It's transition time again

I go home from Amsterdam tomorrow. These past three weeks have been hell--only one of them in Amsterdam, thank goodness.

Good enough isn't good enough, anymore.

Work is imploding. I've allowed them to pidgenhole me into a role I don't like and I'm not suited for. Fucking event planner, basically. Plus menopause does incredibly damaging things to a woman's body and mind. Since medicine assumes that women can be treated like men, and since men never suffer a debilitating loss of the most important hormone of their entire system, they assume that estrogen deprivation is just a natural thing that women should endure.

But I digress.

I've been suffering from the mental and physical symptoms of estrogen deprivation for a couple of years now. These past 12 months have been particularly horrid. I thought I was going to have to quit working. I'm being treated now, and though there are still mysteries and monsters to pursue, I'm feeling a little better.

All this to say, I should have advocated better for myself last year. I kept saying I didn't have the resources to put together these two symposia they want as part of their 50th anniversary. Big high level shit. I don't have it in me, I'm not a details person and I don't have anyone to help.

And everything else was so much more urgent.

So here I am, in Amsterdam, meeting with folks about the second symposium, which will happen in November, while scrambling to save the second symposium, in DC in June. I started eating again, this week. That's something, at least.

So the loud Judge in my head tried to make it All My Fault. But some well-timed conversations with our HR manager and the coach I hired has helped me untangle some things and start to question the mythology I hide behind. Why don't I believe I'm competent? Why do I think I am fooling everyone? That if someone lifts the curtain just a little bit they will find I'm a fraud and a sham? Whose voice is that and how can I shut it up?

I'm at an industry conference this week, as well. I walk into the room thinking, no one wants to talk to me. Why would they? I'm just the stratcomms manager. I need to fix that voice inside my head, too, or I'll never be able to open my own consultancy--if that's what I want to do. But it's all so hard and I'm so tired and all I really want to do is lay in bed and read all day until its time to go to sleep again.

I don't think that's depression. I think it's generalized anxiety, ADHD, and a post-COVID reality. Everything is difficult. My friends are worn thin by it. They haven't got much to give me at this utterly bleak point in my own life.

Do I want to stay in food security? Do I want to keep trying to be some small part of the global solution? Or is that just too much to expect of myself? Can I pull it in to blanket my own small circle with love and let the rest of the world sort it out for itself? Why me? Why do I have this burning need to serve a greater good?

I'm getting anxious just typing this all out. I am competent. Perhaps part of my insecurity is being in the wrong role. I should be big-picture teams, not in the weeds team. I should have a competent team to lean on to make the details work. I should be working to improve our systems and processes. Not planning a freaking party.

So I forced myself to apply for a new job at a cool international development shop with a focus on employee ownership and ethical capitalism. We'll see what it brings. A shitty commute, though. But the job description was written for me, it seems. And there is a team in place to support me. I'm not making it up all on my own.

And I have a coach who is teaching me how to be mindful and intentional about what would bring me joy in my work.

But oh, how I want to walk away. Just quit. Just leave this abusive miserable work I'm doing. Even if it brings me to places like Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania. Amsterdam, Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya.

I'm tired.