so hard to rest. 

Go forward, guarded - ready to play the expected role - it's your only protection. 

And this is where I am now:

Ferguson

I know that I have had a lot to say about Ferguson, I'm fatigued and I know just about everyone is. However, I see different kinds of fatigue: those who are fighting for justice for Michael Brown (most of who have been fighting this since they were born), and those of us who have joined with them... we see it as a fight for fairness and justice and have a hard time understanding why that is so hard to impart. The other fatigue is for those who want to go back to their comfortable, oblivious bubbles and just want everyone to shut up already.... we've discussed it, can we be done now?!

I lived in St. Louis for the first 21 years of my life, growing up in Florissant, right next to Ferguson. In retrospect, I can recognize the bubble of privilege in which I was raised. I didn't have to worry about being followed around stores or being judged because of my skin color. I had several black friends and I just didn't notice problems.  We really didn't talk about race, we were just friends, kids hanging out.  Those were good times.

The first even that started to raise my awareness was when my close black friend, who was also male told me that he had to work twice as hard as the white people around him to earn his full ride scholarship to a state university. He is brilliant, moreso than I could ever hope to be, and deserved every penny of that scholarship... and he had to work twice as hard to earn it, what sort of message is that about equality?  That same friend and I also went to visit a mutual friend going to school in eastern Indiana, our Moms were worried about us travelling together, but mine didn't bother to tell me about it until after we got back.  I really didn't understand, I was that oblivious.  We were friends heading off on an adventure, period, end of story, in my mind.  Now I understand much better that racism exists, but I still don't understand why.

My biggest frustration, as I intimated earlier, is trying to get across to other white people that they need to really listen and open up their eyes, to stop seeing what it is to be a person of color in this country from the privileged perspective of being white.  A scary thing that was brought up by a friend and echoed on the media is the fear that persons of color worry about whether their young men will reach adulthood without being killed or incarcerated....and I was accused of it being rhetoric. That doesn't sound like equality to me or something that you can blame on those experiencing it.

We have to embrace discomfort and start asking the hard questions of "Why?"  We have to look at ourselves and our own assumptions and accept that some of the stuff we have been taught is a lie that whitewashes the truth.  The very fabric of our country has deeply woven racist threads, from even earlier than the infamous 3/5 solution.

I believe it is very human to choose to go where we find comfort, but taking some comforts for granted just hurts us all.

Walk, Don't Run... directives vs. tools

A friend of mine on Facebook posted the following graphic on her feed the other day:

I found it triggering, mostly of memories from when I was in school. I was one of those sensitive kids, and in many ways I still am. I really don’t know why, but it is simply part of my make-up… and it’s not something you outgrow or unlearn when you are hard-wired that way.

Over the years, I have learned some coping mechanisms, but it never really goes away… and despite efforts to cope, sometimes that hard-wiring kicks in automatically and takes me by surprise. It also makes me feel like you have to explain to other people why I reacted the way I did to “X” situation… borne out of years of being misunderstood, ridiculed, or thought to be a weirdo.

Even though my family was a pretty safe cocoon, they sometimes would obviously not “get” me either. I think my Mom was wired a lot like me and did her best to prepare me for the reality of the “outside world.” But she didn’t want to completely protect me from it either, because I had to toughen up to a certain extent just to learn to survive… and treating me like a hothouse flower wasn’t going to achieve that end.

I guess the hardest part, apart from not having my feelings honored, was the lack of tools. I was told to “stop overreacting”, “stop crying”, “stop losing your temper”, etc. But nobody told me how to “stop”, never gave me the tools or helped me figure out the “how”.

One of the wisest things I have ever heard was from a Parents as Teachers educator, she asked rhetorically, “What does ‘stop running’ look like? Tell the child to walk.” What a huge shift in perspective for me, and it is so universally applicable. If someone had taken me aside and told me what to DO instead of what to stop doing… it might have been more helpful. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been less painful, but it would have made me, as a child, feel as though I had some power in the situation… rather than being just a victim reacting to the bullies harassing me… and left holding the bag of responsibility in the situation.

