I swear I am actually going to take the time to sit down and record the good things that have been going on for me some time soon, but it's just that the infuriating, "can't talk to people about" stuff keeps taking precedence.
So, I had talked to Jennifer Gowers several months ago (I think around last fall) about how Linda had taken me to a TWN (The Women's Network) lunch. Jennifer said that I should join EWI - a women-focused professional organization that she is part of. A member has to nominate you (and your organization) which has to be approved. Membership is also pretty exclusive because they tend to not have competing organizations and corporations in the group. Well, Jennifer told me at the time that she had submitted my name for Red Cross, and we've discussed a few times that I had not heard anything but she thought they were still considering me.
Well, a few weeks ago, EWI sent a letter to Billy - they invite the head of the organization and a rep - inviting the Red Cross to join. They didn't include my name anywhere in the letter and didn't send anything to me about it until almost 3 weeks after they sent the letter to let me know that they had sent the letter to Billy and had not heard from him if he would be attending the dinner meeting tomorrow night. I sent an email to Linda about it the day I got the email, but her email was screwed up and she didn't get it. She came in my office later, and I told her I had sent her an email about it and wondered if Billy had said anything about the letter. She said they had discussed whether Red Cross should join or not. I (knowing EWI needed an answer about if anyone was going and knowing Billy was out all this week) emailed to them to say I would come to the meeting since I had not heard back from Linda. Then, after I talked to Linda, it sounded like they had not made up their minds so I still figured it would be fine for me to go because it would give them more details (all of this was in the email that I guess Linda never did read).
So, I emailed Linda this morning to say that I had planned on going to the meeting tomorrow night to help gather more information, but since I was going to be representing Red Cross, I wanted to make sure it was ok with her first. She emailed back to thank me for the reminder and that Billy told her on Friday that he had nominated her - she didn't know about the meeting tomorrow. I emailed her back details about the meeting and that I would email Jennifer Gowers to let her know Linda was going to be our rep since she had nominated me for membership. Linda said that she wished Billy had known before he sent her name in.
I realize that this seems to be a grand scale mix-up between Linda's email being down, EWI not giving me a heads up and Billy just trying to get things taken care of before being on PTO for a week. Still, I can't stop the feelings I'm having of being fucking pissed off.
Here I am trying to maximize my connections to help build myself professionally and to further the organization I work for, and then I get left in the dark. Not only that, but obviously I am completely pigeonholed at work where they don't even begin to consider that someone else may want or need to be a part of such an organization. I know that if I had told them about Jennifer doing all of this because of me and that I was interested that they would have considered me, but it's just so irritating that this is the way it works out. Hell, I was really sending Linda the emails to position myself and to basically say "this is because of me." I'm sure that if she knew it upset me this much or that it mattered so much to me that she would do something about it, but I just don't feel (since she is stressed out so completely and we are in budgetting hell) that it's right for me to push the issue.
Also, how the hell does it look that the person that was actually nominated isn't the one chosen by the organization to represent them? I don't know, I guess I was beginning to think of myself as a growing, professional woman, but here I am - reminded that I am still just a kid playing at being "grown up."
I just wanna give up.
