I haven’t blogged in for a few days, and this is why.
Work has been eating at me in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived inside broken systems that still expect performance. I’m in sales. The pressure to close is constant, but lately the real problem hasn’t been customers, it’s the tools I’m supposed to use to do my job.
I’ve lost sales because I couldn’t figure out how to transfer someone to the secure payment line. Not because I didn’t try. Not because I was careless. Because I was never properly trained. There were a couple of videos, five minutes long, that showed a clean, ideal version of the process. I never saw it done live. I never saw what happens when something doesn’t work. And there’s an extra step that isn’t even mentioned in the training. You don’t find out it exists until you fail.
So the customer hangs up. The sale is gone. And I’m left sitting there knowing I did everything I could with the information I was given… and it still wasn’t enough.
Then there’s quoting. When someone isn’t eligible for Farmers, we quote through Bristol West. They’ll insure just about anyone, but the price is brutal. I’m the one who has to tell someone, “Yes, I can help you, but it’s going to be $700 a month or more.” I don’t blame people for hanging up. I really don’t. But after the tenth time of being treated like I personally set the price, it starts to feel like I’m absorbing everyone else’s financial panic into my own nervous system.
Being the messenger gets exhausting when the message is always bad news.
On top of all of that, there’s licensing. I only need one more state, Florida. Florida requires fingerprints. Back in December, when my car was broken down, I still made it happen. Someone went massively out of their way for me. Forty-five minutes to pick me up. Forty-five minutes to the fingerprint location. Forty-five minutes home. Then forty-five minutes back to their own house. I did the task. I followed instructions. I submitted proof.
Over a month later, my job starts questioning whether I even went.
Turns out Florida rejected the fingerprints.
Not because I skipped it. Not because I procrastinated. But because the person at the fingerprinting location did them wrong.
Florida accepts fingerprints in two ways, digitally sent directly to them, or traditional wet ink cards. I couldn’t get to the location over an hour away that does direct digital uploads. I called the closer place ahead of time. I told them it was for Florida. They told me they could digitally upload and print cards for mailing.
Apparently, Florida doesn’t accept that.
So now I have to redo fingerprints. Not because I failed to act… but because a trained professional didn’t know their own requirements. And somehow, the consequences land on me.
I was supposed to go farther. I was supposed to have more transportation. I was supposed to magically foresee that the information I was given was wrong. The universe, as usual, had different plans.
This past Saturday, we went grocery shopping. We got food. We walked back out to my boyfriend’s truck… and it wouldn’t start. We knew the gas was low, but the light hadn’t even come on yet. In a snowstorm, strangers helped me get gas. We came back. Still nothing.
Those same people later returned with a car dolly and hauled the truck for us, saving us a $300 tow bill. I’m deeply grateful for them. I really am. But gratitude doesn’t erase the fact that we’re now without a vehicle.
I’ve been stuck at home for five days.
I’ve been trying to pat myself on the back for being prepared, buying meat in bulk, vacuum sealing meals, keeping the freezer stocked. And yes, that matters. But it doesn’t stop the quiet panic of knowing my dog is going to need food. We’re going to need laundry soap. The everyday things that keep life moving forward don’t care how prepared you were last month.
The truck issue isn’t catastrophic, but the part isn’t stocked locally. It has to be ordered. Possibly won’t arrive until next Tuesday.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was pulled into a meeting with compliance managers. I stayed polite. I stayed factual. I acknowledged my responsibility while also stating the truth. I did get fingerprinted. I did provide proof. The fingerprints were done incorrectly by the vendor. I am now being asked to fix something that wasn’t my mistake, while dealing with circumstances completely outside my control.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I work from home, yet not having a vehicle could cost me my job.
That’s the part that finally knocked the wind out of me.
So I haven’t blogged in for a few days. Not because I don’t care. Not because I’m lazy or ungrateful or dramatic. But because sometimes life keeps stacking hurdles faster than you can clear them, and at some point your body just says… enough.
I’m tired. I’m frustrated. I feel defeated in ways that don’t show up on a performance review.
I’m still here. Still trying. Still doing my best inside systems that don’t bend when real life happens. But right now, I needed to step back and admit the truth. Resilience isn’t always pushing through. Sometimes it’s stopping long enough to say, out loud, that this is hard… and it shouldn’t all be on one person to absorb.
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