Dancing in the Rain
by Pamelagrace Beatty
“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Have you ever been in a place in your life or career where you just know it is time for a change, but you don’t know what that change should be? I have and I have usually figured it out in a short amount of time. Maybe a few months. But once it took me THREE years!
Three long years to finally know what I wanted to do next. I thought I was going to die. The wait was excruciating. The problem was I didn’t like the job I was in, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. I was used to always having a plan and working toward a goal. Here I was in a job I disliked, a lot, without any idea of what I wanted to do instead. Bad place to be.
Fortunately, the vice president of the company I was in, asked me to do the department a favor and move to a different one to take the place of a staff member who was out on maternity leave. “Sure,” I said. Even though I had no experience in the area, it would only be for a short while and it was far more attractive than what I was doing at the moment (details are being left out to protect the guilty).
To my surprise, I enjoyed learning about the new assignment and getting up to speed on the processes and procedures. It meant becoming very familiar with 12 union contracts because there were so many different job classifications. I found that fun. But my time in the department stretched. It wasn’t for a short while. Although the staff member came back from leave, the VP kept me in that department! He said the department employees needed a buffer between themselves and the boss. Too often someone was found crying in the restroom because of this boss. Being the eternal Pollyanna that I was, again I said, “Sure.” My bad.
“People will try to rain on your parade because they have no parade of their own.”
Jeffrey Gitomer
The department manager was a bully. That’s why people were crying in the restroom. My being a buffer did change that. However, the manager vented all of her wrath on me instead. Oh, yay. I’m sure some of you reading this know what it is like to think you can handle a bad situation that others haven’t been able to handle for some reason. Then you find out there is a reason why the others couldn’t handle it. Here’s an example: Perhaps at some point you were in a relationship with someone who had broken many a heart, but you just knew they weren’t going to break yours. You were stronger, or smarter or prettier, or wilier and you could handle it. Then you discovered you couldn’t! And you got your heart broken, too. Does that ring a bell?
Well, this manager wasn’t about to let me stay in Pollyanna-land. She let loose with everything she had to undermine me and shake my self-confidence. She took credit for all of my work. She signed her name to the memos and recommendations I wrote. Needless to say, I was not happy with her.
“One monkey don’t stop no show”
Anonymous
I took it all on as a challenge. I was no longer trying to figure out what my next career move would be; I didn’t have the time. I was firmly engaged in the here and now. I knew I was doing good work, and making a difference for the employees at the company, as well as supporting the company’s goals and mission. My father frequently said to me as I was growing up, “One monkey don’t stop no show.” I liked that saying. It made me determined to overcome the negative efforts of this manager.
“Replace the words ‘have to’ with ‘get to’ and watch how the cold rain on your life changes to sunshine.”
Mary Schmich
When the manager dropped projects that would stretch me yet again, I looked at them as opportunities to learn something new and to increase my skill set. I got to travel to and drive in L.A. The rush hour traffic there was quite an experience! I would never have chosen to do if I’d had a choice. I got used to it after a while. Going 80 mph on the freeway, bumper to bumper, became normal. Fortunately, I never experienced any sudden stops and unfortunately, I found that if I wasn’t in the right lane to exit the freeway, I was never going to get there on short notice. There was no room to squeeze over at the last minute. But traveling to other cities and getting over the fear of driving in wild freeway traffic got to be fun!
“Life isn’t how you survive the thunderstorm, but how you dance in the rain.” AdamYoung
Working with “Manager Mean” became interesting. Thwarting her efforts to discredit me became fun. I got creative with it. O.K., this might sound a little subversive, but a woman has to do what a woman has to do. I mentioned that she put her name on work I had done. If it was well received, she preened under the compliments and never mentioned the part I played. If the recommendation was rejected, she immediately, and loudly, blamed me even though she had approved the recommendation when she signed it and sent it up the chain of command. This did not make me happy. So, here is when I went underground. I let those who were using my recommendations know that I had made them by simply calling them up and asking them how things were going. I also explained my thinking behind the recommendations and offered my help in implementing them. This was not something my manager could say or do, nor was she even interested in that. As a result, sometimes I was able to help the other departments effectively use the recommendations and every time I did it, I felt better about my work. Nope, my mean manager never learned of these calls.
“The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually.”
Eeyore, “Winnie the Pooh”
My mother used to tell me, “This too shall pass.” Whenever she told me that I would frown. “I want it over now!” I’d tell her. The three years of waiting to realize what I wanted to do next were like that. How long was it going to take before all of this passed? How long would I have to wait before I finally figured out what I wanted to do, so I could leave this onerous job? How long?!!
Not long. The company was bought out by a different company headquartered on the east coast. Everything changed! Our headquarters was closed down and many administrative people were laid off. I was offered a position in another city. Unfortunately, it was one I disliked intensely. Suddenly, it came to me what I wanted to do next. I set about doing it. I found a new job and stayed there for years, continuing to learn, grow and dance in the rain.
May these quotes and/or the story strike a chord in you. May something come to you that you haven’t thought of before. And may you always dance in the rain.
“From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.”
Tony Hillerman
