I know it's not good to dwell on failure but it is good to review accomplishments and plan ahead, even if it's a little bit and plan around failures.... Sure, I'm not dumb enough to make the same mistakes over and over again, am I?  Where before I could have said emphatically NO; now I can really be sure of the answer I give because I no longer have certainty of where I'm going and how to get there.

I have to keep asking myself, where did the certainty go? Why am I, all of a sudden, so desperate to get out of where I'm at? is it really all of a sudden? Did I really let things get to the point where I knew I'd want out of the job knowing that it would happen?   Things have been rough for the past year yet I let them get worse and worse thinking they would turn for the better and they haven't.... Is this one of the situations where you know you can't win so you'll move on? What happens to the next poor son of a bitch who gets my job? Time will tell, as Hiki-chan sings above.

So... having stayed this long probably falls into the miss category. While I've learned a lot in the 3+ years I've been here I should have listened when my heart started saying it was time to move on rather than have to put up with all the bullshit currently going on and my brain started little by little looking for alternatives.

Whether I leave or not I owe to myself to stand up for what I think is right. I've been going through and processing a lot of anger over the past couple months and I think it's time for me to let it out. The 2 reviews I've had have been totally unfair in their perception and judgement of my work and the way that the review was written came as a total surprise.

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

I'm through, with doubt,
There's nothing left for me to figure out,
I've paid a price, and I'll keep paying

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

(Dixie Chicks - Ready to make nice)

One of the first things I was taught in my instructional design classes was that effective feedback was ongoing and that it started right when the problem was first discovered. I also hate the fact that I'm not taken seriously even now. I've expressed misgivings multiple times and they've been acknowledged with a "you're right" and no further action taken to address the concerns.

I think that not caving in to pressure and standing up for what I believe in is a hit. It is hard for me to be confrontational and even more so at this level but I firmly believe what I've said is true and I am willing to fight for it... hell, what do I have to loose?

I blogged about this a while ago (see entry: How to do what you love?). What I didn't realize at the time is the cost of doing what you love. I don't mean in terms of money and or resources, although that may or may not become an issue in the future, but in terms of the solitude that sometimes takes to stand your ground and to put career before happiness. A long time ago, almost 10 years to be more precise, I decided that relationships would take a backseat to career.... Now I'm paying the price in terms of wanting to be with someone and not having someone to be with.

Chilean/Hispanic cultural expectations aside, I think that age is becoming more and more of a factor. I've said it before, 34 is not old by any stretch of the imagination. It's just the 14 years that snuck by when I wasn't looking.... Yeah, yeah, he says the same thing every so often, I hear the argument already.  That may be so but I hadn't seen many of my high school friends in Facebook until now. It's a shock and a sad/happy state of events to know that I lost track of so many of the people whom I grew up with only to find most of them married and with multiple children. My best friend from my elementary school days and throughout school had her 3rd baby not too long ago... I lost track of her when her 1st baby was born!  It makes me wonder about this particular decision and about the path not traveled, it makes me think that it might be such a bad idea to go back to Chile for a couple years and see what happens.

Meeting my high school friends in Facebook is most definitely a hit. Even though I've been bad at handling these old/new people in my life it has been wonderful nonetheless

As to why I'm still single in light of what I wrote in the last paragraph. I've always used the excuse of being selective or wanting people who, deep down, I knew and know are unreachable. Whenever I thought I had found them I let them go and they became unreachable (either she got married to someone else or I decided she wasn't really worth the effort) and I was left alone because of my own stupid choices. So it becomes a matter of either lowering my standards (forget it) or keep looking for Ms. Right.... It'll be an interesting challenge one way or another.

I think it's time to pursue the people I really want in life and not worry about the consequences.

Pursuit of happiness is also a hit. I think that it's about time to stop lying to myself and to those around me in terms of relationships. Either accept the fact that you don't want to or don't know how to engage in a relationship without being afraid and/or self destructive about it or really pursue a relationship and screw the consequences.

Friend issues seem to continue coming out of the woodwork lately. If it's not the friends I left behind in Chile then it's the ones I wish I could leave behind here in the US. Particularly when I moved up to Chico I reconnected with people whom I knew were trouble but who were the anchor I needed to settle in. There's been a lot of issues between the two of us and after the latest incident I was strongly encouraged to let go of the friendship but I stubbornly stuck by it. Let's say that later events proved me wrong. Anyone who uses his fiance to protect him from unpleasant stuff from friends deserves to have neither. So be it.

Yeah, clinging to friendships even when you've been shown that they are not good and healthy for you is a definitive miss and one that I'm definitely not making again.

I think I let anger the best part of me over the past few months. I am not ashamed of the results as I think they are long overdue. I'm also not sad or angry that this whole mess is unfair to Laura... I tried to address my problems as they happened but it didn't work. I've said it elsewhere that now it's time for me to take care of me and what I need rather than let other people be the driving force in my professional life.

I am long past caring about the potential problems that a more confrontational attitude may cause. As strange as it may seem I am also looking for the performance review next week... I have said a lot of what was on my mind but now also feel ready to take it that little extra mile and let people know more of it .

I always have to stop myself when starting to confront someone. Until now I have never been able to be 100% sure that it wasn't me who had caused things to go haywire.  Now I am sure it wasn't me who started but who reacted to a very hostile situation in the best way I could.  It is validating when other people tell you of conflicts and you realize that you're not the only one who has problems with person x, it validates that my approach to try and solve the problem was correct and that I wasn't the source of the problem.

Although standing for yourself rated a hit, letting anger take over and not communicate the anger somehow is a definitive miss

The one thing I want to keep is my approach and perspective on things. Knowing that I'm not screwing things up in terms of my relationships with coworkers is very validating (said that before at least once :P) and invigorating. It doesn't make me any less pissed off than what I was on Friday or when I started writing this entry but it gives me focus to either ignore the issue or to actually go to war about it.... So far I've chosen the later but it might be an issue of just letting it slide and not worry about it anymore... for once let someone else deal with the problem issues around the office.