Not so happily ever after

Hello Stranger,

How are you? It’s good to say that it hasn’t been that long since the last time I posted.

There isn’t much that has happened since then, except for two main things. One is related to my health and the other to my career. While I won’t go into too many details about one of them, I will try to cover the other more in depth.

In the first week of December, I had my first ever surgery. It wasn’t for my knees, but for something else that became a necessity after years of self-neglect. This was done privately and paid out of pocket, but regardless, it was a difficult surgery under general anaesthesia, so I want to share my experience briefly.

I wish I could say that I wasn’t scared, but I would be blatantly lying. Frankly, I went through multiple stages before truly coming to terms with the fact that this surgery was a necessity, one that could help me not only now, but hopefully for the rest of my life.

Eventually, I accepted that it needed to happen and tried to clear my head about it, even counting the days. Still, for a whole month, I struggled to get any restful sleep, or enough sleep per night. I know my stress manifests like this the most, taking away the thing I need the most to function, which is sleep. It has been my weakest point for years now.

On the outside, I seem like a very calm and composed person. I have learned and honed the skill of hiding any anxiety I might feel. You cannot see it unless I want you to see it. Years ago, things were different and far too visible. I am glad I have made progress with this, and I aim to keep improving it, as well as many other aspects of my life that have been weaknesses for me.

Anyway, back to the surgery. The complete fasting, without even water beforehand, was so hard. I usually drink lots of water all day long, and not being able to drink at all was driving me insane.

I blacked out from the anaesthesia immediately, nothing like what I saw in the movies about counting down.

Waking up was the worst. An hour after surgery, I was trembling and shivering so badly, and I was so damn cold.

Initially, right after opening my eyes, I couldn’t speak at all because of the cold, but I was fully awake. There was nothing fuzzy or blurry, unlike what my mother experienced after her surgery. I was painfully aware of everything, but the cold was unbearable, and it made the cuts from surgery hurt too. I kept telling myself to calm down and take deep breaths, which slowed the trembling a bit, but it would take over again.

Words wouldn’t come out because my jaw was shaking and my teeth kept clamping together hard. Tears formed in my eyes because it was too much. It wasn’t even the pain from the surgery, but the cold I was feeling. It felt like it was seeping through my bones.

I kept trying to raise my hand to get the attention of the nurses nearby, yet they looked at me and completely ignored me.

After a few minutes passed, and I kept forcing myself to take deep breaths, I managed to speak. All I said was that I was too cold, and I asked for a blanket. I already had a thin one on me, but it wasn’t enough.

They heard me, yet they still didn’t pay attention. They seemed only focused on another patient nearby, and I wanted to scream for someone to give me a damn blanket. But even after anaesthesia, I couldn’t be a loud person. So frustrating!

I hate asking so many times, so while I was still trembling, I started feeling rage.

Not even anger, just pure rage. I tried speaking louder, and a nurse told me to relax because it was normal. Yet I saw nobody else around shaking so violently, and trust me, I looked.

Finally, they took me to my private room. I asked angrily for another blanket because I had been asking for twenty fucking minutes. The surgery coordinator was waiting in the room too, and she finally brought two more thin blankets. Painfully slowly, the cold started dissipating, but my rage did not.

They injected me with something and said it was morphine, but I don’t think it was because it took a long time to start feeling anything. I asked if it would make me sleep and I was told yes. Needless to say, it did not, and I stayed awake and furious for hours. I just couldn’t let it go, even when there was no more trace of that cold.

My mom was with me at the hospital, and in many ways I was grateful for that, but in others I wished I was alone. I was so thirsty, and on the first day I could only have sips from the cap of a water bottle, which was hard.

The pain from the cuts never went away, despite the fact that the nurses kept adding things to my IV frequently.

I was told I needed to start moving once four hours had passed since the surgery, and it was so hard, especially getting out of bed even with someone’s support. But I did it. It felt like I was getting punched multiple times at once.

