So last we left the conservative in me, it was the very late 70’s to very early 80’s and my life was slowly beginning to come around and things were getting a little better economically. Not great but better. As I struggled, I just couldn’t understand why it looked like I was the only one struggling. I was beleaguered trying to come to term with my religious views, and found that many of my conservative views were tied to fundamental Christian teachings. I thought I hated homosexuals, though I’d never really known any gays, because I was supposed to, didn’t the Bible teach that homosexually was a sin and an abomination before God? I was very much anti-abortion, buying many claims that it violated the 6th commandment, at the time thought to be “Thou shall not Kill,” a notion still held by many today, even though it has been discovered and acknowledged that the old Hebrew was translated incorrectly, with the actual translation being “Thou shall not Murder.” Anyway, at the time, I agreed that it was morally wrong. And finally, I was very much against the welfare system, but that was more of an economic motivation. Why the hell should I have to pay anything to support children and family that I didn’t create, and why didn’t these people keep having children they could support? I found myself hating more people than I liked, but that is something to be discussing in my next religious confession.
So I found myself buying into the idea that we shouldn’t be paying our hard earned income on taxes that on all these entitlement for citizens who didn’t caring enough to try their hardest to make it in a difficult world – like say me?
Until my first child was born, I was perfectly happy to be one of the conservative realm’s pawns. It was easy, and it made sense. I wanted more of my money to do with what I wanted, and I didn’t want to be told how to spend it. I was working hard; everyone should work hard, right? Then two things happened that started that process of introspection. One, my first child was born, and two, she was born with a serious genetic problem. If you have never experience the terror of having a pediatrician come and tell you that there is a problem with you newborn child and she may not make survive, I hope you never have to experience it, but I can tell for me, it was the beginning of a complete re-evaluation of my life, my views, and my values. I have seen combat, been shot at, and been shot off and landed on an aircraft carrier, so very frightening events. But, I have never been so terrified as I was during the first couple of weeks of my young daughter’s life. She had undergone two surgical procedures before she was 24 hours old, and a total of five in that first week. After 5 weeks in the NICU, she was finally well enough to come home, and the additional pressures of raising a child with special need began to exert themselves. That was when the self assessment began to occur.
While we had an exception support network from our family and friends, the work environment was stressful. I had been a hard worker for the previous seven years, with a work ethic that had me doing just about anything that was asked of me, and had been recognized with a few promotions in the company. That work ethic came with a cost that I had not recognized until a few years after my daughters were born. Yes, we did it again about two years later. However, that cost I spoke of was an employer who now expected me to take on any activity they deem necessary, an expectation that quickly created normal work week in excess of 60 hours a week, for a salary barely adequate to a 40 hour work week. That was sort of okay, I was working hard to support my young family, but two events (really more) began to create doubts in my mind. The first occurred when my manager began to require me to take vacation or sick time for any of my daughter’s many appointments, even though I was covering much more than my 40 hours a week. When I questioned this policy, I was told that the company does not offer comp time, and any activity that required my absence from the office between 8 to 5 required me to use my personal time off options, and that I was still expected to complete my weekly work load, that is what is expected of salaried personnel. I accepted this for awhile; after all I had a family to support and a young daughter with expensive special needs, I felt trapped by my circumstances.
The next event opened my eyes to exactly what my employer had in mind for me, and that they felt they had me trapped right where they wanted me. As part of my take on any challenge mentality, I had begun to move into the information technology arena from my finance position. I discovered that I really enjoyed the challenges of using and implementing technology to solve problems, and I decided I wanted to pursue the technology arena as a career path. While this employer was more than happy to allow me the “honor” of taking on additional responsibilities and the associated additional unpaid hours in the IT group, they continually balked at and thwarted any attempt of a full scale move into that group. Needless to say, as my hours increased and I saw no possibility of moving in the direction I really wanted to go… My performance began to suffer, as I began to balk at taking on even more hours and even tried to reduce some of my workload. Soon after my change in attitude, my performance evaluations began to suffer even thought my functional responsibilities include that of; accountant, data analyst, programmer, and desktop support tech and systems analyst, with an associated 70 plus hour work week. Not to mention missing most milestone events in my young daughters’ lives. The poor performance reviews began to take their toll, and a performance improvement plan was put in place, even after discussing the situation with the VP of Human Resources. While acknowledging that my workload was a bit much, I was informed that there was really much call for what I did outside of the company, and that I should just be happy that I had a job.
Time for change and a personal assessment became the order of the hour.
The very first realization of this personal assessment was that I was being extremely undervalued. The hard part of this realization was that it was not my employer perception of my value, as much as it was my own views of my worth. I realized that my own views of my worth allowed others the opportunity to exploit my talents to my own detriment. If I did not chance how I viewed myself, and become my own champion of my talents and worth, no one else was going to do it for me. With this new understanding, I began to explore opportunities outside of this employer, and discover a wealth of positions paying far greater salaries for more reasonable weekly workloads. When I informed the VP of HR that I would be leaving the company for another opportunity that paid almost twice what I was currently receiving, and was exactly within the direction I want my career to take, the shocked look on his face was almost worth the experience. I have never regretted my decision to move on, and I have not had an employer since who has ever shown me the disrespect of undervaluing my worth to any organization.
The outcome of this initial introspection, and the success I have achieved with it, led me to an additional realization that it was time for me to start analyzing the rest of the views, opinion, and values that I had been holding onto for some many years.
I’ll start sharing those analyses in my future posts. We’ll explore the first of my religious challenges in my next post.
I do hope you enjoy my writings, or at least find something interesting within, but consider this a warning…
Many will hate it, and I’m okay with that too.
Your comments or questions are welcome, even though I may well ignore some of them.
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