(no subject)

[unicornduke]

 I mention one possible thing about my job and that's the only thing my mom remembers about work and is fucking obsessed with it oh my god

Work has a thing in the contract that they may cut hours in the winter depending on workload and budget. I mentioned this offhand to mom when I first took the job and it is literally the only thing she will bring up over and over and over again. It's been almost a year since I took this job. I think she's brought it up every month or two. 

holy shit. 

I've gotten confirmation from my boss that I'm not getting my hours cut because I've got plenty to do and they like me and there's budget. 

But she won't. stop. asking.

I just responded to her email and said "they aren't going to cut hours. please stop asking about that"

okay, back to enjoyable things like seeds and maybe playing video games

Comments

[dragonlady7]

MY MOM DOES THIS TOO!!!
It's often like, I'm talking about something and stop paying attention to myself and so offhandedly make some comment like, "and like, sometimes things are like, blue or whatever probably," and move on with my life, and months later she's like "WHAT ABT THE BLUE THINGS" and I'm like "the what now? What?" and if I'm lucky, I'll remember that sometimes things are in different colors, blue among them, and I must have mentioned that, and I'll be like "oh most of them turned out green this time?" and she's like "YOU SAID BLUE" and I'm like "I said blue SOMETIMES MAYBE and it's the LEAST important thing about this thing I've been involved in" and she's all "jeez you don't have to be so defensive."
But sometimes I won't remember, and then it's that I'm clearly deliberately misleading her about blue things, and I honestly don't remember and if I'm lucky enough that one of the things turned out blue it might jog my memory, but otherwise I'm literally like "I have no idea what you're talking about? I spoke for twenty minutes about this thing and all you can think of is that it ought to be blue? It's like basically never blue?" and she's like, Oppressed by my Whimsical Changeable Nature and you know, she called it, when I was four and couldn't pay attention to anything, I've been away with the fairies my whole life...
And it's not even that she likes blue or that it matters, it's just that's the single thing she's retained and that's the thing she's told literally everyone who ever asks after me, so now they all think I'm some kind of Blue Expert and it's really confusing when I can't come up with a single blue example.

There's a reason I live far away from my mother, who I love very much, and with whom I have lovely conversations, but to whom I don't confide a whole hell of a lot because that's how she listens.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, it's SO frustrating. Ask about my cool projects or whatever but stop focusing on this one thing.

Granted, now that I think about it, she might be projecting a little bit. Money's tight for them right now because they're putting my younger sibling through college at NYU ($$$$$$$$) so I think she's overly focused on money right now. I mean, for me, as long as I don't have negative dollars in my bank account and I'm paying off my loans, I'm good. It's not like I'm saving for retirement or anything because that's just unrealistic. I've got a truck and some stuff. It's not like I'm going to buy a house or a farm. That's not going to happen.

[graydon]

One thing that's difficult for many parents is to stop constantly worrying about the kid. In an ideal world, growing up is a steadily decreasing degree of worry and by the time the kid is an adult worry is only warranted on special occasions, but that's not how these things often go.

So combine scant listening with $WORRY and it can be difficult to explain that, even if that was a worry then, it's not a worry now.

[unicornduke]

I mean, the thing about this job is that it is 100000x better than my previous job, in all ways but pure $. And with mileage paid by them and my sidejob, I make enough money to keep me even.

So the fact that she's focusing so much on this one possible negative, possible it isn't even for sure, is really irritating. I suspect some of it is 1. she's an anxious person and I get it from her 2. my younger sib is in their final ish year of college so all the kids are out of the house and now I'm the kid she talks to most frequently because of how much I go home. 3. I don't know if she does anything fun.

like, she gets SO ANXIOUS, and I understand, the farm consumes all and it's hard to break free of it even though she doesn't like the farm that much. But come on. I'm working on all these cool projects, I'm doing all this neat stuff, I'm traveling, I'm planning things, there's a million things to talk about.

Oh well. I think she'll drop it now that I asked her to. Hopefully.

[graydon]

Here's hoping!

Anxiety is a really tough thing to improve from the outside; it can sometimes help to ask what's setting it off (at some time it's not going off!), but, yeah. Kinda inherently not your problem, in that you can't do anything about it.

[dorchadas]

Ugh, that sounds annoying.

My mother would do the same thing, but for her, it's because she's always thinking of the worst possible outcome for any situation. Usually it's just a background because the situations she talks about are unlikely, but sometimes it just adds to how stressed I feel.