by Before I flew down south I emailed my boss asking for a year’s unpaid leave. Today I got the big NO and on balance I’m glad. My dad always says I should never shut doors, and normally I agree with him, but you know what, I really do want to shut the door on this long chapter of my life. I want to shut the door on nothing happening being the best thing that can happen. I want to shut the door on bluffing and guessing and prevaricating and procrastinating. I want to shut the door on getting through every day in pure survival mode. I want to slam the goddamn door on feeling that I’m a failure and being ashamed of who I am.
My boss would have been fine with the unpaid leave – he seems to like me for some reason – but senior management didn’t approve it. Really I haven’t been performing or looking like I fit in for some months and that’s why my leave wasn’t approved – they wouldn’t want me back. And heck, if I’m going to bloody Romania, I’m not exactly screaming that I want to be there. I’m trying to imagine how the conversation between my boss and his manager two levels above (grandboss? and therefore my great-grandboss?) actually went. Nothing like my boss told me it did, I’m sure.
Today was a shit of a day at work. I felt so depressed, just as I did for much of the long weekend in spite of the beautiful winter scenery and of course seeing my parents who are so good to me. I think I’ll need to take another day off work to knock some items off my to-do list. At least my English lesson tonight went well. I helped him with his CV and we talked about school. He lived in a village and didn’t receive any formal state education after the age of eight. His wife’s experience was quite different: she went to school into her teens and learnt some English.
This morning Natalie Rooney of Timaru won New Zealand’s first medal of these Olympics, a silver in one of the shooting events.
