Birthdays, injuries, abusive train-platform drunkards, cat spew, sunshine, storms, fire-drills, new friends, macarons, and now.... a job offer.
After completely talking myself out of getting my hopes up on Wednesday, I received news from my referees yesterday that they had been called for questioning in the morning. That completely knocked me for six - I had, up until that point, been preparing myself for the "rejection and constructive feedback" phone call.
So, there we have it. I now have a decision to make. My almost-new supervisor voluntarily (and very kindly) offered me some time to "have the chats" with my current employer and husband before responding to the offer, which is lovely.
The difficulty is that I love my current job - I am challenged and I learn new things on a weekly basis. I still have so much more room to learn and grow, and so many new skills I was looking forward to developing. But alas, budget-tightening and job insecurity has increasingly dimmed any prospect of ongoing employment in the team - and unfortunately for me, it's the team where I finally re-discovered confidence in myself to learn new things and to present that confidence to the outside world, where I made amazing contacts and developed relationships with a strong foundation of mutual trust and respect, and where, more importantly, I looked forward to going to work each day, even after long weekends and holidays.
I have worked in plenty of toxic environments, where I dreaded going to work, where I felt swamped by emails and phone messages and a million things to do, the majority of which I knew I would never get around to dealing with. Where I had vile colleagues, bullying supervisors, and obnoxious students to deal with, and it always came down to me having to rise above it all and be the "bigger person" (aka Punching Bag). Where I would desperately hope to get hit by a tram on the way to work so I could have a good excuse not to show up. Where I would be practically catatonic with depression on Sundays and at the end of holidays, unable to speak due to the dread of returning to work the next day.
Not that I'm expecting the new position to be anything like that, but it was my current employer who rescued me and to whom I will be eternally grateful. Out of the toxic swamp I was headhunted, I was appreciated, I was empowered, and I was welcomed with open arms. I had never known anything like it before. But, on a fixed-term position, and with permanent-staff departures leaving holes which will now never be filled, it has reached the point where I'm not sure that gratitude is enough to keep me there.
Take care, my Blogosphere Buddies. Until tomorrow...
Louki xxx
