Happy Boss's Day, Allison!

Hey everybody, it’s Megan here with a sneak blog!

I wanted to take this space and write a quick piece on National Boss’s Day, Allison, and what Abundance Practice Building means to me.

You could say I’m a late bloomer in a lot of ways. I didn’t even really know that was a thing that existed out of teen movies - I always thought that maybe if you didn’t bloom by your high school graduation you were some kind of cactus/potato hybrid, something kinda squat and potentially prickly and that’s all there is to it - that blooming isn’t a thing that happens to some people.

I ended up doing a lot of huge stuff in my late twenties: I put my husband through college, I desperately wanted to switch careers. We moved across the country. Twice. In two years. I don’t recommend that.

Finding a job has always been a huge source of panic for me and relocating across the country to a very small town of less than 400 people, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave my field unless I wanted to be a cattle brander and I emphatically did not want to do that for a living. But we had also moved 3,000 miles and money doesn’t grow on trees.  I had a lot of hospital/medical/clinical admin experience under my belt but after one interview with the local hospital, I couldn’t stop cringing; to say the pay was bad would mean the pay had to exist to start with. With the commute, the lack of pay, and the bad weather and terrain, I did something I never thought I’d do and I turned down a job I really needed.

I tossed out resumes to online companies, getting some temp online gigs and overflow data entry projects that hardly brought in any money and left me bored, worried, and wondering if I should have taken the job that would have me traveling 15 hours a week through snowy mountain passes with no cell service. Things were starting to look kinda bleak.

Then I got matched up with Allison through the Great Assistant Program. Like a lot of you, I found Abundance Practice Building at just the right time in my life (even though I’m not a therapist). A lot of my previous work experience left me jangled, anxious, and with some mild compassion fatigue and burnout. I was really uncertain about my skills and didn’t have a lot of confidence in my value as an employee outside of the medical or clinical field. I was still buying in to the idea that I was a cactus-potato.

But Allison was unlike any supervisor or boss I’d ever worked for. Within a few days, it was evident I wasn’t working for her, I was working with her. With each new project, each new idea, the work was always fun and interesting. It’s been about two years working with Allison and a few months ago, I noticed something weird was happening. I was blooming. Life started to even out for me; I started to take myself seriously, make my goals a priority, and started trusting my skills.

Boom! Pollen everywhere.

Having Allison believe in your skills and your worth is better than having Clark Kent tell you he likes your glasses or Aquaman complimenting your backstroke. Not that she’s super-human. She’s totally human. But she’s a human who gets it and wants to see everybody succeed. She doesn’t do the work for you, but she gives you some amazing tools and ways to see the best in yourself, and for that, she’s a hero.

 

So to my favorite boss and one of my top 10 favorite people ever, I say Happy Boss’s Day. I will try not to lock myself out of the software today. :)

 

*No offense to cacti or the nightshade plant family.