I wake up with fragments of a nice dream still floating around my mind 🌈 🦄. I take it slow; it's Sunday! While I regain some sense of reality, I think: a new day, new opportunities! 🤗 triggering excitement through my body. Then I look at my phone and realize it’s... actually... MONDAY! 😱. My heart sinks. The opportunities do not unfold. My sense of independence becomes blurry. I better get up and get ready to be micromanaged one... more... time 😰. My mind freezes. All I can do is warm it up with a strong cup of coffee ☕️ to gain the necessary courage to open my computer, log into Skype, and withstand the next few hours. I decide to stay in my pajamas; there’s no need to look good. I already know how things are gonna play out. My ideas will not fly. They will be crushed and replaced with the more boring and safer alternatives. I’ve been dealing with this 9–5 for a few weeks now, but it feels like an eternity. Being in the middle of a pandemic, I feel like I have to hold on to this job, even though it’s bringing me down. I’m struggling to convince myself that I am actually lucky for landing a job during these tough times. Everyone tells me I have to be grateful. And I gotta eat and pay the bills (and hopefully save enough money to start going to therapy 😅).

The micromanager is a soul-crusher 💔. It’s a character that completely destroys your self-confidence and your hopes for your professional future. I’d heard about it before, but I always thought it was more of a mythical figure that seemed to hunt certain workspaces (and the lives of certain people) 👻. I never thought I would cross paths with one. They are close-minded, controlling, authoritarian, and invasive.

I still remember the emotional roller coaster I would go through every time I pitched an idea 🎢, I would see my boss’ mouth moving, and the corner of his lips seemed to be going upwards... Is that a smile!? I would think to myself, Is this possible? Have I gotten through to him for the first time? I think he will finally approve an idea of mine!... Until I realized he was just holding his need to yawn before reminding me that emojis and gifs aren’t "professional"... leave things just as they are, he would say, this is not a space for new things, if ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?

He wasn’t very keen on the idea of working remotely, he was a can't-wait-for-things-to-go-back-to-normal kinda guy. On a daily basis, I was receiving an average of 15 calls per day. Whenever I was writing a text and he saw I was typing, he would call me: I saw you typing, what did you want to tell me? He was checking up on me all the time, always “making sure” I was working, going over my tasks, and making me read them out loud. The truth is that he was more of an obstacle-wielding authority, than a leader paving the way. At first, I tried my best to gain his trust, playing his game patiently, expecting things to improve with the passing of time. But things didn't improve. Quite the opposite. My anxiety increased as his surveillance became overwhelming. I came to the realization that I was never gonna gain his trust, the fact was that he just didn't trust himself. We all have a limit to how much we are willing to put up with.

I QUIT! It took me two months to get those words out of my mouth, but as soon as I did, I felt instant relief and freedom 😀. I realized that the torture was mostly inside my head, the intolerable situation was of my own doing, and I could’ve stepped away at any time. I immediately felt my lungs expanding, my brain enlarging like a grow-in-the-water dino🦖... now I can be anyone! Now I can be me! I immediately started to regain my powers and see things clearly and brightly.

✌️😬✌️