The discussions at work continue regarding letting people go. Our finances are not good. We had too many hiring expenses last year and not enough sales to compensate. We are flatlined.
We're letting another senior leader go and putting another marketing person down to part-time. We discussed doing pay cuts across the board. We talked about having it hit our salaries. Nothing seems possible except to trim back marketing again where these staff are. Just when it was sort of working.
I feel ashamed, actually, on top of just general stress. How many times have we tried some combination of things to make marketing work? This is just another area being gutted. I've led many of our efforts, we've hired up at times, outsourced. I just won't let it fall back to me; I've decided that. I don't know what that means then.
So I didn’t sleep last night at all.
I took the puppers on a walk and nature as always is beautiful. It isn’t in a bad mood ever and is just consistently amazing. It was soothing.
I want to try and support Jay in this as best I can. We both feel that we’ve made really bad decisions. I don’t know how to feel good about what we’ve done then. I listened to an account manager talk about our largest client and that helped. He trusts us and the care and product we’ve given him. He wants to move more processes into our solution. So we are helping that person manage his very complex organization and provide good healthcare to thousands of people in that part of the world. I want to keep doing that. Those stories need to get told. Super unsexy when you are laying people off and everyone thinks you're failed leaders.
I feel like at the end of today, I want to feel like I was brave, that I didn’t hide from the reality of our lives and the good and bad decisions we’ve made. I guess in the short term, that means facing the reality of our finances and handling it the very best that we can. Jay has been agonizing over this for months and I’ve just started to digest it in the last few weeks because I couldn’t comprehend it.
My PTSD has not helped us making decisions. I have had very reactionary responses to much of the change we’ve needed to make. I have been scared all the time. I’ve been afraid.
Someone at AlAnon said that she’s trying to be kinder to herself for the bad decisions she’s made in the past. She did the best she could. That’s what I’m trying to do too. Otherwise, I feel awful, as I compare myself to other people who seem to have moved up through life a lot smoother with fewer days curled up under a blanket, angry, scared and withdrawn, brooding and mulling over things incessantly. Comparision is not fair or okay.
So God, help me be both kind and brave today, and to support Jay as he tries to lead in new ways outside of his own comfort zones. We have been blessed w/ a family loan for years, and this is the reality of not having a family loan to flux with us. It was high time for that to happen; it's real and probably healthy I guess. It's harder, but it was what we chose to get out from under the family money situation.
Just alot of pressure and responsibility that we don't seem to get a break from. That makes me question myself and everything.
I know there are seeds of truth in my concerns, but I overreact then struggle to problem-solve. One of my biggest stresses is feeling we don't have genuinely good advice to lean on anywhere, and we're often in uncharted waters. RC continues to be helpful as he gets more engaged. We keep hanging on.
*****
On a quirky note, we got rid of my grandma's old couch today. It was actually almost indestructible. The olefin fabric was built to last, and it did through our kids and their friends, the years at grandma's house. I figure it was about fifty years old at least.
I got $50 for the couch and rocker. Someone bought it for a high school drama program to use in a production of the Outsiders. I plan to go see it and watch it perform on-stage for old time's sake.