Throwback to times I was too busy to process pt 1
I recall working at a company, running their design team in a non-stop-product-shop-type way. Yes, yes, it’s true, I’ve only worked 2 places professionally as a product designer anyhow, but I feel as though the experience was and is enough to share with others. Yes, it may be a little extra, but I do see value in what I experience and interpret, now, especially in being in a completely different environment.
It’s important for me to be as clear and honest with myself while explaining this. I wasn’t the perfect employee, but I also wasn’t properly trained. I understood things in different perspectives and lost a lot of what I initially thought the “dream job” would enable me to do and who I could be. BUT HEY, that’s life!
The whole set up of the organization should have raised flags to me from day one. I should have understood that the task ahead wasn’t something someone of my experience could tackle alone, and especially while feeling under a disguise. The whole “imposter syndrome” and wanting and tasting some initial single-designer glory was what kept me in the job. That, and it was finally my first full-time, tech-paying, designer-y being experience. But it wasn’t a startup where I could bitch at the next person about how I felt or ask others if they were experiencing what I was experiencing.
So I began isolating myself. I adopted a view on life that fed into my personal life. I became lazy and disengaged. I fast-tracked my way into non-motivating behaviors and lost a lot of courage to laugh at myself and situations. It was starting to feel and get darker, and because of that, I chose to use my vices in inappropriate ways. As coping rather than having fun.
I remember going into work and adopting the mentality that if my idea wasn’t made and executed, I would get fired. I would withhold information from the other designer, unknowingly overworked developers, and was always so hard on myself that I slowed down in being able to process the most basic standards/interactions and even documenting them.
BUT I also slipped up while I was alone. I’d surf the web more. I’d indulge in procrastination. I’d hideout, prevent myself from seeing or bumping into others and became generally unpleasant around the workspace. I became unapproachable, shift, unreliable and .. maybe a little too hard on myself once it came to work responsibility. I no longer made it fun, and I put my stresses on other people (and yes, I do think some of it was made by myself, but it was also ultimately what I was exposed to).
I would try but then not understand why I wasn’t being listened to. I’d hear clap backs, but didn’t understand other peoples’ points of view. Some people just don’t care. But I cared too much. I took it too seriously and cut communication, ties and trust with anyone who believed in me or who just wanted me to do the work. I wasn’t my best self in that workplace.
I think it really started going downhill, though, when I was looking at it like a cutthroat competition. It was no longer solving problems. It was looking for ways to save my ass. And yes, it is super apparent to me now that that is a serious reality for a lot of others in the workplace and that I acknowledge my privelege to be able to say “I don’t want that”. I’m not “strong” enough. But, ideally, I wouldn’t want anyone else to be strong enough for some straight up bullshit like that.
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