Day 142

Okay, so, I'm still struggling with the fallout from my most recent encounter with my mother. (I prefer to think of them as mini seminars in tolerance-sounds so much more positive.) And, actually, the fallout so far has just taken the form of silence. It's both a nice break and slightly unnerving as I'm left wondering what she's going to come back at me with now. *sigh* I know, deep down, that I'm just doing what feels better for me and that I'm fighting for what I deserve. It's still just really hard.

The other thing on my mind, the thing that has me creeping on here at work, is this larger issue of honesty and pretense. Work has gotten more and more difficult lately as the emphasis is shifting to impressing on me the importance of acting like I care about what goes on here. I'd say that I don't care but that's not an accurate description. I do care about doing a good job and meeting the expectations laid out for me. But, do I get excited about the work that this department does? Do I want to understand on more than a superficial level how what I do fits in with what everyone else is doing. No to both questions. I've said before that I take care *not* to read what comes across my desk too closely and I really don't want to know exactly what goes on in the labs we oversee. So, I'm left with the dilemma of trying to act as though I do care well enough to keep this job until I can find something I do care about. This gets the 'dilemma' label because, well, I just plain suck at pretending enthusiasm anymore. About the only time I can manage it is with one of the munchkins and that's nowhere near the same thing since I really do care about whether they're happy or not. But, here? I really just don't care if the staples line up or the ink on the agenda is the right shade of blue. Is this a sign that I'm immature or ungrateful? I've tried to refocus and find again that gratitude I used to have for just having a job but the feeling that I'm being pressured to treat this as a career when it's not going to be that for me is making it more difficult.

Okay, enough bitching for now. More later.