When you tell someone to just “stop” doing something, you only appear to be giving them control over the situation. Instead you are giving them a destination with no map or directions to get them there… and the implicit message that what they are doing is the cause of the harassment.

These people, children & adults, need help in recognizing what triggers them and validation that their feelings are okay, whatever they may be. Then they need tools to help them learn to deal with those feelings… be it walking away, asking for help, etc. They also need help in learning to gauge what is appropriate for a given situation.

Sadly, though, we often don’t have the time or emotional space to deal the issues another may have. It’s easy to say “stop that” but not as easy to teach.

Sometimes the ice pack isn't enough...

Today was a sad day as a school nurse. We had a child who has developed a rash on the face, arm and hand on one side. It was first noticed by the counselor, and then the next day by the school nurse and then today by me... and it's been getting worse each day.

The problem was that we needed to send the child home to be seen by a doctor before we could allow him back to school since we didn't know what the rash was. We couldn't get hold of the father and the grandmother's car had broken down.  The counselor called the grandmother to try to arrange someone to get the child, but nobody ever showed up.  The child got to me at 11:35 and was in the office until school ended at 3:40.

I called the grandmother just to let her know we won't be able to have the child back in school tomorrow and she described the pressure she is under. She has given the kids and their parents a home so they won't be homeless, but they haven't given her any sort of rights or power of attorney and accuse her of being the evil bitch grandmother.  So she's totally stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I just listened and gave her a kind ear.

Now we may have to hotline the family... not the grandmother, but the parents.

Mother's Day 2014... gulfs of time and distance.

It's been 8 years, 5 months, 25 days since my Mom, Gloria Alice Kirchhoff Gahr, passed away on 16 November 2005.  She was 74 1/2 years old. She was remarkable, but it still really wasn't enough time.  She was a storyteller, an artist, musician, family chef, gardener and so many other things... she was a Renaissance woman, always interested in everything, there was no concept or project or form of creativity that she was afraid to tackle.  So, our childhoods were magickal... as I'm sure you can imagine.

She was the youngest daughter in a family of 10 children with 3 girls and 7 boys. She was #8 of the lot, iirc. Among her memories of her childhood were cooking for her family when she was 5 years old, standing on a stool, because her mother had narcolepsy.  There were plenty of painful stories too, but we rarely heard those.  

Mostly we heard the stories of her and her brothers, Jack & Rex, running about generally being hoodlums... going down into a neighbor's spring house and throwing rocks at the windows to break them out and things like that.  Once she saved a chipmunk from her dog, an Irish setter, but not before the critter's tail was chewed off by the dog.  She and her brothers performed surgery with scissors and saved the chipmunk's life: she named him Stumpy and he lived in a coffee can filled with horsehair jack cut out of one of the horse's tails.  He had a little tin dish for water and when he wanted more, he would emerge and bang it on the floor.  He also would ride to school in her shirt pocket. Another favorite thing she loved to talk about doing as a child was to go to a clear Missouri stream and take a huge rock and put it in her lap. She would hold her breath and open her eyes to watch the fish swim around her, especially the minnows.

She also loved the holidays... that is when the magic would really happen. We were so cocooned with love and family at that time of year, those memories are perhaps some of the happiest I will ever have. Mom in curlers running around madly on Christmas Eve making cookies and prepping for the big Christmas Day dinner... and going to midnight service... coming out in the cold air in the peaceful frosty dark.  And then opening presents and the bustle of family in our always tastefully-decorated home... it was just warm and cozy, my memories are sort of soft-focused... and feel like a cozy merino wool sweater.

