There are few events which are guaranteed to send me into a tailspin… Running out of money 2 weeks before pay-day, the car breaking down on the school run, my Mother suddenly announcing that she feels I don't bath the children/clean my oven/change my light bulbs often enough.
Not many things, anyway.
But tip top of the list of things which send me, unfailingly, into what my friend would call 'a fettle' is having to go though my annual appraisal at work.
Not because I worry that they'll suddenly discover that I'm not very good at what I do. Well, not just because of that. It's more that, for several years now, I've worried that I really don't like my job very much, and being forced into a period of introspection about it never fails to set my teeth on edge. I don't like considering what I want to be doing here in a year because it brings to the fore the fact that I don't want to be here in a year. I don't like assessing my performance over the last quarter because I will have to remember that I've not enjoyed a single day of it.
And all of it is underscored by the desperate clawing feeling I get in my stomach when I allow myself to dwell on the unfair sum of my wage.
So normally I don't think about it. In the manner of an unpleasant credit card bill pushed to the back of the 'to do' pile, I seldom think about whether this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Appraisals strip away all of those layers of denial and invite me to discuss exactly what I do and exactly how much I'm paid to do it.
Which is why I immediately loose all rationality at appraisal time, and invariably throw my toys out of the pram. This year, it turns out, is no exception. I have huffed and complained and whined my way through the process and managed to secure, as ever, the same pay rise as I always get and the sympathy of all who have listened to my woes.
This year, though, I may have done something different. I've asked them to consider me for voluntary redundancy. A year's wages, tax free, in my grubby hands, and no job to hate.
Bing bang boom.
Only, well… I'm quite a Contrary Mary really… and after spending 2 weeks throwing said toys out of pram that they were not considering me for the old heave ho, they've suddenly announced that they maybe perhaps might consider me after all.
And now I'm frozen with terror. No job? But… I have three children… and it's my JOB!! Where would I go every morning? What would I do?
For the first time in nearly 10 years of working in a job I don't like, I might just have a chance to change it. The problem is, of course, that I have developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I don't know how to be an adult without hating this job. I've never had to do so.
Of course, there is a good chance that their 'perhaps, maybe, hmmm, not sure' attitude to considering me will come to naught anyway - rendering all the heart ache of the last week completely pointless.
But what if they do? Just imagine...