I thought the heavy part was done, but the moment day turned into night, the throwing up started, along with the spasms. My goodness, it was non-stop and so bad, and it went on for almost three days. I was hospitalised for five.

I wasn’t allowed to eat anything either because everything was through the IV, so even the tiny sips of water I was taking were causing it. This led to a throbbing migraine too. I kept asking the nurses for something to ease the nausea at least, and they kept saying they gave me something that didn’t help. Until I straight up told the coordinator, and even the surgeon when he came to check on me, that I needed something stronger because I couldn’t even sleep. Only then did they give me something that helped, momentarily.

Oh, and the compression socks were digging into my legs so much.

I was exhausted and feeling horrible. I guess everyone reacts differently to anaesthesia, but this was ew.

Now I have lots of meds and restrictions for three months, and the worst of it is the lack of coffee. Coffee has been running through my veins for years, and now I spend more than half of the day sleepy and yawning. I guess that’s fine for now, as I am off work. I had two weeks of sick leave this month, then a week of work, and then holiday until January, which I have been saving up for.

My sleep schedule is just a tad better now, but it’s still not a considerable change. I am still waking up randomly multiple times a night, which disrupts everything. Silly of me to think that something that has been malfunctioning for years could improve in less than a month. What can I say, I am recovering from surgery and I have no caffeine or sugar now, so perhaps I am slightly delirious.

A hardcore reset for me. But in three weeks, I have lost 8kg. A win is a win, and may many more kilograms drop!

During the pre-op tests, I also needed to have an ultrasound. On my left ovary, they discovered a 3–4 cm ovarian fibroma. Freaking fantastic, especially considering that in my left breast I have a fibroadenoma which has now grown, and I can easily feel it since it’s right under the skin. Apparently, they couldn’t see my right ovary, which is a bit strange, because I know for sure I feel pain there every month.

The ultrasound happened right before the surgery, and I didn’t really get to react to this at the time. I was already stressed and trying to stay calm, but now it’s yet another thing I need to look into.

This is exactly what I have been saying in other articles too. My health seems to have deteriorated from multiple fronts, and all of it feels like a cry for help. My body is begging me to stop abandoning myself just to prioritise work.

I guess my mom’s harsh words in the hospital aren’t completely unfounded. She told me I should remember this as a trauma, so I never end up in this situation again, because these are the consequences of my own actions and of not taking care of myself. Somehow, she seems to believe I intentionally wanted this to happen, but the reality is far from that.

Once I heal more, I will go and get this checked, because it’s clear that it can’t be postponed while I focus only on career bullshit.

Speaking of my career, I got some news a few days ago that managed to taint the holidays for me and make me start the new year a bit bitter.

In my last article, I mentioned how I might get promoted soon. Well, I should have been promoted soon.

All this year, I worked my ass off, pushing myself more and proving that I am working at the next level. I did more than what a junior engineer is expected to do. I mentored an apprentice for a year, mentored an intern for the three months they worked at the company, led part of a project, then a whole solo project, and then I was leading another project alone again.

That last one was huge and important, but my former manager refused to listen to anything I had to say about it. Initially, he told me a senior would be leading it. Then I went away for a few days, and when I came back, I found it assigned to me, involving one of our big applications, and somehow also deprioritised. So I was supposed to work on it, but also work on other things and help the team.

I voiced that we should start with a smaller application that would be easier and more doable, but of course, I have come to realise that people don’t listen much to juniors.

In the end, after spending time investigating, writing documentation with all the steps and estimations, I managed to do some of the work. But because a lot of these applications are ancient and out of date, the migration required extra time after I ran into multiple issues.

Then, of course, the company decided to do another out-of-the-blue reorg and move people around. My former team disappeared, and the project was completely deprioritised. I could have made more progress in modernising that application, but instead I was thrown into another project to help during my last weeks there. Safe to say, nobody is working on it now, even though it was important for company goals. If I had been given the autonomy to start with a smaller application, even without working on it full-time, I know it could have been done, but meh.

