Today I received the Shining Star award for October at my full-time job. It’s like Employee of the Month, but without the uncomfortable mugshot hanging in the lobby.
Years ago, when my face still resembled a pizza, I received Employee of the Month at Waxie Maxie’s, and a few years later in my 20s I was named Manager of the Year at GameStop. At the time, each award was kind of wasted on me. I didn’t care. Not because I was indifferent. When I worked those jobs, I cared just enough not to get fired. So while the attention was nice, I moved on to the next big thing immediately after, and the next big thing was more likely what movie to watch stoned that night.
My current state of things makes this recognition mean a bit more. I still feel like I’m walking on eggshells at my job, and I couldn’t even tell you why. Self-criticism is at an all-time high in my head these days. For every student case I write up and close out, I question my resolution. Whenever I transfer a call, I wonder if the person I sent it to is complaining about how I don’t know what I’m doing.
You get the picture.
This morning when I opened my email and saw “Congrats” in the subject line of one and my inner voice started chatting.
You should know my inner voice has a name, and that name is Sean Hannity. During a particularly nasty session, after I had ranted about this inner voice for the first twenty minutes, my therapist asked me to name it, and Hannity was the first name that came to mind. You heard that right: every time I’m hard on myself internally, it’s Sean Hannity telling me I’m worthless.
Some days I really hate my life.
Back to my story. During that initial read-through, all the self-deprecating talking points took center stage for about ten minutes. I sat here going through the motions of my day while my inner Hannity chirped in the background. “You don’t deserve that!” “It’s a mistake. The next email will say they’re sorry, wrong Matt.” After a while, when I was convinced he was done, I opened the email again, and this time I read it out loud.
Reading out loud helps me in a couple of ways.
One, it softens the blow of nasty emails. Especially if I use my Jack Nicholson impression. It’s not a good impression, but it’s good enough to help me deliver bad news to myself.
Two, it forces me to truly READ the email and listen while I read. It also helps drown out the inner Hannity in my head, which is a BIG plus.
As wonderful as the entire email was, one line inspired this post: “Matt is always so genuine and available.” That’s the line that made me choke up a bit. To whittle it down even further, two words in that sentence brought me some joy.
Genuine. After losing Katy, I have felt like an imposter. I am hiding a lot, I’ve been walking around the world trying to conceal the fact that I’m a sweaty ball of anxiety and grief. This was especially hard when I started my current job, because my wife used to work for the same group, and a lot of the people here knew her and were quite close to her. She had that effect. I’m sure they did their own grieving, but I also recognize that they want to talk about her. And who better to talk with about someone you enjoyed than somebody else who enjoyed that person? Since they like me, or at least I think they do, they want to talk about her with me. I’m not an aggressive type, so I let them. That makes for some uncomfortable situations.
Available. I do not see myself as available at all. Since losing my wife, I’ve gone into cave mode. I check that the neighbors aren’t outside before grabbing my mail. Even at work, I tend to stay in my little corner of our virtual world, do as I’m told, and move on. Even family, I’ve turned away. In my defense, I’m retraining myself for social interactions. That was part of the reason I took a second, part-time job: to work on talking to people other than my wife. I spent twenty years attached at the hip to my best friend. The structure of my entire social map was built around and with Katy. One morning she was gone, and I suddenly forgot how to talk to people. So having someone tell me I’m available hit close.
One sentence turned my day from okay to rock solid.
The nomination for this award is anonymous, and to be honest, I don’t want to know who put my name in the hat. I’d just like them to know they brightened my day. And they also managed to shut up my inner Sean Hannity—that HAS alone deserve some gratitude. .
