Your Inner Outcast

Posted by fxckfeelings on August 4, 2011

On the road of life (which we’re assuming exists outside of car commercials), sometimes other people, not just strange places, can make you feel like a stranger. In either case, the feeling is painful, not easy to change, and a great source of my revenue. If you know you’ve done your best along the way, however, whether you feel you belong or not, you can stay on course since you’re not a stranger to yourself.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m a quality inspector and recently had cause to turn in a worker after I caught him fudging his work in a way that made the workplace unsafe (I made a copy of his logbook before he could fake his report). Well, since then I’ve been getting the cold shoulder from his supervisor, who says I was mean to get him fired and trying to suck up to my boss, but the truth is, I think our quality has been slipping and this worker was cutting too many corners and needed to be fired (though it wasn’t my decision). It’s painful to be shunned by guys I’ve worked with for years, however, and I wonder, if they understood how upsetting and unfair it was, they might be persuaded to stop.

Despite the value put on employment by the current recession, a job is just a job. It might feel like a family, a career, a definition of your identity, a source for your self-esteem. In truth, it just keeps you in rent and car payments.

The real meaning of a job, then, is what you give to it. If you do what you think is a good day’s work, that’s where your pride and self-esteem should come from.

It shouldn’t come from what the boss or your co-workers say, or from any expectation that good work will be recognized or rewarded with approval, a raise, or security. You did the right thing, you’ve got reason to be proud, even if everyone else has a reason to give you shit.

If you try to change your co-workers’ feelings or explain your own, you’re accepting their definition of the problem and exposing yourself to more pain. Feelings are their idea of what’s important, particularly sympathy for the guy who got fired and fear for their own jobs.

Instead of worrying about how they think or what they feel, you’re more concerned about safety and quality and the bad things that will happen to everyone if those values are compromised. You’re right, they’re wrong, and their feelings, as ever, can go fuck themselves.

Of course it hurts to be shunned by people you’ve known a long time. Let them know, however, that you believe in the importance of doing a good, safe job and there’s no way of doing that job if you don’t face problems and fuck-ups when they occur. They’re free to think you were petty and mean; you think that, if their practices don’t change, everyone will be in trouble.

If they don’t respond positively and you see no sign of a change for the better, look for another job while respecting yourself for tolerating the pain of this one. You can’t change the economy, a bad boss, or corporate culture, but it takes a strong person to do a good job when the job sucks. At least it’s only a job.

STATEMENT:
“I value positive relationships at work but I believe that we can’t do good work unless we recognize bad work and do what’s necessary to improve it. I know when improvement is necessary, even if it causes pain and some of that pain is mine, and I’m proud to make it happen.”

I don’t know why I have the feeling I’m living a life meant for someone else. I love my wife, but she’s a normal person and totally unlike the people I grew up with, who were loony, unsettled, angry, and totally unreliable. Now we have a healthy baby, and the in-laws are available and supportive, and I feel like a visitor from another universe who has wound up in Ordinaryville. My wife knows how I feel and tells me it will pass, but I hate the feeling and think it’s telling me I’m leading an unreal life.

Sometimes, if you’ve had a troubled childhood, you feel authentic only when you’re dealing with shitheads and creeps that remind you of your dear ones. That’s a natural feeling, but you can never go home again, and maybe you shouldn’t if home was a shithole.

I assume it took a major effort and decisions based on sad experience for you to date a nice, normal girl, no matter how strange that made you feel. What’s remarkable is not that the relationship feels strange, but that you and she seem to be doing a good job of bridging the gap between your cultures.

You’ve found a way to let her know about your rocky background and the unexpected, undesirable feelings you contend with, and she accepts how you feel and doesn’t get hurt when she can’t make you happy and comfortable. That’s a big deal; a relationship like that has its own power to create a new world, gradually.

I also assume that you don’t feel your baby was forced on you or that your response to your in-laws is entirely phony and false. You can be you, it’s just not easy because your new world is unfamiliar and triggers sad comparisons that make you feel like a loser who perversely misses his old loser world filled with his lost loser tribe.

The good news is that you’re probably on the right track and your new life will eventually come to feel more solid and familiar. After all, it’s also the life you want for yourself and your family. The sad news is that the feeling of unfamiliarity and dislocation will probably not fade quickly and may always linger.

In effect, you’re an immigrant in a new country with a new language and you immigrated for good reason, but there’s a cost to being an immigrant that you never stop paying.

My guess is that you’ve done what’s necessary to put bad family relationships behind you and create a better life for you and your children. While the pain of your transition is long and unavoidable, you deserve great respect for what you’ve done; even though you were raised by a pack of losers, your current situation is a huge victory.

STATEMENT:
“I wish my new family relationships could feel easy, spontaneous, and natural and that I didn’t sometimes feel like a stranger in my own life, but I’m proud that they’re genuine and I can rely on them in a way I could never rely on my family as a kid. I may never feel like a natural in my new life, but that’s what makes it more of an achievement.”