With great responsibility comes great power

I was promoted today, sort of. Although I have not yet been officially promoted to the position of account supervisor, I am going to start taking on some supervisory responsibilities on two of my accounts, which is to say that I will now have one person working under me to take the bulk of the work, while I provide counsel and strategic direction as needed. Tomorrow, everything starts to change.

It scares the shit out of me.

I have always been ambitious, and I've always been driven to succeed. It's been my goal to be the vice president of public relations at some company by the time I'm 30. I have always believed that I would go far, but I guess I didn't really expect that it would happen to me so young in my career.

But at 26, while most of the people I graduated with are still account executives*, I am getting ready to make the leap into management. In fact, I am younger than my new account executive by 2 years.

It literally scares the shit out of me.

This is a really big step for me, both personally and professionally. I know that there will be challenges ahead. I know that I will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. I know that I don't know everything I should probably know to be in this position. But I've worked my ass off to get here, and I deserve it.

The notion that I deserve it is something I'm coming around to.

The only bummer in this situation is that I will be supervising my two favorite accounts. The one allows me to really feel like I am DOING something... that I'm not just selling products or ideas, but solutions that will really, truly help people. The other client is my favorite because of the people... my "gay boyfriend" is my main client contact and I don't know how I'll go from calling him three times a day to calling him three times a month. Basically, I'll be DOING less work and OVERSEEING more work. Make sense?

Not only will the scope and responsibility of my work change, the way that I am viewed by my peers will change. This is what I am having the most trouble with. The girl whom I will be supervising is my friend. We eat lunch together in our little group of 6 almost every day. Her brother is trying to date me. I can practically feel the tension mounting.

Plus, the other girls at the lunch table won't feel like they can grouse about their jobs in front of me. I'll go from being a friend to a superior. I don't like the thought of losing my social network when my social network is so small to even begin with. I KNOW that this is the next logical step in my career and I have always known this day is coming. I guess I just thought I had more time to get used to the idea... I guess I thought that I'd become a supervisor at my next job, not right now.

(Here is where I have to stop myself from being so melodramatic. It's not the end of world, and I'm not even technically a supervisor yet.)

It is nice to know that my own supervisors have faith in me. I like knowing that they trust me to take this step and are willing to help me through it. It seems ironic that 2 months ago I got a nasty gram from them, telling me that I had a lot of areas to improve upon. I guess I made the improvements they requested, and then some.

I feel like I am becoming the PR professional that I am meant to be. At the same time, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety over leaving behind the professional that I am. I need to take the faith that my supervisors have in me and have it in myself.

But god, I'm scared shit less!

*NOTE: The typical progression of a professional in the PR field is as follows. The numbers behind each position indicate the number of years of experience each position generally requires. Note that I will celebrate my 5th year out of college next summer: Assistant Account Executive (1-2 years); Account Executive (2-4 years); Senior Account Executive (5-7 years); Account Supervisor (6-9); Senior Account Supervisor (10-15 years); Assistant Vice President and so on...

Another weird dream

In this one, I was pregnant and had to tell my family that I didn't know who the father was. Talk about a nightmare.

To Do List

Go to the grocery store
Go to Target
Wash, dust, Armorall and vacuum car
Get oil change
Clean house (includes dusting)
Organize book club
Buy book for book club
Call Dennis to see if I am going to the Bob Dylan concert with him (cross fingers)
Watch Bengals game
Make nice with boys upstairs
Clean closet
Purge refrigerator
Pay bills
Work out
Rejoin Match.com
Do laundry
Find out why vacuum has suddenly stopped working

Dreams

I had this crazy dream last night. I dreamt that I was driving along in a car, holding a baby. The baby (well, he was more like a two year old) was hanging his head out the window enjoying the sweaty summer breeze. The sun shone down on the car as we sped along a curving, dusty road towards the beach.

I stopped by a white fence – the kind of white, split-rail fence that encloses a paddock – to ask permission of the child's mother to take him to the beach. The mother (who incidentally was depicted in my dream as my friend Leia's mother-in-law) was on her hands and knees in the dust, a straw hat on her head and a small spade in her hand. She was gardening, digging among huge tomato plants and God knows what else. Leia was with her. I asked if I could take the baby to the beach. The mother looked skeptical, but I saw Leia nod to her, as if to assure her that I would not harm the baby. The mother said it was fine and the baby and I took off towards the coast.

We arrived at the beach and started walking towards the water. All of a sudden, the sky darkened and the water became tumultuous. Without warning, a huge wave came racing towards the shore. Everything began to move in in slow motion – me, holding a small child, being sucked suddenly and fiercely into a 100-foot wave with no possibility of escape. I rode along its crest, held high above the beach and the swirling water. I saw the people below, the mother and my friend Leia, gesturing frantically towards me, but there was nothing any of us could do.

I was held aloft by the wave as it carried me far, far down the beach. Suddenly, I felt the wave disappear beneath me and I was plummeting towards the earth. I turned on my back, towards the sky, and cradled the child in my arms. We landed in a palm tree miles away from where we started.

I could see the mother and my friend Leia wildly searching for us, combing the beach to find some indication that we were alright. My dreamland self tried to catch their attention – "We're okay, we're in the palm tree!!" – but it was of no use. The mother sobbed violently and blamed me for taking her child to the beach... and then taking her child away from her.

As the search party left the beach, I somehow found a way to shimmy down the trunk of the palm tree to the littered beach below. The baby suddenly (and inexplicably) became my youngest brother. Not a baby version of my brother, but the full-grown, 19-year-old current version of my brother. I was still cradling him. Together, we took off down the beach in search of the mother.

That's where the dream ended. I woke up tangled in my sheets, curled tightly into a sweaty ball. My heart was racing. My body was shaking. And I felt like weeping.