No change from before to after, but it is coming.
For the longest time (28 years), I had the hardest time deciding what I wanted to do when I grow up. Since I had long term amnesia about who I was and where I had been, I just didn't know. My gut was no help, it was crazy. Whenever I asked, "what do I want to be when I grow up?" it's answer was always "a happy woman." If I ever got past that, I had mad, grandiose plans (strangely detailed with sensible doable steps for each progression along the way) that I couldn't believe in because as a hollow sham person (a human Sham-wow!) I knew I would always fail if I did something that was attention getting and pride-ish.
Just like my love relationships, my working relationships tended to follow a pattern of me stumbling into someone who seemed to tolerate and like me, me sticking like one of those little burrs that stick to your sock when you are hiking, and then adapting myself to meet their every need while disappearing from view as an individual. It was safer that way-- I didn't really like myself very much so I was always trying to prove that I was essential and shouldn't be discarded.
I've been at my current company for 10 years, filling gaps that would stop the company if they were ignored, and staying invisible except to my immediate supervisors.
Since I transitioned over the past year, I've done better at work because I am much better able to manage the expectations of others, who were perpetually disappointed, since I would be doing the work of 7 people, but would have committed to do the work of 9. Now I still can't help doing the work of 7 people, because this stuff would be so boring if I didn't challenge myself somehow, but I promise 6, not 9.
I wrote a poem about my career feelings and how its tangled up with all my other life transitions that are unfolding simultaneously. I know - the word poem and the word career in the same line? But I was a liberal arts major in college.
Quote from: MadelineB on October 14, 2012, 03:05:22 PM
from CAREER to CAREEN in one letter
or: twitching to escape from one straitjacket more
career || a wall that I stare at from the wrong side
how may I alter this particular noun
to make it into the verb that I need?
before my need avalanches me?
how does one transform
a fixed path that no longer fits.....
follow the 'quote from' link to read
the whole thing.
In therapy two weeks ago I finally retired from the rescue business.
When my therapist asked me the question I would not have been able to answer before: "Ask your whole being, what do you want to do with all of your energy that you have been dedicating to rescue operations all of these years?" it only took a minute of meditation to clearly form the answer "I want through my work to unleash the creativity and power of young people, who are our future."
So I know my next career, a true vocation for me. Now its just details for getting there.
