The Next Thing

Seven months ago, I posted this on Facebook (italics added):

Today, I complete the The Artist's Way, a twelve-week program created by Julia Cameron. It’s officially tagged as a creative recovery program, but for me, it’s been about more than opening the channel to create art. It’s been about opening the channel to create absolutely anything – loving relationships, a satisfying career, a truer version of myself, the next moment. This is my second time through the course; the last time, back in my mid-twenties, was a crazy mess, although still quite transformative. This time was calmer and more of a journey into self-honoring and self-empowerment than what I expected when I began. And so, onto the next chapter I go…

The italicized line has really taken on a life of its own, and in particular, that "satisfying career" piece has been a trip.

To start with some context, my decision to do The Artist's Way came from two intersecting circumstances: a lot of time on my hands, and not a clue with what I might do to fill it.  My move back to my hometown necessitated leaving a full-time law teaching job, and as I experimented with continuing on the teaching path, the signs kept showing me that this wasn't the way to go. 

During my first year back, I got a little break from figuring all this out when I worked side by side with my husband as he started a business in his field, dog grooming.  Although it was such a great experience to see my husband, the dog whisperer, do his thing, when the business took off, the obvious choice for both the good of the business and our marriage was to hire other people. 

And then, I was out of excuses and really freed up to find my own thing, but the next thing has turned out to be quite an elusive little sucker.

Over two years of on and off job searching, I've gone through cycles of sending out tons of resumes to walking away from it all for a little while.  A big part of my frustration has been the way the current job market feels, a sea of position announcements with no give, each drawing a neat little box of specific requirements.  And as I measured myself against these requirement lists, again and again, I felt like a messy blob of way too much and not enough all at the same time.  I felt like a completely misshapen peg staring down a bunch of perfectly defined little holes, and I had no desire to even try wedging myself into most of them.  From the lack of response to so many of my applications, they had no desire for me to try.

And actually, I really started to love unemployment.  The looking for jobs part really sucked at times, but it would be easy to get used to not working.

But as soon as I'd start settling in to that contentment, the pendulum would swing back, and I'd remember how I felt when I wrote that post on Facebook.  I wanted to do something in the world, be part of something that felt meaningful, paint the next part of this lifelong work of art called My Career.  I could see how all the signs in life kept lining up in a unified message that it was time for me to step out, so Operation Fulfilling Job kept on moving forward. 

In the search, there were two notable possibilities: a job right out of the gate as a social media strategist, and a job about two months ago as a prison case manager. 

The social media job was an exact match for my desire for great aesthetics: gorgeous office building, cool and interesting co-workers, huge opportunities for creativity.  And at first, all slid along feeling quite fated with a great interview and then a call to come back the next day.  But even though an offer followed, there was a strange series of miscommunications that shattered my fantasy of this perfect new job before it even got off the ground.

After months of nothing more than a bunch of half-hearted applications, the prison job was the next thing that really ignited a sense of possibility in me.  Although it lacked all the aesthetics that made me drool over that social media job, I thought maybe I'd be more content on the other, more purposeful, side of the spectrum.  But, as I detailed in my last post, this too was not at all a fit for me.

I wanted the meaning and a sense of service to the greater good AND I wanted the aesthetics, the good feeling day to day.  I wanted the chance to start a creative and intellectual adventure with beauty at both the surface and the depths.  Even though the possibility of finding such a thing was looking less and less likely, I somehow kept the faith. 

Shortly after strike two on this job seeking odyssey, my experience underwent a noticeable shift.  A couple of job announcements crossed my path within days of each other.  One was for the exact job that I got out of law school, although in a different office.  It was something I was good at then, and all my experiences in the interim only made me more qualified.  The other announcement was for a job with a renewable energy company mentioning a mix of skills that fit within my legal background and my more recent exposure to business and accounting through doing the books for my husband's business.  And this second announcement felt so different from all the ones I'd been seeing; rather than a neat and defined box, it was vague, open, and flexible.

Finally, I wasn't in that spot of feeling like both too little and too much for a job.  For one of them, I felt myself to me the perfect fit, given that the exact job title was already on my resume.  For the other, I could see how I was an interesting possibility with the key skills and qualities they hoped to find.

As you can probably guess by now, one of these two jobs has become that next thing for me.

That job I held in the past, not even a phone call.  A week ago, I got a letter in the mail that they decided not to pursue my candidacy.  It actually amuses me that when I finally did find that perfect fit of a box, there was still no response.  Great confirmation that this time of my life really is for starting something new.

And my new thing has emerged from that uniquely open job announcement.  It feels more beautiful and interesting than the job I would have created from my own mind if I'd really let myself imagine that anything was possible.

This time I'm not buying into any fantasy of perfection, but I am truly excited and curious about the shape this new phase of life will take.  And so again, onto the next chapter I go...

Capitalism as a Way to Address Our Prison Crisis?

