My workplace is offering voluntary severance – I am going to go for it. I have been really unhappy in my job for years. I promised myself that when I had completed my PhD I would leave and find other work but then I got ill and lost my confidence. So I stayed on.
Recently, I read a novel, ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ which described my experience of my workplace perfectly. I am not a natural scientist but I too have experienced an academic department riven by favoritism and peopled with mediocrities. I wrote a funding proposal in the last month and I asked a colleague to work with me. Not only did she make herself unavailable, claiming to be ‘too busy’ to contribute to developing the proposal, but then pulled out at the last minute – this is fairly typical behaviour of her and others. I struggled to think of anyone in the unit that I wanted to work with.
I suffer from underemployment which is very depressing – not just in this job but in all others that I have done. In the past, I have been fit enough to just move on to another job but not this time. I think if you are underemployed you begin to buy the idea that you are not good enough to be rewarded with work. But as this book illustrated, it may be because you are too good or too clever and others suffer from the comparison. I have become angrily defensive, frightened that this ‘not good enough’ assessment is correct, wanting to be part of the team but at the same time pushing people away. I have started to believe the view that I am a bit crap and this has led to some mistakes in my judgement. I have too readily agreed to do low value work in evidence reviews in the hopes that one day I might lead a review and do it my way. But that is never going to happen. So the last two reviews I tried to participate in lacked any kind of intellectual leadership, and foolishly I tried to supply some kind of conceptual framework. One team leader relentlessly gaslit me and the second shouted at me and cancelled all our meetings. They were both terrified that my contribution would show them to be the mediocrities that they are, so rather than take me on intellectually, they resorted to bullying tactics to silence me. And it worked, I was silenced.
So I am leaving as I promised myself I would at the end of my studies. When I experienced cancer the first time, my illness reminded me that life is short and so I decided that I would take up painting more seriously to get to the end of my meager talent. I did paint regularly for a while and got better but soon I gave up, bored by my pictures. I recently looked at my pictures from that time, I liked them, and I have framed a couple – why did I give up really? A writer friend told me that she thought I had reached a turning point and was afraid to go further because the possibility of failing was very real and it was about something I cared about deeply.
For my birthday, my sister gave me a sketchbook. This is important because she is a talented print maker, recently leaving teaching to pursue her artistic impulse. She has never given me any art materials, nor showed any real interest in my artistic attempts so the gift felt like she was giving me permission. I didn’t realise until then how much I needed her blessing which the sketchbook represented for me.
A second bout of cancer and the death of my father (a man who also suffered from underemployment (is it genetic?)) has pushed this ambition to the forefront as I have encountered yet again the fleeting nature of life. I have dreams of walks and sketches in my new sketchbook. So I hope the severance pay will fund a painting year.
I will post my paintings on this site if I can work out how to do it – the many failures and the few successes – and you can judge if I turn any corners.
Walking whilst ill 