Hello. Wish I wouldn't feel as though I have dug a big hole and plonked myself down into it with no ladder or rope. That's the consensus in Rod's Brain™ these days. I'm almost 2 weeks into my apparent 'Garden Leave' / suspension and I am missing the place and missing the routine. But like Tom Petty, I won't back down, and I have started looking for other voluntary work. It will not be the same and will take some getting used to... that's if I even get as far as applying.
The way I see it there are now 3 options for me carrying on at the MS Centre:
1) They Who Must Not Be Named leaves and a new manager is appointed - my best possible scenario but the one least likely to happen
2) Rod Swallows Pride and Betrays What He Believes in - already said, I won't back down. No way am I going to go and sit in that office and take everything back, or even argue my point against a brick wall - that would get ugly and not solve anything, if I did back down it would just go back to how it was before
3) Manager Apologises To Me, Makes Changes - unlikely this will happen but I feel I am in fact owed an apology, putting aside the fact that I was right, but a bold-faced lie has been told to others about me (that I am taking a month off due to stress / ill health) and that really flippin' irks me!!
Okay, I lied... there's a:
4) I just go in on Saturdays only, avoiding management but obviously only helping the few who come in on a Saturday and not seeing my Tuesday / Wednesday folk any more... but well...
I feel like maybe I need a clean break with the place. Short of maybe, after enough time has passed, perhaps going in to just chat with people on a friendship basis (surely that would be permitted, if I have the guts to go there...) It may well be, as a dear old friend said recently, that the universe is giving me a clear sign that now it's time to move on to pastures new and hopefully greener.
I still would like to help people, but there are many other opportunities to do so differently. I have looked at primarily caring and befriending - blind people, HIV/AIDS people, the elderly and physically handicapped people, the Samaritans and just a befriender for the lonely. I will be thinking about it a lot over the next week or two. I feel I have a lot to give, and I hope it will be a two-way process like it's been with the MS Centre (from members and volunteers, not management) - I want to get friendship back too and feel worthy and that I am making a difference to people who need help. I also would like to expand my horizons, and of course that is best achieved by meeting new and different people and trying new and different things.
But it also requires discarding a comfort zone that I have grown and nurtured myself in for the past 7 and a bit years now. Like a snake shedding it's skin so that it can grow... yeah, I feel it must be done. We shall see if I have the strength and guts to do it - the option of just doing nothing is not desirable at all. As I said, I miss doing something at least a few hours a week.
Perhaps things will be clearer when next I blog in your general direction.
Tschüß!!
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