How Covid changed my life (but in a good way) - Sometimes you touch the bottom

2019: A comfortable... morass

I thought that this feeling of unease was due to the weirdness of realizing that you don't need to fight for a job anymore, at least for a while.

Over the weeks I was also better understanding my job. I understood that some admin/database reorganization was needed, but it was slowly seeming like it was a never-ending job. I will not add further details.

The first blow

Around September I was starting to realize also that the real reason why I was sort of happy to go to the office was because of the people I could find there and not for the job itself.

That's a problem.

And that's a bigger problem when you realize the huge turnover of the place. And it's even a bigger problem when the one who leaves is your manager who was actually the only "close" colleague you had found over those few months.

I felt a huge anxiety when I got the announcement. It was the typical "offer too good to refuse", I was happy for him, but how I felt made me think a lot about my situation. It was not reasonable, healthy, logical… You name it, that you feel SO bad for someone who leaves.

I was not in love eh, I just understood that the "ok" situation was really not ok - hence, the word "morass". It gave good money. The workload was not too much, but I didn't understand the "direction" of that job.

Where was I heading to? A luxury admin staff? Something more creative/intellectual? I was doing a ton of database cleaning and my brain was really on stand-by all day long. Was I there for THAT?

The disenchantment goes on

If there is one single thing I hated was coordinating. And representing people who cannot do their job or doing things on their behalf, and ending so in the same "mass". I was not like these people, sorry. I didn't want to have the same label as them.

One or two cases were enough to drive me quite crazy. I am very individualistic, and not a team player blabla, but I hate putting my face on work that is done badly because of others' fault.

I also started suffering from quite bad anxiety during the weekends or the evenings, because I could not "switch off". In the end, I was still terribly insecure about the quality of my work. This probably was not the case since after three months they sacked the guy they hired to replace me.

My constant thought at any moment was:

"Did I do everything right? Did I make any mistake? Did I hinder my colleagues in any possible way? Did I do enough?".

The organization was so messy that I couldn't appease my worries. I definitely have a share of the fault, but I think that that's just the way I am and I was not suitable for a job like that.

I was driven by a crazy sense of responsibility because my only thought was "Do not create problems for your colleagues", but I was suffering as hell.

At the same time, seeing the incompetence of certain people and the level of success they had despite everything was baffling. At least it gave me food for thought thanks to some positive returns I had from my managers and the people I esteemed.

I was not a goat for god's sake!

What podcasts do you listen to?

Thanks to the Facebook group of the guy who predicted everything years ago (check this article), I got into entrepreneurship and personal development books. And then podcasts followed those books.

I was listening to them literally all day long. I think I probably have some ear damage because of how much stuff I was listening to in my headphones. In any case, I didn't need my brain that much, that's why I could easily spend so much time with my head somewhere else.

We're in December 2019. Covid starts, but only in China, you know.

Anyway, I was still thinking that my entrepreneurial plan would happen in at least 3 years just to concretize it.

But if you had been in Italy, especially in Lombardy, in January 2020 you could have remembered that things escalated quickly.

A hint of disgust

Things escalated not only on the side of COVID-19 but also at work.

I worked in the EU bubble of Brussels, the economic ecosystem of lobbies, consultancies, and other service providers that owe their existence to the presence of the institutions of the European Union in the Belgian capital.

Many of them are convincedly pro-EU, but I would say that their support for that is sometimes stretched to an extreme.

I saw that blind devotion in my office when people started criticizing the state of the national healthcare systems linking the problems to certain economic policies pushed by the EU. A rational person can understand that the link is not direct, but it's reasonably recognizable anyway. A blind supporter sticks to the literal interpretation of words like "Health is not part of the EU competencies", but that's just dumb.

I was disgusted by hearing these words, seeing the situation of Italy, which is still my country after all.

I was even more disgusted by the idea of someone who proposed sending employees to a conference anyway in return for extra compensation for the "health risk". I remember it.

And then I had a flight, at the beginning of March, because I was used to paying a visit to my parents once every two months at least for a short weekend.

What did I do?

I put my colleagues before everything.

And I moved that flight to April because I didn't want to scare them if I was coming back from Lombardy, the epicenter of the pandemic at that time.

Well, I risked not seeing my parents anymore forever.