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...
No comments:
Post a Comment