There are so many stories, just pieces of her life.  She is with me, I know I am an awful lot like her and I'm glad.  She had a great sense of humor, with a sarcastic edge.  She loved to sing.  Her garden was her true joy... she so loved planting seeds and watching the baby plants grow. Her flower gardens, that surrounded the rock and brick landscaping that she accomplished herself... were always the envy of the neighborhood.

She also loved to paint and sculpt.  I have several of her creations and absolutely treasure them. They could never be replaced. She painted what she saw and remembered in her mind from her Southern Missouri childhood... trees, streams, covered bridges, old barns... and always in her style.

Her intellectual curiosity was never limited by her high school education or being a suburban mom of the 1950s and 60s, she always was a great reader.  She loved to read almost anything... especially history and novels. She had a huge collection of the Reader's Digest Condensed Books.... and would devour them when they would arrive.  She never stopped learning.

This small tribute is exactly that, small, in comparison to who she was... and was to me.  One memory seems to spur another... and I could write for years about her.  I just wish I'd had a few more years with her... maybe she should be the novel that I write.

As a mother this Mother's Day, I am missing my kids. They are wonderful people and I'm proud of them. My own daughter has her own daughter now... and that little enigma is amazing. I get to see her next week and I'm about to burst over that. And I get to see my son graduate from high school.  The years do roll on.  

Well yeah and two months have gone by.

Life has been good, just busy lately. I'm still processing the drek of "That Evil Place"... I wish it would stop. Really don't want to keep dealing with an oozing wound that doesn't seem to want to completely heal over, but I guess PTSD is like that.

It's weird, though I believed in PTSD, and I knew that many different life stressors could kick it off, I have never been so well able to identify it in my own self and situation.  I am well assured that things are going just fine in my temp job situation... but I am still worried that someone is looking over my shoulder and scrutinizing every move that I make. I think it's going to take some time to shake that uncomfortable feeling. Lack of constant and direct feedback makes me very nervous now.  If I was screwing up majorly, I know the folks where I'm at would tell me... but that niggle of doubt and discomfort is still there...

So really, I am viewing PTSD much like I view the perception of pain in different people. What might not bother me that much could be debilitating for another.  What one situation one person can brush off with ease may not be so "brushable" for another.... though it may seem like nothing to me, I don't know the whole of that other person's story, so I really cannot judge.

So things like PTSD are on a continuum and a very individual thing.  Maybe others could have gone through what I did at King County with less damage to the soul and psyche, but that damage is what I sustained, being who *I* am.  It is heartening to hear the co-workers with whom I am friends acknowledge how awful the place is. It is also heartening to simply be accepted for who I am for the most part where I am now.  It's okay to be me, myself and my fleas.

I just wish I could turn off the tap o' crap that gushes forth from time to time.  Despite all this, I am very happy. Life is open right now with our impending plan to move to Portland... I just don't know exactly where I'm heading. Back to school, most likely, really looking at becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner or getting back into something birth-related.  I just still am not completely sure what I want to do when I grow up.

One thing that continues to confuse me is when people tell me that I inspire them when I just feel like I'm blundering through life.  I am always flattered too, but I'm just living life and doing the best that I can.

The Lump in my Throat

It catches in my throat
A hate I cannot swallow
             or spit out

It's like a hardened ball of phlegm
Independent of myself
I feel it   -AND-   see it

A concentrated hatred of
     -ivory towers
     -smug superiority
     -turf war politics
     -those who need to inflict misery on others

It will continue to catch
Until it finally dissolves
Of its own accord. and with time.

Where do we do we go from here...?

Well I am almost a month out from losing my job, and in retrospect, I think it's probably the best things that could have happened to me. It gave me the gift of time... room to breathe, room to be, room to stop, time to spend with Mark as he arrived and began his adjustment...  so I hope that was good for him.

There is so much that I don't miss about that horrible place... the stress, the hours, the attitudes of certain people, the meanness, talking to people endlessly about salmonella, the feeling that I never knew what I was doing.

I guess there was a reason why it all happened... at least I like to believe that. True or not, it is comforting and helps me make sense of such an awful time.

