Spring Back, Fall Ahead

Before the Time of Great Illness, my Career was stalled.

If I wanted to move ahead, I was told, I would need some accounting courses. Even a degree of some kind. Yes, a bachelor's degree would be much better than just a course here or there.

Didn't matter that I knew more about software and computers than anyone else in the office, had trained many a scholar how to use word processing programs, and had picked the very first non-profit accounting software for the Place--oh, and was also responsible for choosing the oriental rug in the Luce Room and choosing the mats and frames for the Audubon prints. Not to mention the projects I nurtured, and the conferences I worked on, the bookkeeping I did for spin-off orgs...

None of this was enough--I didn't have a bachelors degree and was just going nowhere.

That's what I was told anyway..

So, I took advantage of the Time of Great Illness and went to college. I excelled both at the community college I attended (receiving the Dean's Award) as well as at Smith.

But now it seems to be a bit of a derth of Practical Experience....(except, possibly, that I'm also an Associate Director of a local film festival...yes, I can manage a staff of 40 plus volunteers and plan some parties.)

Before College I was told I wouldn't get ahead because I didn't have a degree. Now, I have a degree, only to be told that I don't have much in my background that's Practical...

Maybe it's more that I've done so darned much that I can't fit it all on two pages--that there's no adequate way to put me on a piece of paper--that there's so much more here than meets the eye and it causes people not to see me at all..

Maybe it's just that I don't know how to present all of me.

There are places I go where I feel like I'm squashed in a box, and other places where I feel like I'm so thin I'm transparent.

On the way home, I remarked to Steady Eddie that in the past I wasn't enough even though I did everything nobody else could do; and now, in some ways I'm still not enough even though I can do things that few people actually "get."

I further remarked how, in both cases--both in the past and now--I seem to be missing a middle phase that is apparently Of Much Importance to a lot of people who may be evaluating me for jobs. How can I know so much about "X" if I either (in the past) never went to college or (in the present) haven't spent years working in a particular--what is perceived as foundational--Career?

I missed my 30's too--that middle phase of adult life where lots of practical things are learned and families are formed. Illness--whether my own or others-- made me miss all those middle phase things...

And now, it's neither practical nor do-able to go back in time and try to get that Career-oriented Middle Phase any more that it's practical to try to have my 30's when I'm well into my 40's.

It's kind of easy to go back and have your 20's again in your 30's. Nature's kind to some of us and we don't physically age all that quickly.

But it's darned well nigh impossible to have your 30's again in your 40's. It's not just that the body slows down--it's just that people have a bit of a tough time understanding your life when it doesn't follow the Commonly Accepted Career Pattern.

who knew? I certainly didn't. Nobody I knew even knew about this.

Then again, nobody I knew ever ventured out of the Working Class.

Well, could be that none of them lost that Middle Phase, too.

So I'm always springing behind, falling ahead. Trying to make up for lost time while hoping every bit of overachievement will help me fall ahead and make up for lost Career time.

What to do...what to do...next...