[star parfait]

A quick background, I had surgery and couldn't go back to my old job. I was out of work for about five months when I found this job I'm working now. I really, really like what I'm doing. It's the next step forward in my field and it's new and challenging.

But the atmosphere there is hard on me. Number one, a lot of the employees dislike one another. So if I ask one person what the procedure is, and I follow their advice, then someone else will say, "Screw them, they don't know what they're talking about, here's what you should REALLY do." The supervisor is very hands-off so I'm trying to figure all this out by myself and I don't like that. I like rules and parameters, not chaos and guesswork.

Number two, there is always more work than anyone can get done. Intellectually I know that, and I know I need to give myself permission to not be superhuman, to work at my own pace, and if they can't accept that, then the job is not for me. But perfectionism has always been an issue for me, and I hate hate HATE leaving work undone.

So I've been there about three months now and when people say, "How do you like your new job?" I'm not sure whether I do or not.

So does anybody have advice on how you were able to stop expecting the impossible from yourself? I think a lot of the pressure I feel comes from within, I just don't know how not to feel it.

[cheshiregrins]

I had that same problem when I started a new job- expecting too much and terrified to make a mistake. What helped was to realistically look at my work compared to others. I noticed that other people do make a lot of mistakes and it's not such a big deal. As long as you're keeping up with the team, you have to accept that that's good enough.
The alternative is that you'll stress yourself out or work yourself to the ground and end up crashing, and then you really won't be of much use to the others.