Rambling

My better replacement has appeared

I told my translation group I'm leaving in a few months. I've been doing a lot of work to make this happen recently, and the anxiety about it all is keeping me up at night. When this group first started, here's a list of all the things I did:

Over the years, I managed to wipe my hands of the image editing and passed the social media and some of the reference material parts to someone else, but the rest has still largely been my responsibility.

I've made small teams to pass off the project management, proofreading, and website maintenance to. Not completely sure what to do about the social media and calming relationship fires, but I feel like the people I've assigned to project management might be able to handle that. I've started a conversation about it in the wider group, but no one has really commented on it yet so maybe it's not a huge need.

This left just the translation portion. Given that not all of our translators are at the same level, we had two main translators (of which I was one) that checked their work (and each other's work) for quality assurance. Last year, I thought someone who would be able to replace me on this front had appeared, but then they ghosted me. I was worried that this would be the hardest part to replace and that I would have to wait around for months to see even a sliver of hope in this realm. Worst case, I'd have to pack my bags and leave it to the current team, even if the quality would be worse than if I had stayed.


We found someone to take my place almost immediately. They're better than me and the other main translator, too.

This gives me all sorts of complicated feelings to cry over. On one hand, this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted someone my level (a middling N3 at best) or better to replace me so that I wouldn't feel bad about leaving. On the other hand, knowing that someone can replace me and do better than me makes me feel really useless. Like, all this stuff I found so hard will just come to someone else as easy as breathing.

That's good. It really is. But on the other hand, there's all this grief about not being the right person. The best person. The person who was truly irreplaceable, even though a group where someone really can't be replaced is ultimately doomed to fail in the future. Now that I'm handing off all of my duties to people I'm confident can take them, I've made myself obsolete, which should be the goal of any group if it is to do better and go on without its founder.

And yet. I'm sad. I can't help but feel like my efforts were for nothing, even though I know this not true. It just parallels my feelings about my friendships, also. I'm doing that thing again where I'm only thinking about the final outcome and none of the process measures, which should be just as important. And my perfectionism is showing up again as well.

I've only ever wanted to be good, but it turns out "good" is a really high bar for me and I'm always coming up short. I just feel insecure. I need to make a portfolio so that I have something to kind of show for this, even though I will probably show it to no one as long as social anxiety makes job interviews impossible for me.

I'm also worried that this truth will hold for my future endeavors, too. What if I'm just not the best option, and never will be? What if I just didn't look hard enough for the right people to replace me and I held things back from being better? What if I was just playing the martyr and I've just been doing the wrong thing all along?

I feel like I know how this goes.

<<<

I've been with a volunteer group for 5 years now. The first two years, we had a supervisor who was more like me: perfectionist, extremely worried about procedure, and clearly took on too much. She was doing everything. Granted, she was way more capable than me since she didn't have social anxiety, but she was more introverted than the other paid employees in this small organization, and she always showed up tired. You could also just feel a level of pessimism and burnout from her. She initially treated us distantly, but once some of the volunteer members took her side when she was venting to us about some of the issues in procedure other employees were creating, she started smiling more and I got the sense that we were "her" people. I liked her. She did too much and never slept, but she was really trustworthy, and good at her job. At the same time, I was always aware of the negativity that she held in her.

After she left for another job, her replacements weren't quite good enough. They were very social but didn't have her eye for detail, or were already wearing too many hats and actually cared about work-life balance. Our data engineer, who always seemed to come up with big ideas but didn't think about the timeline for deploying them well enough, continued working according to her own logic, and inevitably trust in the volunteer group decreased. I don't think the data engineer is incapable, but the types of issues we started having to deal with really confirmed the original supervisor's words. Lots of the original volunteer team left; to this day, there are only 3 people from the original team (including me), out of 10.

There became a new normal, where we just kind of assumed that things would break and we'd just have to deal with it. But surprisingly, this didn't actually make the organization that much less effective (or, maybe I don't know how effective it would've been if the original supervisor had stuck around even though she clearly didn't like her coworkers). We rolled with it. I lost interest in the group, but continued to show up because I didn't have any other better place to volunteer with my mental issues.

I pushed for us to increase the volunteering team a couple of times, and it eventually happened. And then one of those people in the new team eventually became our new supervisor about a year after she joined.

This new person, my current supervisor, actually talked to me and asked why I hadn't applied for the position. I was honest about my social issues and fear that I wouldn't be a good fit in those terms. She reassured me that she would be able to do what I was afraid of doing, and now has turned out to be the best supervisor the volunteer team has had. Far better than I would've done, and better, I think, than the original supervisor, precisely because of the positive energy.

And now, even though we still have things breaking, the data engineer has caught up to the sentiment of the times and is trying a bunch of things we actually care about. And I don't worry about much anymore because I trust that this current supervisor will be able to bring things up and continue to press on things that need to be fixed while continuing to have good relationships with everyone. I do believe that the original manager put out more fires before they even started, but it was exchange for obviously worse work relationships.

There really is an immense value in having a manager that actually believes in the mission, is a people person, and of course, is able to actually do the work and keep things organized.

The only thing I've ever had was the third part. The first two have largely been missing, partly because I made the mistake in my more reactive days to start this translation group out of spite.

There's so much I've learned about how counterproductive negativity and resentment is, and even when I've dropped most of this, I can't seem to escape myself. The truth is that I've never truly wanted to be here; since day one, I was doing way more than I was excited about.

So I've learned better. I've learned what to look for in my replacements. And I think, unless I'm full of it, that with what I'm putting in place, this translation group will be able to skip over the muddling era I had to live through in my volunteer group by having the happy, positive people around with tasks distributed to the capable rather than overloading one person.

In other words, this place will be way better without me.

Process measures wise, I should take the fact that I helped at least 2 people with their careers as a win. One of these people I'm even planning on passing the title of head of the group to; she's like sunshine and has no beef with anyone in the group. She has also thanked me for creating this group, but ironically, I was never thinking about her at all through all of this. So while the knowledge helps, it still doesn't feel like I got my efforts' worth emotionally. Not that I want to downplay her journey and the honor that I've had in being able to play a role in it, but the emotions shoot shit when they want to.

>>>

Is the problem me, or that I was in the wrong position? ...But I put myself in that situation to begin with.

I just feel bad. When I try to do right by others — or rather, do them better — and neglect myself, I end up giving off a negative aura. Taking on so much without delegating was wrong. Even when I delegated some, I should've delegated more. I tried to emotionally support three different people in this group towards healthier ways of thinking, and all ultimately let me down. I never quite got the moderating part right. I was quite possibly holding back the potential for the group to be even better, and in the end, I didn't even exist here in a sustainable or enjoyable way.

Various people say they'll miss me and that no one will be like me. That's true, but also not true. It's very possible that this place will be able to sidestep my faults, now. And I won't even be around to see it, because I'm exhausted.

Where do people like me exist? Where is it okay for me to exist, without feeling like I'm holding anyone back, and without having to live with negativity that I can't quite hide? Where can I go, where my efforts mean something, and I get out exactly as much as I put in?

Where do I go, to be genuinely happy about the things that I create?

#moping