I've always fought against memories of the past. In doing so I've deprived myself of the chance to actually enjoy what they mean.
What's the first thing you remember when listening to Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child of Mine? To me it's Slash and his guitar at the beginning of the song.
I don't know about you but but music, Naginata and sometimes being a mean and nasty son of a bitch is so liberating. Fuck the consequences and just go with it
I've decided that this is the last time I talk to the person I've been having problems with and then let the chips fall as they may.
Part of reinventing yourself is to keep yourself flexible and nimble. I heard news @work that put the June conference into perspective. Now it makes sense why I have to take vacation time to go and it defused that piece to the point where it's a non-issue. What brought my anger level up 'though is the fact that where I want to go professionally does not match where upper management wants me to go and no one has seen fit to tell me so. I had to pry it out of my supervisor today and I know that he's as uncomfortable with this whole situation as I am but he really can't do much about it either. SO I have to decide if my peace of mind is worth calling attention to myself and the possible consequences of that action.
I can't get this song from my head and haven't been able to for a while. The emphasis to me is in the chorus:
We're fighting for the gods of war
But what the hell we're fighting for
We're fighting with the gods of war
But I ain't gonna fight no more
The first step is to take inventory of yourself, your priorities and your goals (both short and long term).
The last few posts have talked a lot about priorities, goals and commitments. For more details see Sometimes I just wish, Priorities, realizations and commitments, and Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish so now I think it's time to do an inventory of who I really am and take another, more serious, look at where I want to be or perhaps who I don't want to be.
I want to be someone whom people can trust, and not be afraid to approach; I want those around me to know that, if I see a reciprocal effort, I'll put 110% effort into our friendship. People who try to, in their words, "be nice" have a problem that I don't want to be a part of: in being nice they deprive their friends of the opportunities to change and grow. I tend to be opinionated, sometimes too opinionated for my own good, but I'll always do my best to be open and honest with my friends.
I think that we all want to work on something we enjoy and can grow to love. The disagreements are more in the shape and nature of what that job is and the areas of responsibilities that it's associated with "the dream job". Some things are about the job itself and others are more about what I want and the challenges I want to stretch me professionally.
- I want flexibility;
- I want room for growth: not be pigeonholed into one specific area but to be allowed to branch out as needed to get stuff done and not get bored to tears;
Perhaps that's the key to reinventing yourself.... To keep enough versions of you around that each one of them can take whatever is coming your way.
Am I really ready to do that? Am I willing to embrace the flexibility I need not to be afraid of whatever is coming?
One of the things that I've never learned all the way through is that there is no gain without pain.... intellectually I can understand it but I don't think I've ever internalized it and the fear still stops me when it's time to move on. I've said it before that I couldn't understand why was it that I didn't trust my instincts when they told me it was time to move on. Being totally blunt
I was watching, again, the series final for JAG: Fair Winds and Following Seas. The last scene when Bud flips the coin and everyone keeps staring to see who is going to have to give up their life dreams to achieve happiness.
As I've said before what do you have to give up in order to get what you really want.
Being totally honest, I don't know if I could give up my job and be totally happy. I know I don't want crap like what happened today to repeat itself but I also know that I'm not ever going to be happy without being able to exercise the atrophied skill sets.
I've hardly done any training or presentations since I moved to Chico. 10 hours or so in 3 years hardly qualifies as keeping your skills sharp. I'm afraid that my instructional design and development skills are going the same way. If you don't use them or at least keep current with the literature I'll loose what little of those skills you have left.
Back to what I want and don't want. So far these are the elements of what I'd want in an "ideal job." I realize that some of these things are not realistic and/or even possible but, hell, we're talking about an ideal so why not? 🙂
- I want a place where I can actually practice training and instructional design even if it's as a secondary area of responsibility
- I want a team, not a place where people feel empowered to dictate to other teammates. I've been as guilty about this as anyone and that's what I hate the most about the situation
- I want a job where the rules are clear from day 1 with room for change, evolution and improvement where it's appropriate. It's not that I'm averse to change, it's just that I want to know when it's coming.
- Related to the one above is wanting to at least get a voice on what direction my job is going. I know this is totally unrealistic, but it's one worth writing down even if it means that I'm never going to get a job that's 100% satisfactory
- Communication, communication, communication. Things haven't been put on context and it shouldn't have to be my job to figure out what it is that I'm supposed to be doing.
Listening:
- Skid Row (Youth gone wild, 18 and life)
- Linkin Park - iTunes selection
- Rush - Roll the bones
Reading:
- Agile web development with Rails
- Foundation's Edge
Doing:
- Learning to Program Rails
- Trying to complete my final paper
- Outlining my 2 summer writing projects
Watching:
- Reruns of JAG
- NCIS
- Stargate: The Ark of Truth