new challenges at work

13 May, 2026

In the past, I have complained about some aspects of my work here and there. As I continue to grow, get more qualifications, visit conferences, and apply to interesting positions, I've put more effort into transforming the place where I'm at, to the best of my abilities.

I've repeatedly asked for more work, I've asked for different tasks, and I helped create a new role. Not replacing my current role and work, but something on top/on the side next to my core tasks. I needed change and something worth logging in or coming into the office for, and of course I wanted to pivot more into my desired field. That brings some new challenges, which are desired, but can be uncomfortable at first.

Years of doing the same tasks with comparatively little cooperation and following repetitive processes never forced me to put a lot of thought into what I put out, so to say. That can be very nice, and in the beginning, it was hard enough learning everything and doing everything correctly.

With my core work, no one asks me to create anything from scratch, make any decisions, or organize anything independently; it's all set in stone. If I wanted to, I could just spend years doing the work-equivalent of "minding my own business" and keeping my head down, in which I work off what came in that day based on our rigid standards and use fixed email templates (not even having to formulate my own sentences), nothing more, nothing less, unbothered. That's what I did for years as I got used to everything, and as I was very sick.

But now, when I want to do more challenging work, I notice that years of working like this have made me very comfortable. Not lazy, but it feels unusual and slightly scary to suddenly have a more "active" part of work where I actually have to plan meetings, host and lead them, prepare slides, and even approach people first about needing to find time to discuss something together. Completely normal office tasks for others, of course, and it's what I wanted to not stagnate further in something that bores me, but my brain still perceives it as a threat.

Due to internal restructuring and moving of employees, we lost our sub-department's IT coordinator¹ (each sub-department has to assign someone). I asked my boss if I could be the new one, and she agreed. Unfortunately, at least in our department, this title is more decorative than anything else, as the IT coordinators don't even have any meetings to discuss anything at all. This has generally worked fine enough, as in "we are surviving", but now with different AI model rollouts and other software changes, I notice employees becoming more and more confused and helpless, and a more proactive approach would be nicer. When I asked my boss for permission to be one, I said I would like to organize a meeting of all coordinators to discuss some challenges and more, and both her and the department head thought this was a good idea and asked me to schedule one soon.

I didn't expect how much this task would make me freeze up; I didn't wanna be the newcomer in a group who piles more work and yet another meeting onto the other people as a first move. So I obsessed over a good way to introduce this, and how to make the first meeting worth it. I didn't want everyone to show up, discover we have nothing to discuss, and leave after 5 minutes. The invitation mail should stress that this is just a first, casual meeting in which we will talk about x, y and z topic, and then determine whether this should happen again and in what frequency.

I also kept pondering whether I should also already prepare a topic/mini-presentation to not come with empty hands myself as an organizer, and what that could be, putting a lot of pressure on finding something good enough. The final hurdle was that no one in my department apparently even had a full list of who the other coordinators are; had to research that myself somehow and ask around. All that made me put off scheduling anything for a good 3 weeks.

Yesterday, I finally dealt with this mess, as the task became more and more pressing and uncomfortable to think about, threatening to become this huge anxiety beast strangling me. Detangled my feelings, set realistic expectations, and scheduled it to mid June to have a bit of time.

At the same time, I am finally officially the data protection coordinator of my department. My work never had any before, no other department has one either. This is just my department wanting to lead by example, and admittedly, also accommodating me and my ambitions, as I have asked for this for months. Leadership up top has repeatedly thwarted my attempts to move into the data protection team, or officially implement coordinators house-wide, and refused to even discuss it or process it in the idea management system, so this is my little rebellion, you could say. Doing things from the bottom up.

I have already prepared the slides they will use to announce it in the next department meeting and the meeting of all department heads. I will also have to prepare a short presentation about data protection challenges in our department, scheduled around Q3 or Q4 of 2026 as I need time to get an overview of everything. I'll have to meet up and interview a lot of people about their team's data workflows to see what needs to be adjusted, write some analyses, write deletion concepts, create awareness, ensure compliance, and more. I'll also be the person to go to before the data protection officer is getting involved.

It's what I wanted, but internally it also makes me very nervous. I finally get to create things and success will be about the quality, not just that something was done; but it opens the door for thoughts about whether I am good enough or not. Merely following process steps as described makes it easy to just be a bot that gets things done; creating things yourself, sharing your own ideas and opinions exposes you as a person, makes you vulnerable. There are people working there that will finally see that there is a person with a brain underneath the years of automatically generated emails they received in my name.

There is no one else to watch and learn from, as I am the only one, and I get to make things up as I go for this new role. I will be the blueprint, for now. There are horror scenarios in my head of not knowing something in a meeting and everyone thinking I am an impostor who doesn't really know anything. That's not how real life goes, of course, and everyone is usually understanding when you say "Sorry, I will have to look that up and get back to you about that.", but you know how brains are. I'll have to learn from every meeting.

I am scared of not doing a good job and doing it all a disservice. The culture is an aspect of it too, because unfortunately, my place has a reputation of not being kind to ambitious people, and many people being rather hostile if anything is asked of them - time, expertise, feedback, a change in routine, a little bit of grace; anything. There are also a few coworkers that have proven again and again that they are unable to view younger people or people lacking this or that university degree as worth taking seriously.

That's what I will be up against, and my own harsh standards I have for myself. I'm trying to reassure myself that I have time to figure things out and that I need to make mistakes to improve.

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Published 13 May, 2026

#2026