I also need to pull some positives out of it. I got to the Pacific northwest. I got 2 new friends. I am closer to some old friends. I have processed a lot of old stuff. I'm not in Missouri anymore. I have other new friends. I'm getting to try out school nursing.

Then there is the gratitude. I have the support of so many friends around the world. my husband is here with me... and the kitties are too. I have enough money. People have been kind. I like it here. I am happier than I've been in a long time and excited about life and the possibilities that lie ahead.

I can't say that I'm not angry or hurt by what happened, but I'm choosing carefully how much I dwell on those emotions. I was ill-used by King County, but it's over. Honestly though, thinking about the county, seeing the logo, etc puts a really bad taste in my mouth. It's going to take a long time to get away from that feeling.  I honestly hope that those who follow have it better than I did.

I am both excited and nervous about the school nursing gig that starts on Monday. I think it will be a refreshing departure from what I've been doing so long.  It will also stretch me and reawaken some dormant nursing skills.  I honestly kind of glad that I took the temp gig instead of a permanent one for now.  It's also nice and close to home.  I will cover about 3 schools.  I have that job until June and then I will be going to Ft Knox KY for my summer Army training and then it will be time to find a new job.  

Just kind of letting the journey unfold.

And yes, they threatened my nursing license too…

I didn't put this out there so publicly, but now that it has come to naught, I feel it needs to be stated.  Not only did I get fired from the most toxic job I have ever held, I also had a cloud hanging over my nursing license, they really couldn't just let me go in peace, they had to make the special torture last with one last threat.

When I was canned, they told me that they had filed a complaint against my nursing license with reassurance that “these things rarely get investigated or become anything.” The reasoning they gave is that they had to cover the county in case of liability. I also spoke to the union representative who said that they used to do reports on nearly every nurse’s license and that she had to send them the state regulations and tell them to cool it.  What this tells me is that they have quite a history of filing BS complaints… and the next thing that pops up in my mind is “The why do it?!”

I think that “Why” question is the one that really sticks in my craw.  With as personal as the firing was, it just seems like it’s another way for them to twist the knife and feel like they have power.  There is also an element of them playing C.Y.A. and trying to convince the world that their feces is odorless and made of solid gold…. and that they train people well too!  No matter the reason, I have more pity than anger for them. 

The reason I was given for the complaint was a vague “you gave wrong information over the phone” to someone on 2 occasions.  I have acknowledged my mistakes all along.  I’m not perfect, and they said I didn't have to be perfect, while the unspoken subtext was that I did have to be perfect. One of these occasions I remember and I called to correct the situation as soon as I was aware of it.  The other one, I really don’t know.  However, the letter I got from the state yesterday said, “The Washington State Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission received a report about an alleged failure to satisfactorily learn and perform duties as a public health nurse.  After careful consideration of the information received the Nursing Commission decided not to investigate because there was no violation of nursing law and it is considered an employer-employee issue.”  That is rather different, IMNSHO.

Unfortunately, I have had to mark “yes” on some job applications when asked about complaints against my license.  I had to be honest. However it shows that their petty, vindictive action has had some lasting effects that may have cost me some interviews. I cannot prove or disprove this, any more than I can about my being in the military being part of the reason that I was fired.  I just don’t understand what exactly would make a person or organization act in this manner unless it was warranted.  The good news is that I can now answer that question “no” on future applications.

Because of everything that I survived in that 3 ½ months, I am a bit bumped and bruised, but I will heal and I will prevail. They cannot take my dignity, they cannot take my soul.  They tried to tear down everything that was important to me, because they didn't “approve” of something… who I was, where I was from, my Army service, perhaps my very existence on the planet… I will never know.  In almost every situation I have done fine with people using my quirky charm, even those I haven’t liked a whole lot… but this was the rare instance and for whatever reason, there was no way I would have or could have ever fit into their special little corner of hell.  For those who have known me a long time, I will say that given a choice, I would return to the dining hall at Rhein-Main before I would the Seattle King County Public Health Department… the latter of which has earned the special distinction of being the worst job I have ever had.

