It may seem minor, but I had what I consider a breakthrough this week. Monday afternoon, I had a report returned to me with edits from my boss. Three places she wrote “grammar” as a comment pointing to a sentence that had no grammatical error. I had not given her a report that had any grammatical mistakes in it. I am a much more accomplished grammarian than my boss. I took offense that she was calling my work substandard and wondered how to go about sending the drafts back with a “no grammatical error here” comment. I left work for the day.
The next morning, I looked at the report again and decided that I would not make waves. I did not try to correct her errors, but simply rewrote the sentences that she pointed to and sent it back for re-review. The decision brought me immediate relief.
When I don’t struggle, I don’t have conflict. My goal is to remain employed in an adversarial work environment. It doesn’t matter what my boss thinks of me if I can stay confident in my skills and bide my time. I’m getting a lot of practice letting go, and I think I see some progress.