What's it like living in a fish bowl
Time to free Willy
There I was, sitting at one end of a long conference table just barely small enough to fit inside the bland, white-walled meeting room. I was facing a group of my supervisors, waiting to go over my performance review.
I had been stuck in this job for 2 1/2 years, and for most of that time, it had been a pretty toxic culture that was wreaking havoc on my mental health (the true impact of which I would only start to grapple with years later). I was subjected to constant scrutiny, criticism, and negativity.
No effort was ever good enough.
No word I uttered ever went without a dissenting response.
No statement ever went without someone trying to misrepresent what I said.
I dealt with gossipers, back-biters, manipulators, usurpers, underminers… the list goes on. I entered the job with a wide-eyed optimism; the kind of naïveté that one has when he believes he can truly make a positive difference before being chopped up in the meat grinder of unwavering traditionalism. But that would come later.
The job wasn’t in video or film production. Far from it, in fact. But I took the job because at the time I really needed some steady pay. I had been freelancing in the industry, but I was newly married, and the pay wasn’t enough to help support a new family, even with my wife’s income. At the time I thought, “I can use the steady pay from this job, continue my freelance work on the side, and invest a portion of what I earn into new gear.”
A little over two years later, I was done. I couldn’t take it anymore. Not only was the job horrible, but it had taken me away from my true passion for too long.
Lesson: Stay true to your passion.
That’s a very easy statement to type, I know. I also understand that a lot of people just can’t help but take any job that comes their way. I empathize because I’ve been there myself. But in my particular situation, I could have changed one thing and my situation might have turned out differently:
I could have cast my net wider.
What I should have done was blanket the US with my resume. I should have applied to any and every job in the industry, no matter how tangentially related. But I was a homebody. I knew that I wanted to have a family, and I wanted my kids to be close to their grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. I didn’t like the thought of moving away. But I shouldn’t have let that stop me from pursuing my passion. As a result, I was stuck in a job which was far from what I wanted to do, desperate to get back on track. The crazy thing was, my supervisors had no idea.
And so the review began. They were prepared to offer me more responsibilities, higher pay, and even send me to get a Master’s in the field so I could be better educated and better equipped.
But I walked away. I couldn’t see myself doing that job day in, day out for the rest of my career. Not with the culture and the people I’d be forced to deal with on a constant basis. It was a relief, to say the least.
Until I realized later that I didn’t have much of a plan as to what to do next. More on that in my next post.