Standup Nearly Made Me Cry🥹 Today
I’m not prone to displays of emotion. Yet this Mental Health Monday at work I felt like letting my emotions out. During today’s standup meeting I could have cried, I felt that I could not hold everything in.
Here is what has just about broken me, and why I’m not letting any of my colleagues know what I’m feeling.
Stand-Ups Should Stand Down
I’m no fan of stand-up meetings in software development. They seem to be a waste of time as if you’ve encountered a block in your work surely you should act on that rather than waiting for the next Agile meeting?
For me the pain is double. I have a morning stand-up meeting with my feature team and then another meeting with my technical team.
I think this shouldn’t usually result in any sort of display of emotion. I might be angry, I might be sad, I might even be happy. I always appear professional. At least most of the time.
My Mental Health Monday
This happened on our company “Mental Health Monday” where we should all think about mental health and push it to the forefront of everybody's minds.
It’s at the forefront of my mind.
The Sadness of Nothing
I feel like I’m being pushed over the edge. The multiple meetings. The questioning. The asking.
Because I don’t have anything to do.
That’s right. In the last month, I created a PR. A single PR (that took an hour) and each and everyday I need to update my progress twice each day. That is typically nothing.
It makes me feel useless and a fraud. I either say something I’m *investigating* or say *nothing from me*. It tells me what impact I’m having on the team. It’s even been impacting my performance at interviews and my confidence is knocked at the first difficult question — “What is a difficult problem you’ve solved recently” — and although I have a lie prepared it doesn’t feel good. Honestly, I am a fraud at this point.
Should’ve, Would’ve, Could’ve
I know I should be doing some work to help the team.
But listen, I tried in the recent and distant past. And everything in between.
I found a production bug 4 weeks ago. It took two weeks to “confirm” it was a bug (it is) and raise a ticket. We won’t work on the ticket as we don’t have the testing capacity to complete the ticket in a sprint. I’ve already spent 30 minutes to fix this and have it on a local branch.
Refactoring requires a ticket. The process is the same as the production bug and honestly, I don’t have the energy.
I could think about how to improve our codebase. Yet the work will never be integrated and if I cause a fuss trying to get more work I’ll be shut down.
If I spoke to my boss, who acts like a ghost towards me I’d ask for some targets or direction. I understand that they are not interested in me or my work because I’ve listened to their behavior towards me and acted accordingly.
I’ve sadly, and with regret, decided that disengaging is my best option.
But you see how well that is working for me.
Go Let It Out!
If I want to cry at work I usually go into the bathroom to do so. I used to do this when I felt overwhelmed by the work I needed to complete
Luckily, I work at home now. That means I’m working with my camera off and can be as grumpy and upset as I like.
So, I’m able to emote, keep my job and keep getting a paycheck.
I don’t recommend this strategy to anybody.
Conclusion
I’ll let you know how my job hunt goes! Thanks for reading!