Work woes

I haven’t talked about work too much in these blogs.  An intentional choice.  I want to be careful about what I say.  But, no surprises here, I’m getting increasingly fed up and disconsolate about my job.  I’m not happy with how I’m being used, how I’m being managed and the kind of work (or lack of work) that I’m being asked to do.  I didn’t think I’d feel like this, because this is the same job and the same company that I worked at before for a number of years with relative success.  I think this is due to working with different people (none of who are based in Seattle) and having a remote manager who hasn’t really got to know me and doesn’t really understand my strengths, my weaknesses and my aspirations when it comes to work (and hasn’t really shown any inclination to do so, she just wants to pigeonhole me into a role that I’m not particularly comfortable with).  It’s really starting to get me down, and it’s even started to make me question my career choices.  I transitioned from being a statistician to a statistical programmer about 10 years ago – a choice I’ve been happy and comfortable with until now, when I’ve started to wonder whether I’d like to revert back to being a statistician again.  I also wonder whether it might be a cultural thing (this is the first time I’ve had an Indian manager)…  But perhaps, more than anything, not working with anyone else in the Seattle office has left me feeling isolated, neglected and lacking support.  I’m not going anywhere any time soon (mainly because I’d have to pay back the cost of relocation and temporary accommodation if I leave before 2 years!), so I think I need to address these things as best as I can soon rather than continue to be unhappy for another year.  I guess I should be grateful that I don’t particularly have much of a workload at the moment (and really haven’t for most of the last year), so I’m being paid good money to not do too much.  But I just know that at some point the pendulum will swing to the opposite extreme and I’ll start to stress out about having too much on my plate and too little time to work on it.  That is part of the reason why I left this job last time, and I can easily see it happening again.