
It won’t be any surprise to regular readers to know I’ve felt at a crossroads in my life over the last few years. Call it a mid-life career crisis if you will, but something has definitely been off. I’ve started to question exactly what all this life business is about really. What am I striving for? For what purpose?
Apparently this is a very common, especially with women who are 'achievers' (to say I'm a junkie for accomplishing things would be an understatement!). For the first part of your life you strive for the sake of striving because you're trying to prove yourself, but suddenly you realise that you want to strive to make a difference for something outside of yourself – and unfortunately you realise you don’t so you become disillusioned. And then change job.
When I see news stories about how there are too few woman in senior positions and the same old trite reasons are spewed forth such as leaving to take care of family and children now women are marrying and having kids later I think blah, blah, blah, what a crock. Men generally tend to enjoy the sense of accomplishment, power, respect and of course money that comes with climbing the career ladder, embracing it and going with it, whereas I think women do start off this way and somewhere along the way stop and think “what am I doing this for? Who benefits? I want to make a difference and I'm not. In fact I haven’t been for a long time. This isn't who I am.” You suddenly realise that you are disappointed with your job - hell your whole career - that you don’t contribute in any meaningful way. Then you leave and try and find something that will help you contribute. But that job doesn’t cut it either, so you leave and try and find something else. Ad infinitum.
Marcia Reynolds wrote about this in her book Wander Women. We are destined to wander not knowing what we want but every time we start afresh with new hopes we soon know whatever we want isn’t where we’ve just jumped to, and we feel empty because of it. There's an ancient story, a blueprint, that we have in our heads and we don't live up to it.
I am more than the story I and everyone else thinks I’m supposed to be. The qualifications I have achieved so far has positioned me for a ladder I don’t want to climb. I don’t even think my ladder is up against the right tree to be quite frank. And it shows. Right now I’m so happy with my home life, but it is entirely at odds with my work life. I want more of what I have at home because of the feelings it generates and the values it aligns with, and less of what I currently do at work. And I want a way of making money that reflects the former. Either I need to update my story so it aligns with my working life, or I need to let both go and get a different story and working life.
I can remember being 14 and trying to choose my options for GCSE. I remember being interested in social work and child protection, but sadly choosing normal ‘standard’ subjects as I met too much resistance trying to choose a different path. Knowing what I know now I don’t think I’d be happy as a social worker, but I think back then I wanted to feel I was directly involved in changing a life. I should have stuck to my guns. At the time I wanted to work with children, probably because that was what most of the GCSE subjects in this area revolved around, but over the years that’s expanded beyond children to encompass adults, animals and the environment at different times.
I’ve never wanted my own children, and I knew that at 15, but now I’m questioning more deeply why that would be. Did I think I was destined for something else, to use the time not being used for taking care of a family to make a difference in other ways? I’m not saying parents can’t make a difference, they can, but when you have kids your free time is torn between many different tasks caring for them so the time available for doing anything beyond that is limited. Your family unit has to come first before you can care for other things outside the home in a life-changing way. You make a massive life-changing difference to them and the impact of that could last the rest of their life.
So here I sit, trying not to be a Wander Woman because it’s unfair on my employers while the company is in flux, but not knowing what else to do instead because I'm in flux. Two fluxes don't stop the craziness. My job leaves me too far removed from the practical nature of the help I sense I want to offer. Kind of like me being indirectly involved in something that is indirectly involved in directly helping people. I’m two or more levels beyond where I should be. I want to be on the ground doing things not sitting behind a bloody desk all day, but this desk is the culmination of every decision I've made since I was 14 and I wear it like Jacob Marley wears his ghostly chains.
Still don’t know exactly what I want to do though.
[sigh]
It took a year for me to work out this post. I think it’s going to take a while before a pathway presents itself ;-)