A month later...

...I'm back, with an existential crisis.

It is 11:15 pm. I should be in bed, sleeping. But I'm not. I'm awake, on the couch, in the dark, with my fiance asleep in the next room, the cat purring behind me and the my beloved MacBook the only light in the room. And my feverish typing the only noise.

Why, do you ask, am I doing this to myself? Because I am in crisis. I don't know what the heck I'm doing with my life.

I should clarify. I don't know what the heck I'm doing with my professional life.

I should clarify further. I know what I want to do with my professional life. The problem is that no one else seems to know what to do with it.

Here is the situation. I work for a charter school in the Rio Grande Valley. (Think Texas. Then think Mexico, but in Texas.) I love the organization that I work for and (most of the time) I love the people I work with. Intelligent, dedicated, passionate, enlightened people. A non-discrimination policy for sexual orientation. A mission and vision centered around educational equity and social justice.

So why am I complaining?

Because no one seems to give a flying fuck that I exist!

I work really, really hard at my job, which is coordinating assessments and achievement data for the district. But the problem is, I do it a little too well. So well that I think a lot of folks in the organization have started to minimize how essential it is--and consequently, how essential I am.

I am working for someone who, while a delightful and intelligent and highly capable individual, has a working style that is the polar opposite of mine. Which I could learn to live with, if I actually felt she was the appropriate manager for my position. It seems to me, however, that the area of "Testing" should fall under the umbrella of "Curriculum." Not of "Federal Programs."

Call me crazy.

My manager doesn't really know anything about what I do, and most of what I do isn't even related to what she does. I work much more closely with our Chief Academic Officer (my manager's manager) and with our Director of Curriculum. A lot of times, I feel like things were structured this way just to have someone who's anal retentive babysit me.

I'm sorry I don't use a different colored pen for every day of the week.

All of this is coming to a head, of course, because my dying grandfather told me he's proud of me today. And I really, really, really want to live up that expectation. But no one is letting me. I get menial tasks to do, no assistance so that I can be working on higher priority jobs, and no one has expressed more than passing interest in my professional development.

I hate my job. But I WANT to love it.