Day 254: How martyrdom ends.....

Recently work has been tough. Staying late, doing extra, stressful meetings, long days, no lunches, etc. you know the things that happen from time to time (well unless you work in education), but the reason you make it is it is not all the time! My job is very individualistic, you come up with your schedule, complete projects on your own time, and no one really knows what you have going on. That means everyone expects you to do their projects immediately and timely. Can you imagine?

This has affected me directly, but I feel you can only do so much work before the quality of your work suffers, so I prefer quality over quantity. I will not stress my body for anyone because at the end of the day, no one cares. No one is going to come to my rescue or care that I chose to hurt myself for work. I felt bad as I told my supervisors that I would not be able to complete the work that they thought I could do because they had too much, because you expect to want to fulfill your supervisors' wishes. Since I work for 4 different teams, and around 7 different supervisors that can ask for my help, NO is a word that I must cherish.

I have a supervisor who is literally in the same boat. She is working for 5 different companies, simply because she is efficient, knows what she is doing, and never says no. The difference is the projects that I'm given takes several hours to complete, the ones that she is given take months to complete in several countries and all happen with weeks, and in some cases days of each other. She is literally working every night in the night time and every weekend, and running herself ragged, all because she feels as if "she has to". Everyone keeps asking her to do more things, then expects her to do more, then wonders why she doesn't perform as a superhuman. She is making a martyrdom of herself. But, for what, giving your life for a cause that you believe in, you will always be part of something big, something amazing and you die a hero. But working yourself to death??? You just die and they get 5 people to replace you. No one cares they just want the work done.

So please, work hard, do the most, challenge yourself and lead up to greatness, but don't kill/hurt yourself over it. It's not worth it.