New Year's Resolutions Interim Review

Throughout my twelve wonderful quiet days of vacation I thought hard about my New Year's resolutions - how I have met and exceeded some while consciously ignoring others. For the year of me, I grade the year so far in meeting expectations around a C-/D+. Good thing it's only April as I'm not only optimistic I can turn my year around, I have a game plan.

I have learned many new knitting techniques, finished three pairs of socks, worked mostly from my stash and went to the dentist. All other resolutions have been ignored and put to the side allowing my hours at work to have a higher priority.

A few red flags popped up on vacation that made it apparent I'm clearly not taking care of myself and upon my return I was going to make those flags disappear. The biggest concern which was apparent to everyone with me on vacation was that I was just exhausted. I slept over 18 hours my first day on vacation followed by minimally 12 hours per day every day for the rest of my time away.

Another red flag that I need to address immediately is losing weight and getting into shape. If I lose weight my back will feel better. Upon my return from vacation I'm back to low carb and am attempting 20 minutes a day of walking on a treadmill as a start.

Stress is another red flag. My work life changes - no more 80-100 hours a week, no more fire drills and no more client dominanting my nights and weekends. In another capacity stress is related to the working conditions and how my client counterpart gruffly treats me. It really annoyed me on vacation how often and intensely he yelled at me and often with an audience.

Which leads to me to yesterday's drama - with my resolution of "never again will he open his mouth and I just let him rip me apart in front of everyone". At the end of what most everyone thought was a productive, good meeting he tore me and associated his feelings for my company (geared towards me) in a horrible manner, in front of the wrong audience and misspeaking.

It was the misspeaking of facts and accusations that pissed me off like I've never been in my now 11 years of consulting. I calmly responded with - you had your say and now I will have mine - in my opinion, you are blatantly wrong based on facts x,y and z and I'll leave it at that. I thought I was calm but my team lead said my lip was quivering I was so pissed and I had the look in my eyes of wanting to jump across the table and make sure my point was made eyeball to eyeball.

I was pissed off for the misspeaking of facts but the audience members were pissed off for the horrible manner in which I was treated, yet again. Two of the highest ranking employees in the company had my back after the meeting. I was surprised that after the meeting they reacted towards this jerk's actions to me.

I left the meeting and went to this jerk's superior asking for his assistance with the situation.

After that I unfortunately reacted like the human I am - I was to the point of being so pissed off I started crying. Of course I didn't do this in front of the client (but they knew I was upset). In my 11 years of consulting I have only been to this extreme point one other time.

Very long story short, I have received multiple apologies from this guy since and was made aware that a hostile work environment is equally actionable as sexual harassment.

I am strengthening relationships with the right high level people so I don't have to worry about this jerk and will go around him to resolve situations, including when he's an asshole.

My resolution is to remember who I am and continue to be proud of who I am when I look in the mirror. I'm proud of handing the situation maturely, frustrated at how badly it upset me but I thought about how much better I handled this situation today versus a year ago versus 5 years ago.

The year of me continues, I just needed the interim review to get back on track. Like the consultant I am, I'm logically attacking the losing weight and getting into shape via a project plan; incorporating small milestones so that the overall picture doesn't feel overwhelming. I really want my back to feel better and I'm striving to run the 5K in October.

I'm blame jet lag for my 4am blogging today - I'm only now just digging out of my emails and voicemails.

On a knitting note - I finished my red lady bug opal socks, two and a half hedge hogs and the body for my sister's surprised birthday hoodie. I spent a lot of time on vacation sleeping and knitting - it was wonderful. I'll post pictures post felting of hedge hogs.