on wisdom and nervous breakdowns

I love new places. I love new jobs (and hate them, too). I love having a new life.

Spending 8 hours a day in a new place with new people, learning a trade I know nothing about. Stressful, and exhausting. But I learn something new every time I turn around: through glancing at the file folders I'm asked to archive, through eavesdropping on the boss explaining an invoice to someone on the phone, through listening to my workmates complaining about a difficult customer at the lunch table.

But there is so much more than the business to learn. I try to absorb it all. I learn what the boss is like, just by observing how he interacts with the others. I learn the history of the company by finding in the back of the storage room old products it used to import, rather unsuccessfully.

I have changed jobs quite frequently over the years (staying five years in The Little Shop of Harmony was a personal best). Being  the newbie  in the workplace always makes me feel like an inexperienced, insecure teenager again. But I notice, with joy and pride, that my experience and wisdom are slowly accumulating. I may be a newbie and I may be insecure. But I'm no longer inexperienced.

I learn, and I learn fast.

( And the most useful wisdom I have gathered regarding new jobs: awareness of the emotional dynamics. That the first week is the worst and that it gets better after that, but also that the adrenaline wears off at the same time and I get rather fed up sometime during the second week. It gets better after that, too. And when things finally seem to run smoothly, somewhere around the fifth week, I usually have an unexpected nervous breakdown. )