I know I’m stronger for the experience.  I also know what is important to me.  I will take the gifts and walk away.

Please be kind to yourself and others.  Gentleness and compassion go a lot farther than vindictiveness and revenge.

How to train (or not to train) someone...

Sometimes, when you go through something, it takes some time to tease out what exactly the problem was with certain aspects of events.  I am finding this to be true of this recent job experience and I think it will be valuable to examine going forward.

The issue that I am really thinking about is the training piece.  I worked with some folks very well there and my direct supervisors not well at all… and the latter were the ones who pretty much sealed my fate.  I did read the performance review (after fishing the pieces out of the recycling and taping it back together) and it pretty much said that I couldn’t communicate my way out of a paper bag.  It also said that they tried to train me on how to interview people over the phone but that I improved but was never good enough.  (This was among other things, many of which were pointedly personal.)

First, lack of clear training standards, benchmarks and objectives make the training process amorphous and all too subjective.  You need something more than just a checklist that says, "you should be able to do all of this stuff by 6 months" Goals should be measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-limited.  Lack of specificity allows far too many variables, based on assumptions to take precedence over clear, measurable, progressive standards.  Also, lack of clear objectives also allows for goalposts to be moved or even removed.  A trainer can make arbitrary decisions based on how they feel, as opposed to objective reality.  Telling someone “I want you to be able to carry over ‘x-skills’ to the next task may sound clear, but doesn’t begin to take into account the nuances that differ task to task.  So a “squishy” direction like that only serves to disadvantage the recipient of such instruction.  It’s hard to tell someone that they haven’t met standards when the standards are constantly changing or unclear. It puts the trainee in a situation of never feeling secure or knowing how things are going. 

Secondly, how many times do you really think you need to tell someone what needs improvement? You should be able to tell someone something and then see if they implement, then correct as needed.  To be so unsure that someone has heard you that you feel you have to hammer home a point 10 times in the same conversation only serves to both instill that lack of confidence in the trainee. It also makes them feel that lack of trust.  Gentle reminders tend to work better than a “omfg, I can’t believe you make this stupid mistake again” attitude and approach.

Third, watching over someone’s shoulder constantly makes him or her feel like a trapped animal, heightens tension and only makes him prone to more mistakes.  A person who feels trapped and afraid is much less likely to achieve the best results.

Fourth, public ridicule/reprimand is not a good training tool.  It only serves to alienate your trainee and make them more resistant to what you are trying to train them to do.  Public belittlement is also damaging to the confidence you are trying to build, it only heightens the sense of being cornered and watched.

Fifth, micromanaging is like squeezing a fistful of mud… the harder you squeeze, the more you lose hold of.

Those are some of the things that ‘went wrong ‘in my training process.  It’s taken me nearly two weeks to be able to get most of the emotional drek out of the way to begin to a clear post-mortem on it.  The good news is that a bit of analysis gives me tools that I can use moving forward.

Rebuilding

I have many tasks right now.  A  huge one is regaining the confidence that was effectively trashed in this experience.  I also have to stop living through fear, but that entails rewiring my brain. So I have a lot of rewiring to do all over my brain.

I have a core confidence that we will get through this. I just don't like the uncertainty and that puts that uncomfortable queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. That feeling is my fear response, so I am having to learn to recognize the fear, honor it, but not let it sit with me and spiral me down into dark, negative space.... and that is so easy to do.  I don't think I am a normally depressed person, but I do have times when it gets dark and everything feels like a battle. So then the trick becomes sitting with and accepting the unknown for exactly what it is.

When the fear response sets in, it tends to dominate all processes.  But like one website I read, you have to learn to not pull the alarm bell... you can feel the fear without freaking out.  And you can intellectually know a lot of things, but until it translates into GUT knowledge, it is harder to integrate that knowledge into your process.

