Loved

Havesumhope! Llama! I'm loved! (cheering) Does this mean I was missed? Woo-hoo.... its wonderful to get validation of lingering remainder-ness on people's minds once in a while. You guys rock!

HSH, for those of you not lucky enough to have been a digital voyeur of the erratic and frequently self-licking ice cream cone of my many blogs past, is the thoughtful, creative Barista at one of my favorite drink-and-think establishments, The eMotion Cafe. Many of the musings are, like those of us whose primary intent for our blogs are to release some of life's tension, what I call "personally profound" ... small reflections on our lives that may or not spill into the experience of others and offer the small comforts of empathy (or shared entropy.) However, the eMotion Cafe offers its patrons more than its share of unique surprises and perspectives into deeper human truths and attributes. Piqued your curiosity? Might I suggest:

Understanding * Beauty * Humiliation * Intelligence * MPOD

Llama, too, runs a deeply spiritual and creative site: one I would likewise link too if not for the vulnerability of occasionally weepy wounds received from my "former" corporation. By the fresh droppings, it seems vultures still lurk.

Side note: though I have now rejected ALL THREE opportunities to "avenge" my undeserved and humiliating ordeal, the knowledge of my leverage and initial intent appears to have earned me a spot-check space in their "lingering reminded-ness" as well. Dear reader, be you a subject of the despotic anarchy (the volatile images such description conjures being, all things, accurate) under which I was once subjugated; know ye this:

the multitude of process failures encountered since my departure, though in no way my ambition or desire, have supplied serious restitution toward the resentment felt following my unceremonial ousting.

Yes, I became crochecty and impatient, a jaded idealist. And yes......as was reminded Neal Donald Walsh by Divine Inspiration itself, I no longer woke with an appreciation for the challenge ahead of me in the corporate world each morning. Toward the political proclivity for disgenousness, I am hostile... and as my idealism soured so did my patience, my thoughtfulness, and my optimism. I had threatened to leave, to quit, how many times? Dozens... but couldn't let go of the shining "city on a hill" I had created... the only processes in the entire organization that actually worked. I feared the entropy surrounding IT would destroy this newly birthed, unshielded and unstable experiment whose success I hoped would become the beacon under which the other departments would fall.

My seemingly hyperbolic and paternalistic description is, I am ashamed to admit, closer to the truth than you might at first guess. When my department began to suffer the effects from lack of executive commitment, managerial deceipt and self-serving underminment, I waged war with my own boss though an information campaign, "knowledge is power." I refused to compromise my "principles" and let my team suffer - or enable the business's ignorance with regard to legal compliance.... I fancied myself a "moral warrior: for the corporation and its employees, missing my own Quixotic reflection...

In all fairness to myself: it worked, and I was "right," the proof of which you now experience being the solace I take from the humiliation. It may surprise you, considering my tongue-in-cheek presentation, that I am NOT unjustified in presenting myself as a martyr for corporate integrity. That being said: how *sad* for me. How sad that I sacrificed 70-90 hours a week (and no, executives do NOT make overtime!) to fix an entire department flogged by the entropy of managerial narcissism and neglect, throw myself on the sword repeatedly for the jobs of my subordinates AND simply to maintain the integrity of a process. All the stress and anxiety and frustration I underwent for..... a business? Work? Oh... how very, very sad.

And now I must close this both self-critical and self-congratulatory rant, its birth and life stolen from moments reserved for brushing teeth and lukewarm showers.

In closing credits, the two stressful years of constant training (positive) implementation (positive) and global corporate political experience (NEGATIVE!) combined with my eager idealism (refusal to swallow the pill,) and endowed me with unique and (thankfully) desirable corporate IT skills that did not go unappreciated. I imagine I would have wallowed longer had not the offers began rolling in as soon as I was on the market... I felt like a woman whose new "divorce" status was initiated due to her abusive, philandering husband's impregnated young secretary rather than her own "fed-upedness" with his behavior - I came out of the courthouse relieved rather than lonesome. And lo, there were men lined up around the courthouse!

Well, I interviewed several and was flown around the country and said thank you, very kind and I am flattered but nooo.... I was picky - and then finally after a few months I took the plunge and said "yes." I now work as an IT project manager for the specialty insurance sector of a successful, international banking conglomerate. I generate exactly the SAME income, am not required to travel (unless I wish to) and work 40-50 hours a week. I enjoy both the employees and the corporate culture, and I remain attached enough to et results - but detached enough to maintain my sanity and my boundaries.

That last part? That is the blessing, and maintaining its presence is not the company's responsibility... its mine.

~Psyche