Almost fifteen years ago, I walked into a prison for the first time, and since then, the current state of our prison system had been of great and heartbreaking interest to me.  I wrote a little about my thoughts, feelings, and experiences with all this in locked down light back in 2010.

And recently, I have had a new surge of energy in this area.  I've been job searching on and off for the last couple years, looking for a meaningful and interesting new start to my career.  In the process, I've opened up and explored a huge variety of possibilities, and a couple months ago, I applied for and accepted a position as a case manager in a local jail.  Although the pay wasn't great, it had the stability and benefits I wanted, and it felt like an opportunity to do meaningful work that would channel my compassion for incarcerated people into something productive.

I lasted two days. 

The PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) talk and the prison tour culminated into a stomach turning reality check.  I could not possibly handle being in this environment day after day.  The smells, the overcrowding, the human beings caged up for huge parts of the day with one or two other people in rooms the size of a typical bathroom...I wanted to cry or just scream "how can we call this humane!" 

I was in a facility holding mostly people who had not even been convicted.  Any one of us, no matter the legality of our actions, could be accused of a crime.  And the unfortunate reality of our criminal justice system is that convicted isn't really synonymous with guilt; just take a look at all the exonerations of people after decades of serving time.  Guilty or innocent, this is no way to treat other human beings.

Although I felt moved to action, I chose my mental well being and walked away from the job.  But I started researching and thinking about possibilities for shifting the horrid direction of mass incarceration and inhumane conditions in our prisons.  In this, something occurred to me.

I started here: Why Scandinavian Prisons Have Less Recidivism.  For me, this article was heartening and opened up some optimism that at least somewhere in the world a different approach is taken.  Then, I came across this: Prison Firm CCA Seeks to Reduce Number of Repeat Offenders, and an idea started coming together.

What if one of our for-profit prison companies could be convinced to build a prison much more like one of these Scandinavian prisons?  What if it was built to compete with the overcrowded and violent facilities throughout our nation?  What if this company used the project to study the recidivism rates in different types of facilities?  What if judges across the country were moved to send offenders here for a more rehabilitative period of incarceration?  What if this started to shift the cycles of recidivism and the ever-increasing prison population?

Many states (19, I think) outlaw the use of private prisons, and just a few minutes searching the topic of private prisons reveals the skepticism and disgust in the public perception of these facilities.  I don't know whether this public opinion reflects reality because of the lack of studies on whether the conditions in the private prisons are really worse than in the publically run facilities.  My own gut says that there isn't much of a difference, and the distaste comes from the fact that these prisons are making a profit.

But lately, I've started challenging that assumption that the profit motive only instigates greed and corruption.  (A book that started opening me to this view is Be The Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the Worlds Problems.)  Either private or public, there's a ridiculous amount of our tax dollars perpetuating this cycle.  Could the for-profit motive lead to greater efficiency in the spending of those dollars?  Could it lead to more creative solutions, more creative ways of connecting the greater good with a profit?  Could this bottom line motivation actually be helpful in instigating change?  Is it possible to start a revolution here in the for-profit sector that stagnant government bureaucracy couldn't possibly accomplish? 

I'm inclined to say, yes.

Thoughts?  I invite any and all ideas, by email, message, or comment below. 

Autonomy and Women

As both a woman and the mother of a woman-to-be, I am deeply interested in issues of gender equality and harmony, and it is actually a somewhat rare occurrence that I find a point of view that really resonates for me in this area.  But recently, two completely different articles crossed my FB newsfeed and stood out: Legalize Polygamy and Freedom Whore (about abortion - warning graphic photo and some strong language in this article).  As you might imagine from the titles, these two articles share little in terms of general flavor, content, or place on the liberal/conservative divide.  And although neither article fully resonated for me, as I read them, I was struck by the common respect for feminine autonomy at the heart of each argument.  

The trend of other people making decisions on behalf of adult women is a vestige of historical inequality.  Although the specifics have changed, the existence of debates around polygamy and abortion illustrate how the dynamic has remained.  It is so easy for us to mentally imagine the choices of abortion or marrying a man that already has a wife (or several) and proclaim ourselves able to make "the right decision" for women generally.  We can get so absorbed in the debate that we overlook the immense difference between this abstract analysis and the actuality of such a decision in an individual woman’s life.   

These debates attempt to override an individual woman's personal calculus.  The back-alley abortions and polygamous marriages in the shadows show the truth: these are and always will be her decisions about her life and her body.  

As long as there is a fight in public about the right decision she should make, her individual autonomy is not fully respected.  The idea of women as a means lurks within both of these issues, yet each woman is more than a means for children and more than a means for progress in the women's movement.  Each woman is an autonomous being in control of her own destiny, no matter the destiny she might choose.  

In the safe place of not having either of these choices before me, I personally feel deeply drawn to choose life and to choose only one marriage partner, but am I really in a position to make either of these choices for another woman, faced with incredibly different circumstances and coming from a completely different history?  When I consider some of the really big differences facing other women who confront these decisions, my own sense of the decision I would make seems completely irrelevant.