I joined the new team in September, and it hasn’t been good. We have had one project, and it has been messy, with requirements changing almost every week and poor communication throughout.

I asked the two seniors on the team more than once if there was any part I could lead myself, and they immediately said no. I asked my current manager, and she kept telling me there was nothing at the moment, but hopefully a new project would come to the team soon, and I could lead that instead.

Listen, I am not necessarily keen on leading things. I am not saying this because I love programming so much. It’s a requirement for promotion.

It’s a stupid requirement that in order to be promoted to mid-level engineer, I need to prove I have been working as a mid-level engineer for a year. Exactly what I have been doing, without the title or the pay. I have it all documented, with examples and screenshots, and two consecutive “great” ratings in my last two performance reviews. All the requirements met, basically!

Until last week, my manager gave me the impression that I could apply in January. Instead, she drove me insane with her usual excuse of a lack of context. How much more documentation do you need when there is a full year of projects and contributions thoroughly documented? She also has access to my performance reviews, and it’s not my fault that my former manager couldn’t be bothered to give her a proper handover of my work, especially given that our last formal conversation was literally about how I should apply for promotion soon because I was ready.

I don’t know how to say this nicely, but I am not responsible for someone else’s incompetence, only my own when that’s the case.

Yet because I was pulled from that big project and then moved to this new team, where I had no opportunity to lead a project myself in the last three months, I can’t apply for promotion now. Instead, I need to wait until the end of next year.

Funny how all my work has basically been erased, and even though I contributed to this last project, it doesn’t seem to matter. The company once again decided to change the process by adding extra steps, so the deadline to apply was moved up to mid-January. That was exactly when a new project was supposed to come to the team, and I could have worked on it. Now there is no new project. On top of that, my manager needs to complete a document based on everything I have done, and I guess she didn’t feel like doing it.

Honestly, it feels like I am being penalised for finally taking a longer sick leave, even though I am told otherwise. Such pretty lies. I am many things, but a fool isn’t one of them.

I refuse to feel guilty for taking time off. I needed that sick leave to recover after surgery, and I still took less than I was told would be ideal. I also saved my annual leave days basically all year. So yes, maybe I haven’t done much in December other than a ticket, but I will not be sorry for that. It shouldn’t cancel out everything I have done so far, especially all the times I still worked even when I was sick. In retrospect, I can see how stupid that was of me. 

I am genuinely burned out, and this has been going on for a long time now.

All work, no fun, no rest, no living my life. All the focus on my job while my health is going to hell!

I was told I just need to keep leading projects and keep being consistent in working as a mid-level engineer, and hopefully, I can apply for promotion sometime in September or October. That’s literally almost another year.

Yay. This motivates me so much…

I don’t like December. For years, bad things have happened in this month, and silly of me to think this December would be any different.

Perhaps to some people it may seem like I am not grateful enough for what I have, or that I am making a big deal out of this. First of all, I am grateful, because I worked incredibly hard to get here, and the price has been steep. Secondly, I earned this. Yet for an unjust reason like this, which has minimised, or better said erased, a whole year of work, I am now expected to keep a smile on my face and keep performing for another year, not at my current level, but at the next one. And maybe, who knows, I will finally officially get the title and the compensation for it.

I spent years being underpaid for my work, and let’s be completely honest, I still am.

I have the right to be angry and to make a huge deal out of this if I want to. You should be amused to hear that even my pay rise at the beginning of this year was lower than what two guys I know, who were juniors last year, received. Even though they got a “good” in their performance reviews and I got a “great”, they still got more money. And yes, the rating absolutely determines the percentage of the raise. How fun!

It truly put things into perspective, not just this shitty situation, but other things that happened this year too.

Is it truly worth it? Are the lack of memories from the last few years worth it? Is watching my health deteriorate worth it? And the most important question of all: is this really how I want to keep living my life?

The answer to all of these questions is no!

I hope you can feel my anger in this article, even if I toned it down considerably.