In this society, women are told to be humble and not take credit for their own successes. You downplay your success... while men are told to trumpet their successes to the world.  This is evident in the wage gap, the lesser value of women's work unless men have taken it up, etc.

But the truth is that I HAVE achieved a great deal. I have been a successful nurse in many settings over the past 10 1/2 years, I am a successful US Army officer, I have two great kids who are achieving in their own interesting ways, I have a successful (almost) 27 year marriage, I lost 60 lbs and have kept it off, I am an accomplished knitter and spinner, and so many more.  And what's funny is that I feel compelled to explain why I am enumerating my positives... which is a form of downplaying what I do.

Additionally, the way I was treated in school by the other kids often made me feel incompetent and stupid.  I have always been the sensitive one, easy to tears, easy to anger, easy to laugh... just generally emotional.  I was raised in a nurturing home, but when I got out into the real world and saw that other people didn't treat me or anyone else with lovingkindess, I was confused.  And honestly, I am still confused.  Things work better when you are nice and genuine with people... but only if everyone is on that same page.  Most of the time, my trust and openness has served me better than subterfuge and general asshattery... so I expect back what I am giving... and I get hurt when it doesn't work that way.

I guess you would think that after getting burned as many times as I have, I would be a hard person, but it really isn't in my nature to be that way.  I don't want to be bitter, cynical, mean.  I like having an open and happy approach to the world.  The problem is also that when I meet people who aren't trusting, the act as though I'm playing an angle or trying to get something over on them... even though I'm being genuine.

So I guess some other takeaways from this experience, apart from the learning to surrender (not in a let the world run over you way) to what is, is to learn to not tip my hand or open myself up too soon.  I need to be cautious and get the lay of the land first... or I will end up railroaded and humiliated like I did in this most recent misadventure.  Some lessons are harder won than others.

ruminations

I am glad that I have drill this weekend. Once again, the Army has come through for me.  It is keeping me busy and getting me out of the apartment for the weekend.  I got to talk to people about everything and nothing... and have a general change of scene and society... and that carries a value that is hard to enumerate.  So now I'm safely ensconced in a hotel room while the snow falls outside.

I am still feeling angry and resentful to a certain degree, but honestly it's actually quite small. Mostly I just feel sad... sad that it didn't work out, sad that there are others still working there, sad for those who hurt me.  And it's a real feeling of pity.... I'm sorry that they are so convinced of their rightness, their perfection, and yet seemingly so unhappy.  I don't think that many of those who treat others badly are particularly happy themselves. There is usually something they are trying to protect, be it turf, or something deep inside of themselves. So really I feel more pity than anything else.

Even though this makes my situation financially rather precarious, I need to move forward and not spend all that time and energy on anger and resentment.  It's fine to acknowledge them, but not to live in them.  I'm going to forgive and move on.

Sometimes it IS personal.

Yeah, I’m still processing being fired. How I could go from such success in my most recent job at Callaway County and with my Army MOB to Ft. Hood, TX to being such a seemingly abysmal failure here seems incongruous to me.  I’m in no way saying that I didn’t make mistakes…. Hey! Human!  I wish those mistakes hadn’t happened, but if I were perfect I would be a robot.  I have only been fired from two jobs, the previous one truly wasn’t personal, it was situational… but I feel this firing had a lot of personal elements to it.

So of course the fault lies somewhere in the middle of this whole thing…. Some theirs, some mine. Fair enough.  To try and press the point that my poop don’t stink and is made of solid gold… well no flight on that goose. However, in retrospect, I still stand by my gut intuition that says there was a personality conflict with my direct supervisors very early on and that combined with me tipping my hand early on about being nervous about the situation working out since there was so much riding on it was my downfall.  They smelled blood in the water and took advantage.

