The Honest Truth

Le Chateau sweater (c/o) (similar)
Aritzia culottes (similar)
Jonak mules (similar)
Elizabeth Lyn Jewelry necklace
& Other Stories earrings
Madewell rings
Location: La Maison Fernand – Bordeaux, France

I’ll be honest, my darlings – I keep saying the words, “I’ll be honest…” and following them up with very thinly veiled but unfailingly polite condemnation of my colleagues’ incompetence. If I had known what I was getting myself into, when I accepted the job that I took three weeks before we left for Bordeaux, I might have reconsidered…

…might have. But the honest truth is that I would have ultimately forged ahead anyway. And I knew it, on our second morning in Bordeaux, just like I know it now.

After our morning walk, we picked up a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique and made our way back to the hotel just in time for our beautiful breakfast basket to be delivered. The newspaper was pricey, Ian remarked on the way to the hotel. He didn’t care that I’d spent the five euros, it just surprised him. “It’s a monthly,” I explained. “And besides,” I went on, “isn’t it nice to know that somewhere, writers are not only still paid for their work, but actually given time to do it properly? I’ll pay for a paper that allows that.”

I read Le Monde Diplomatique as we sipped chocolat chaud and indulged in a baguette with butter and marmalade. There were pauses for pictures because, since I’m being honest, there always are in my life. But mostly, I read the thoughtfully written articles and envied the journalists who were given the gift of time to write them well. I wish we all had more time. I wish, more specifically, that in this era of instant gratification, we could all step back and recognise that getting something right now most often means not actually getting what you want. Good things still take time. That never changed.

And all of those thoughts lead me back to work. I am normally good about turning off my work brain while I’m on holiday. But that morning, I reflected on my own team, who have not been given the time to do their work properly, nor the tools to do it well, for several years. Until February, I was one of them – and every single thing I did was done on a timer. While I heard that the quality of my work was important, the fact that every task I completed had a number of “expected minutes” associated with it reinforced the idea that how quickly I did it was more important.

For years, I swore I would never move into a management role, because I knew I would have to deliver mixed messages about what type of work is most important. I couldn’t face telling anyone they weren’t doing their work well enough, while simultaneously evaluating their performance based primarily on their speed. Speed does not beget accuracy, and vice versa.

But as 2018 drew to a close and 2019 began, it became clear that if I didn’t take on the job, someone else would. Someone else about whom I would find myself saying, “I’ll be honest…” to preface lengthy and polite but legitimate criticisms. So I took the job. I took it knowing that even though there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for me to accomplish what I needed to, I could do it better than someone else – and, for better or worse, that I was willing to sacrifice some part of my sanity to try to accomplish everything, too.

The honest truth is, when I look back on these photos, I know this was always how it was going to turn out for me. Not just in this job, but in my life. I took my time getting here – I’ve taken career breaks and changed paths a few times. But I was always going to be a career woman. I was always going to be the kind of person who needed vacation desperately because she would not, or could not, stop herself from giving too much of herself to her job in the perhaps vain pursuit of doing things well when it seemed others couldn’t. I became exactly the kind of woman my seven-year-old self admired. The kind of woman who means business, and looks good doing it. While trying, sometimes desperately, to hold it all together behind the scenes.

Maybe I just love a challenge. Or maybe I really believe I have superpowers. It’s hard to say. But when I look back on these photos, I know that I already knew what the next months of my life were going to look out. And when I look at them again, I realise that I’ve known it all along. This woman, with her expensive French newspaper, who naively thinks she can succeed in improving corporate drudgery where others have failed, is who I was always going to be. She’s silly. She pushes herself too hard, often for no discernible gain. But I like her, anyway. After all, she never fails to reward herself with new shoes and delicious pastries.

Tell me, darlings; have you ever looked at a photo of yourself and thought, This is who I was always going to be? I want the honest truth.