So if you can learn anything from my experience, do better and don’t be like me. Put yourself first, because jobs come and go.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think I belong in tech. I don’t enjoy coding that much, or at least not what I currently do. Focusing on web is a big no for me, but I do love cloud engineering. It clicks faster for me, it’s cleaner and more logical, so I spent this year working on many personal projects and I never got bored of it. I can learn it much faster and I don’t forget it as easily. For those of you not familiar with what I’m talking about right now, coding is still involved, but it’s very different.

I felt guilty about this for a long time, constantly trying different things to find something more suited to me, and it only accentuated that ever-growing imposter feeling. Hence the constant upskilling, until I finally found something that resonated the most with me.

Now my goal is to continue learning what I need to make this transition. I might even consider investing in a longer and more expensive course, one that includes not just complex projects, but also interview prep and mock interviews. I am trying to be realistic, and while I’d like to go straight into cloud security or FinOps engineering, those roles aren’t that common. I don’t mind starting with Cloud DevOps, which is something I already have some experience with.

That role is mine, and I’ll be damned if I get stuck doing something I don’t want to do, like I am now.

Until now, I took this slower because I really wanted to focus on getting promoted at work. Since that is clearly not happening, and there are slim chances of transitioning internally into this new role, I will make this preparation a priority!

I don’t care if it takes me the whole of 2026, but if it does, I will make sure I don’t get hired as a junior.

I’ve also received feedback that sometimes I am more reserved and quiet compared to others on the team. Well, I don’t like to speak just to hear my own voice, even if my voice is lovely. The web people in my current team tend to be very loud and interrupt a lot.

I don’t like being like that, but if that’s what gets you the visibility you need, then what’s one more thing to fake?

The new year will definitely be the year I start being louder. With the right pissed-off mood, I will also be what many people would call a b*tch, which isn’t difficult, given that the bar is low. All I need to do is stop wearing a polite smile. Once that’s gone, not just my face but my whole demeanour changes. It will be fun!

Anyway, I know this article isn’t very positive, but I just wanted to come here and give you a big dose of realism about what is currently happening in my life.

Many times, things don’t go my way, and I am tired of how life has been over the past few years. I hope this will motivate you to take a step back, evaluate how your life is going, see whether you like it or not, and if you don’t, try to focus on the things that are in your control and that you can change.

There is a lot of anger in this article, yes, but also fatigue, clarity, and self-respect. All of them coexist, and I am no longer interested in pretending they shouldn’t.

I won’t apologise for my anger. If anything, in many situations I think I should be angrier. Anger can be a signal that something isn’t right, and ignoring it for too long is how you end up losing yourself.

You don’t want to live your life constantly full of regrets, being an “if only I had done this” type of person, because time is unforgiving. Whether you make those changes or you don’t, time will continue to fly mercilessly, because it doesn’t wait for anyone.

Frankly, I have come to realise that perhaps the right time doesn’t exist, even though many of us keep clinging to that idea.

Change is inevitable, so at least try to make it work in your favour however you can.

If you read this far, thank you. It will always mean so much to me that you continue to read my thoughts and support my work.

I don’t really celebrate Christmas anymore, nor do I care much for holidays these days.

As my brother said, I am probably more like the Grinch now, even though I used to love celebrating and I looked forward to them. Years of solitude can snuff the joy out of many things. Perhaps it is for the better!

But for those of you who are celebrating, I genuinely wish you a wonderful time, whether by yourself or together with your loved ones. May these days bring you light and peace of mind, and may your thoughts be filled with tranquillity and happiness.

Sending big hugs to everyone.

I will try to be back with another article right before the New Year, hopefully a more positive one filled with some objective reflection.

Lots of love and happy holidays 🎄🤍

I also discovered this song when I was at the hospital. Since I had to walk up and down the hallway several times a day, I put my headphones on and it made the pain feel more muted. I hope you like it too: https://youtu.be/aGjTMzeQH_g?si=RPSs81OIvz-dssta

I really liked the Christmas market tree in my hometown.