Introducing Me to Myself

When I quit retail last year, I didn't realize what I was doing.

I didn't really even know where I was going.

I had a dream, and the sprouts of Something New out here in the blogosphere....

no clue where any of it would lead, though.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized my resume was in a shambles. I'd done so many activities since last July--a lot of them only taking form since January--that I'd carelessly tacked some activities on to the res, while other jobs and tasks remained percolating in the brain matter between my ears.

Thank god none of them poured out before they were ready! ;-)

So many of the activities and jobs and tasks I'd been doing I didn't know quite how to describe. My vocabulary wasn't quite up to the task. I knew, too, that some of the jobs and tasks were so new that there weren't too many people who actually knew the correct vocabulary to use for their description.

Another thing that hampers me is not having a clear understanding of where I stand in the world. I know a lot of really wonderful folks who are CEOs or company presidents, and others who are entrepreneurs or solid workaday folks. Maybe it was, on the one hand, not really understanding what some of them do, and on the other, feeling a little inferior, but I couldn't figure out whom to ask for help.

Ah, the inferiority thing....

I hadn't really admitted to that all that much, but unless you've lost a career and decided to re-tool for a whole new career--do that whole midlife job change thing without using one job as a catalyst into another--then you might not understand how or why I felt that way. Some of it, too, came from putting myself up against the yardstick of others careers and seeing that mine was more of a meter stick than a yardstick...

with Roman numerals rather than Arabic numbers in the middle...

Whenever I looked at the bios and resumes of people I know--from the CEOs to the workers--everyone around me seemed (on paper at least) to have a linear path. Job A went to Job B which became Career C.

Mine went something like: Job A to Job B--no! wait!I hate that job!--to Illness to College to Ennui...

Rather than feeling like an Iconoclast, or The Great Lemonade Maker, or a Follow-Your-Blisser I felt more like the Huge Loser Who Can't Hit Her Butt With Both Hands (even if it wasn't true.) I couldn't demonstrate 15 years Here or 20 years progressive experience There or 10 years at the Top of My Game.

Yeah, I'm smart and got honors in obscure stuff and am horrifically driven, have an encyclopedic knowledge of film, a way with words (at least I think I do) and at times a disproportionate amount of chutzpah, but it was like parts of a puzzle that constructed a portrait by Picasso.

I didn't make any sense to Me. I couldn't figure out what the heck to do with *any* of all the busyness and education and esoteric knowledge. (my terrible economic situation didn't help--but I won't elaborate on that here.)

Some of the People Who Know Me started to get amazingly frustrated with me. Some didn't understand why I flaked on doing some things, or sat paralyzed and not doing other things. Some didn't understand why I left a crummy job and didn't have A Job now. It was, though, because nothing was making sense within the framework of my life-experience. I couldn't gage any Success in the standard sense of the concept and wasn't sure if I *could* do some tasks or if other tasks were even worth doing.

I looked at me and saw a 20-something person trapped in the body of a 40-something person. That's what kind of happened as a result of going back to college and NOT majoring in the same profession as my prior work experience--which is always the easiest path for those who resume their educations after careers.

As "Halley Suitt said to me when we were talking about what happens when women go *back* to college, "what's the purpose of going back to school if you're just going to go back to the same old job?" Very true (even if it is what a lot of people do...)

Around January, some of the frenetic energy of the previous months started to coalesce, but I had no frame of reference to get what was going on. It was like trying to sculpt plaster without having poured it into a mold. (I've blogged about it before, in detail, so I'll skip the details lest I bore myself as well as you.)

Thing was, the plaster wasn't stirred properly just yet...a couple of other things had to be added so it would create the right consistency...

And then I called in A Favor. The C.D.O. at Alma Mater says we alums can call at any time and get some help. I needed help, so I called. I emailed the counsellor what I had in the way of a res, with some notes, just to give her a Heads Up as to what was coming her way.

She mentioned the article I wrote for the Alumni Quarterly!

And then we put some words together to describe what I've been doing. Slowly, it started to make sense.

I had been missing not just some rudimentary vocabulary, but also an understanding of the subtleties of what'd been going on.

I also told her how I felt kind of inferior to a lot of the folks I knew because of my non-linear, stop-started career path. "Well," she said, "you have to start somewhere."

That made a lot of sense.

It sunk in, finally, that I have started Some Kind of Career. It also sunk in that I am starting--not resuming or adding to or continuing or branching out from. When I quit my day job I was really putting myself square on a murkily charted path to Somewhere with no map and a wonky compass--but I had a super-sharp machete that cut both ways. It sometimes cut the kudzu well, while at other times I ended up slashing myself (although have not been mortally wounded.)

I took the raw material of all I'd been doing...all those disjointed bits and pieces...and with a couple of good headings and some description, Me started to make sense to Myself.

For the first time since I stopped being an Honors Student and Retail Manager.

I now understand why some people say "don't quit your day job." To some degree it has to do with loss of income, but on another level it has to do with dismissing known identity without having another identity fully constructed. That's kind of like trading in a sedan for a sports car that's still at the factory. Or still in development. In adulthood, we rely on our careers as descriptors of who we are. Careers convey our social status, or earning potential, and what we have been doing to be Upstanding and Responsible Members of Society. When those descriptors drop away, we become amorphous not only to those around us (who can then judge us according to our lack of preconceived social status hallmarks) but also to ourselves. As time wears on, and we get more distanced from our old identities, and our transition to a new identity isn't fully actualized, we can drift off into despair. Within a state of despair we can treat ourselves rather harshly--I know I tend to do that, as I expect a great deal from myself, even when I don't know what I'm supposed to be expecting.

So I look at my resume, and I see that it is a concrete explanation of Me to Others. It gives Others a time line and explanation of what I've been doing. It is a fairly accurate description of where I've been and shows I am a woman with a great deal of determination, a desire to be someone other than ordinary, and a bit of success at accomplishing just that.

Me....meet Myself. Myself...meet Me.

Resume Available Upon Request.