I just got early on that they really didn’t “get” me… my sense of humor, my personality, my Army service, any of it… nor do I think they really wanted to try. They were put off early on, which sealed my fate.  Usually just being myself will ease situations and initial personality conflicts smooth themsleves over. Sadly, I think I was prejudged. In retrospect, I was bullied too.

Perhaps these statements sound paranoid, but please keep on, it will make sense as you go on.

First off, I moved 2000 miles for this job and have been the main support for my entire family for a long while now.  Those stressors alone were extraordinary.  Then I chose to uproot to a new city, new job, new everything… alone.  This was way different than the MOB to Ft. Hood… there I had the support and familiarity of my Army unit… though not my family, they were friends who knew me and people I could talk to since we were all in the same boat.  It wasn’t easy but it was a cake walk in comparison to what the last few months have been here in Washington.

So, I landed at the job on my 3^rd full day in Washington.  Everything seemed fine.  I tried to crack some jokes and be myself but the chilly reception was apparent to me.  I was given a checklist of things that stated at the bottom that they expected me to be able to do by 6 months into the job.  So I am concerned because of the niggle in my gut, but not too worried.  However, I did express my concern and was told everything was fine.  Hand was tipped, weakness shown, blood in the water.

So I had my 6 month checklist and was working diligently on it. I was being given different diseases to work on, but there was always something wrong and positive feedback was limited or eclipsed by the negative.  It was really difficult to go to work on a daily basis with any confidence when any gains you feel you are making are constantly being undermined by the “Yes… but…”  So I had a check-in meeting with a higher level supervisor and aired my need for solid benchmarks and more frequent feedback.  I felt like I wasn’t really being trained, but more being expected to know everything upfront and then being excoriated for making mistakes.  I also felt belittled and stupid. 

So the meeting with the supervisor was helpful for a few weeks, it did get some benchmarks and a training plan. However, at the next training meeting I was told that my meeting of one of the benchmarks really didn’t count… which pretty put me back at square one.  I accepted it and didn’t report it higher (and probably should have) because I was trying to move on in my training anyway.  I really didn’t think about it much.

However I think the fact that I talked to the upper management put me on the radar and also inadvertently exacerbated a turf war between the new upper management and the old guard middle management.

In these training meetings all the way through, I was told my telephone interviewing skills weren’t right, they needed work. I was not allowed to make calls. We worked on my phone skills; I gained confidence as they wanted me too.  I was never told that my skills are good or adequate, just that they were “better”. Goal was never achieved…I was given lots of tips and pointers... and I worked to put them into practice, but I still got the "it is getting better"... with no direction past a certain point. In one meeting I was told (paraphrasing here) that Public Health messaging always has to be right (no argument there) and “flat”, so to speak.  I’m guessing that meant no personality or at least not my personality.  I was told not to use any colorful language because it might confuse people, this was after I had been dealing with a facility that had an outbreak and I said, “Norovirus can spread like a fire in a dry Kansas summer.’  Okay, yeah, I could have said “wildfire”… but if it had just been a message of “tame your metaphors”… no sweat, but they had to add “People here wouldn’t understand that. It must be a Missouri thing.”  The other piece that came out of that same meeting was criticism for using the military alphabet to help someone spell my last name “Sierra-Charlie-Hotel-Mike-India-Delta-Tango”.  I was told not to use military slang since it might offend people. They did not want to turn off the public since “most people in Washington didn’t support the war”.  If their reason was “use something more people will understand”, again, no sweat… but there was a veiled assumption about my military service and how I felt about the current conflicts our country is involved in.  So yeah, it was personal.

I have also come across some information that has validated my experience.  One nurse admitted she takes Pepto Bismol every day, another told me that in her first few weeks there, she would end up on her living room floor sobbing in a fetal position and that an MD stationed there (via the CDC) spent her early days wondering what she was going to get yelled at about each day.  I also spoke to the union rep who said that my experience wasn’t unusual and that the lack of clear training, and that it's not uncommon for former employees to have PTSD.

