Blind Prophecy

I think I’m all packed for my flight tomorrow. It was a bit of work to get the presents into my suitcase, so I ended up switching to a dufflebag.

I sent Joanna an email:

Joanna,

After giving it some considerable thought, my response to your phone call on Wednesday is no. I truly do not believe I have done anything wrong and an apology from me to your husband would be insincere and hypocritical.

I won’t waste your time or mine by going into the details of why I feel this way. I will, however, offer this… if you and Brandon decide to participate anyway, I will be civil and won’t bring up anything that isn’t brought up by one of you two first. I won’t back down from an argument, but I won’t start one, either. I won’t turn a blind eye to bad behavior, but I won’t be “out to get” anyone either. In other words, I continue to pledge that I’ll treat you both as adults and with respect you have not shown me.

Jere

Today was also a bit demoralizing at work. They’ve let me work for two months on a budget, timeline and goal set based on two key goals for department development. Today, without so much as a warning flag before now, they unceremoniously announced that those two key goals would not be happening.

Additionally, my director and I worked all this time on a set goals that we both felt was extermely ambitious for our department. Our E.D. took a look at the timeline and goal set and couldn’t understand why we had “so few” goals. So she started adding workload by writing in new and arbitrary objectives like monthly e-newsletters and a specific number of advertisements placed. Oh… one of those key objectives she shot down was hiring a new staff member for our department.

In other words, a business plan that felt ambitious for a three person department … is getting expanded for a two person department.

If we can’t resolve this before the board meeting in January, I honestly feel like I’m being set up for failure, as 90% of our evaluations are based on how well we accomplish the goals in our business plan. As it was, I worried about our ability to meet those goals if we get blind-sided by breaking news or dramatic new opportunities. Example: our E.D. was recently invited to give a keynote speech at an LGBT conference. That means I have a month to write an hour-long speech on a specific topic, develop multimedia/powerpoint to compliment it, revise said speech based on E.D.’s unpredictable feedback, AND stay on top of all my other responsbilities and objectives.

Oh, that was not the meeting to have right before leaving for vacation. Now I’m going to spend the next five days brooding.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys