Easy Now

So, I was a little, um, worked up in that last post.  I’m better now, I promise.  There are a couple of reasons why.

1.  The sun has come back into the sky, after having hidden behind murky gray clouds for days.  I am a solar powered machine.

2. I reread the part about taking action in Barbara Sher’s book.  Oh yeah, action!  I had forgotten about that!  It turns out ruminating alone does not produce much in the way of results for me.  Nor does it make me feel particularly awesome.

I admit I haven’t taken a LOT of actions already, but I started again.  And it feels good.  I contacted another friend to have coffee and talk about her job.  (It’s research into What’s Out There!)  I signed up to help plan a women’s gathering at my church.  (This seems unrelated, but I think it will give me the opportunity to meet a bunch of people who might know interesting and useful things.)  I got up early enough to do some shivanata this morning.  And I worked on a couple of the exercises from the book.  Wanna see?

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One of the things to think about is what we secretly, deep down, think we’re “supposed” to be doing with our lives.  These are things we osmosed (new verb?) as children that we consciously or unconsciously compare ourselves against.  The idea is to discover that we hold contradictory ideas in our heads.  Once we know the standards to which we’re holding ourselves are impossible to meet, we can let them go a little bit.

What messages did I pick up while growing up that told me what I’m “supposed” to be doing by this nice round-number age?  I’m definitely supposed to me smart.  As a kid I was supposed to be an excellent student.  And I was (high school valedictorian, prestigious college, blah, blah, etc.).  But I’m not supposed to be a student now, even though I’m really good at it.  I’m supposed to have a job.  I was supposed to be safe and not take risks.  By now I was supposed to be married, and maybe already have kids.   I’m not, and I don’t.  Did my parents or anyone suggest what I should do work-wise?  Something “better” than what they do.  By which I think I mean, “more prestigious.”  I guess maybe I was supposed to be a genius and also a mother?  I don’t think those are things one can accomplish without taking risks.

This was kind of interesting to think about, but I’m not sure it got me much further on the path.  I don’t feel as though my parents disapprove of my life as it is now.  Far from it!  I don’t think this is the thing that’s holding me back from figuring out what I want to do.

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Next I though about another thing: the job I’d hate most in the world.  This is a tricky way to make me figure out what an ideal job might be like.  It’s the opposite of the nightmare job.  I maybe kind of cheated on this one.  I basically wrote down all the things I don’t like about my current job.  But maybe I don’t have such clear memories of things I hated about past jobs.  And!  Maybe I would not like the opposing condition to the one I hate, either.  Hmm.  Anyway, here are the characteristics of my worst job ever.

I’d work alone without any camaraderie.
I’d have a boss who didn’t appreciate me, and could not be pleased.
I’d do drudge work that was not exciting, and that didn’t benefit any people in the world.
I’d have no supervision, and never know whether I was doing a good job.
I’d be in an office that had no natural light and no color.
I’d be constantly flooded with work, and would always feel like I hadn’t accomplished enough.

(A lot of these things seem to be pointing to a need for external gratification, btw.)

And now, what is the opposite of these things?

I would have colleagues and human interaction during the day.
People that I respect would appreciate my work and tell me so.
I would do work that was interesting and varied and that helped people in the world in some way.
I would have some supervision so I wouldn’t feel all on my own and uncertain whether I was doing it right.
I would have pleasant physical surroundings.
I would have enough work to keep me busy, but not so much that I felt overwhelmed all the time.

So, does this point to anything?  It doesn’t help narrow down the options of kinds of work I might like to do.  But it does define the kind of environment I’d like to work in.  Office (or not-office) culture.

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Hey!  This was a lot of words.  I’m stopping now.

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