In the end, I cannot argue that it was not a good fit. I am honestly glad to be out of there. Strangely, the stress of being unemployed is less than the stress of going to work sick everyday.  I am not proud about how I let them made me feel. I am sorry I tipped my hand so early. But I am proud that I stood up for my needs.

I have learned a lot. And those lessons will go forward with me.

Examining the rocks... day 2 of whatever this is.

Woke up early… with some things really coming clear in my head. Today is going to be an angry day, I think. I woke up thinking about that training issue. So I will try to be constructive about what I think a good training system is and isn’t…. and then I will look at what I just went through.

At the outset, any training plan needs to have general goals undergirded by specific, measurable goals and benchmarks with general timelines. And the only way to make this work is to have clear, unbiased communication.

Here’s what happened to me… I was given a general checklist of things that “I was expected to be able to do by 6 months”. I had to fight to get clear benchmarks with measurable goals, but didn’t get them until 2 months in. So I was already behind the 8 ball in behind in trying to reach the goals that had been set out. I thought I was starting to “get it” only to find the goalposts had not only moved, they had been removed and replaced… all the stuff I’d been working to master no longer counted. I was also given other goals to achieve, which I understood needed to be completed by the 6 month point… but I only started being given additional things to master a few weeks ago. And yet, ostensibly, I was fired for not meeting standards.

In addition, instead of an ongoing dialogue about how I was doing… I would be told I was doing fine when I would ask and then get slammed in training meetings. Things would be “getting better” but they would still be vulturing over me. At some point in training a person you have to let go and let them make mistakes… that is what training is for.

In this passive-aggressive atmosphere it was nearly impossible for me to succeed. It was uncomfortable from very early on. So honestly, yesterday’s events really weren’t all that surprising… I just honestly thought I would have had more warning.

Sudden crash onto the rocks...

The unknown is very scary. I am sitting very solidly in that space that makes me very uncomfortable, but you know, considering what I just left, I’m not really sure it’s any worse. I can get some of the rest that I desperately need… and have needed for 5 or more years. I am bone weary in just about every way imaginable. I’m tired of struggling… tired of fighting… tired of you name it. My heart is weary and needs some nurturing. In a way it’s a relief to not have to go to work every morning with my stomach in knots and feeling like I’m going to throw up.

I don’t regret leaving Missouri, it really was time to go and Mark and I wanted to move out here. The job just seemed perfect and I was so excited and happy to be headed out on a new adventure, but from very early on, I started having misgivings.  It’s not any one thing, but I think I got off on a wrong foot and I can’t even say when it happened exactly… but whatever it was a fatal mistake from which I never recovered. Additionally, I did make mistakes, which I know but choose not to enumerate here… but I’m not sure any of them were truly fatal… but they certainly seemed to be aggregated in such a way that they couldn’t be overcome, no matter how good I was doing in every other aspect of the job.

The fault lies in the middle somewhere, I’m honestly not sure where. It has been chalked up to “not meeting standards” and “not a good fit”… which, as one friend put it, “Translation -- bonking heads with ... who? The boss or the old hand?" Also there was an issue I had with the training system, or lack thereof… the newer management was trying to change things but the middle management that has been there forever really didn’t seem to want to. So as the same friend put it, despite my mistakes, I became collateral damage in an apparent turf war. And how do you know about something like that before you take a job?

So… here we are, moving forward into completely uncharted waters. I am frightened, scared, angry, depressed, lonely… and every imaginable combo of emotions… often all at the same time. I have been much heartened by the amazing outpouring of support by friends and family. One of my friends from my (now former) job even came to spend a few hours making sure I was okay. So we baked cookies and watched Mamma Mia. That helped more than I can say.

So here I am, washed up on the rocks of life. I need to start by regrouping myself and then start forging a new path forward. Mark will be here next week, so I won’t be alone for too much longer. I have hope that being on the rocks won’t be for too long.