Not a Gentleman

by Tintinnabula

Update 3

I just wanted to give an update and let you know that I am indeed among the living.

I do have a bit of news.

I have been struggling on two fronts.

First (and sadly, I expect this to only get worse over the coming months), my workplace is in the process of imploding. Over the past month we lost two critical people. Without going into details that could possibly out me (the field I work in is small and incestuous), the two people we lost were vital to our company and both were treated exceptionally poorly by upper management. That is a very strange thing. I have never worked at a place with more competent colleagues, and I have never worked at a place where I have liked or respected my colleagues more. At the same time my work is intellectually stimulating, and over the course of my career that has hardly ever been the case.

For these reasons it makes me sad to say that I have never worked at a place with a management staff as toxic as where I currently work. The level of incompetence is staggering, and the number of truly boneheaded decisions that rank-and-file employees have had to clean up after has been immense. We are now at the point of no return, I think, as key employees are beginning to leave. My workload is now even crazier than it was before, and I am not sleeping at night. I cannot continue to work twelve hour days and weekends as a matter of routine, without overtime or comp time. I am simply exhausted. My colleagues are in the same boat. It simply isn't sustainable. Worse, we are just getting into the busy time of the year! As a result, I really don't think the company will even exist in another year, and I am going to have to actively begin looking for other employment. I am in a state of shock and mourning because, as I said, I have never had better colleagues (apart from the upper level managers). I don't want to have to start again. What are the chances that there will be a huge management shakeup in the near future? That is what I am hoping for, but I am thinking snowball in Hades...

So, I'm not in the best place right now in terms of stamina and outlook. :) But to add to this, I received several nastygrams last chapter that really seemed to pile on and actually made me want to quit this story. Same person as before? Who knows. They were anonymous, and they were not constructive criticism. (I actually value that!) I deleted them, but they did their damage. And I have to say, that makes me really sad. This story, for me, is intended to be a release, something uplifting. I have not wanted to work on it for the past few weekends, but really, that was a moot point, because I had to work (job) every weekend this month, anyway.

I'm not sure I understand the reason for the nastiness because it was not expressed very coherently, but I think it is about wanting the story to be told a certain way, or wanting characters to behave a certain way. I would like to say this in response: Every story is a journey. I'm extending a measure of trust by offering it to you to read, and you are extending a measure of trust by going on that journey with me, without knowing the path or the final destination. The point of fan fiction is that each story is a different journey, a permutation of the original story. So what is the point of knowing the path and destination in advance? And what is the point of taking the same path every time? And how boring would it be if the scenery stayed the same, if there were no variation in speed or curves in the road?

It's doubly frustrating when I look through the writing in this fandom and see the stories that are currently being updated (as well as the completed ones). How many other fandoms have stories written at such a high level of quality as these? I just don't see the point of nastiness when there is such a smörgåsbord of choice. (Well, to be honest, I don't see the point of nastiness at all...)

I guess what I would ask those who would do continue to read my story is that you trust me to tell it, and that you extend the same courtesy to the other writers on this site. I know this does not apply to 99.9% of people reading this, but I thank you for taking the time to read it anyway. :)

I am not really sure what work is going to throw at me this week, but I am writing today, and maybe (?) I will have a chapter ready next weekend. Fingers crossed! Tintin