2021 wrapped

Spotify dropped their wrapped, and just this morning, YouTube music hit me up to say, “your music has no personality”. They didn’t actually say that, but my music recap did. Anyway, I thought I would do a recap of my year, but only the Ls. I saw a lot of people posting their Wins on the bird app and whilst I appreciate all the positivity, I have a lot of Ls.

This year, I did the worst quality of work I have ever done.

If you think I am exaggerating, I am not. This is also not the post where I tell you how I turned it around, because I didn’t. I lost that job.

This was also the year I struggled the most mentally. I am not sure whether my work was bad because my mental health was bad, or my mental health was bad because my work was bad, or whether they were feeding themselves in a never-ending loop. This is something I hope to figure out soon.

However, let me tell you why my work was bad this year. I quit a toxic workspace in March to go somewhere I could breathe without carrying the weight of 5 other people’s responsibilities and that’s when I found my last job. It was a completely remote job with a description that meant that I had freedom of creative expression. It was also the first time my remote work did not have strict deadlines and hourly goals. My creative mind thrived in this atmosphere, but my fragile mental health suffered.

Working remotely meant that most of the time, I was home alone, and when I wasn’t alone, I still wasn’t interacting with anyone because I did not know how to balance work and life. This in turn meant that I only spoke to one person — my partner over the phone. This gave me a lot of time to think about my feelings. Not great for someone like me.

Apart from my mental health, I have a perfectionist problem, and this means that I will hyper-fixate on getting the correct word to start the heading of my email copy, and I may not move on until that is fixed. This was made worse by the fact that I am very touchy about every remotely “creative” thing I produce. I am never sure my ideas are good, or my mode of execution will work, or everything will come together as planned. So this meant that I was either putting out work that I didn’t like in order to meet my deadlines, or not meeting my deadlines. You can guess which one I did more. Take a wild guess.

The worst problem by far that I had was recovering from failure. I take failures personally. As a formerly gifted child, failures mean that I am a failure and that I am no good, because I have tied my entire sense of self-worth to how well I do on work tasks. This was very hard to deal with because by every single team meeting, I had done something wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I got some compliments too, but my brain focused more on the things I did wrong. It got so bad that if I was anticipating correction, I would go late to the meeting. This was obviously stupid because I was only delaying the inevitable and adding lateness to my list of sins.

This article is not an excuse list. It is an acknowledgment of my problems. And with this said, I would like to introduce you to my biggest problem.

Lack of self-leadership.

This in essence is my inability to work without being micro-managed; a problem I did not know I had this bad until I got to this organization. Of course, the TikTok algorithm also started showing me ADHD videos, which actually better describe the problem I discovered that I had. The issue was not that I didn’t know what work was there to be done. The issue was that I would start on task A, while thinking about task B. Then I would think about task B so hard that I would dump Task A. But then a random solution to a problem that was discussed in the meeting that wasn’t even on my task list would fly into my head, and you know I have to solve that. By the end of the day, the only task that would be completed would be the one that wasn’t even my concern.

I mentally checked out of that job in October. I was doing so bad that I felt bad that I was getting paid.

By November, I got admission into a school for my PGD and decided to work part-time. However, I didn't do enough for me to even justify still being on payroll, so after a long conversation with my team lead, I took the out. This is not the full story, but it is also not the point of this article.

The bottom line is, I am jobless right now.

I could start applying for jobs now, and I know I would probably get one. I kick-ass at interviews, but I also know that me in this current state would not be good for any company.

I want to take at least half of the duration of my study time and focus it on learning consistency. Consistent writing, no matter how shit, consistent podcasting with no excuses, consistent reading, because I have two exams coming up, and consistently bettering myself before I foist all my drama on another person.

I took a lot of Ls, but I deserved them.