I started a new job a few weeks ago. I’m back in a corporate environment again. It’s been mostly good so far: having a steady paycheck is nice, and I do know how to do this job well without too much ramping up. It is cutting into my ability to sleep in every morning, which will take some getting used to. But from an existential and financial, this is a big step in a better direction.
The folks in working with are very nice and welcoming, which I feel is really important if I’m to do well in this new place. I want to have a good interpersonal connection with everyone on my team, and I feel like I am integrating very well. They are quirky and funny and dorky, which definitely makes them my people.
The one thing that I am really anxious about is coming out as poly at some point. I came out at work when I had my last corporate job. I inched my way out to folks, approaching those I knew would be understanding, or at least would roll their eyes at me and get back to work. It felt really good to discuss my life with them without having to do an elaborate self-censoring dance. And I knew that I was lucky to find myself in that workplace with a majority of queer folks, which made those first hurdles nearly nonexistent. I cherished that.
A few months ago, it dawned on me that I was going to have to go through that whole process again. At first I was a little angry, because in my head I had “already” done all that work. It was unfair that I had to start over again at the beginning. Even without the greater societal norms and expectations that I had to climb around, it felt like I was being personally penalized. Once those vague feelings were centered on a specific new job, the anxiety zoomed up to the foreground. I was going to have to have that conversation with these specific people, in these specific circumstances.
I have not come out to anyone there yet. I’ve only been there a few weeks, and I feel like I want to know the lay of the land more first before I start making moves. And I am already not as confident that it will be as easy this time. These folks are a bit older, and bit more conservative, than my old team. I think it’s going to take me a little more time, and I’ll need to be a bit more intentional.
But I will come out to them, one way or another. My relationships are too big, and too present in my life, to pretend that they aren’t there. I long to be myself in that group, truly and completely. I look forward to being in that place.