That Shelter Dog Energy
Somebody once told me I reacted to my new job like a shelter dog. At the time, I thought it was a hilariously dark way of explaining exactly what was going on. I laughed, and then promptly made no changes to myself, my life, or my thinking. At the time I had just started a new job, having left one where the environment was… off. Expectations didn’t line up with reality. Metrics were skewed by work that wasn’t being tracked properly. Eventually I left, and landed somewhere that was, by comparison, mind numbingly normal. Reasonable expectations. Time to ramp up. No one hovering over my shoulder waiting for me to fail. People who were friendly, managers who were mentors, who took the time to train, to check in, to make sure I was comfortable and help where they could. And I couldn’t relax. I kept waiting for the moment where everything would snap back to reality. The sudden shift in expectations. The conversation about performance. The realization that I had somehow missed something ...