I find I'm comparing myself to other women quite a lot these days. I look at women in the Dem club with successful business and careers or who have retired from fascinating jobs - and I wonder what happened with me. Why have I not joined their ranks? I' m intelligent - how did I become a throw back to the 50s? Other women my age have the excellent excuse, and the amazing proof, of children as their success instead of businesses. In comparison, my messy house and husband seem a pale excuse for lack of success.
I can remember thinking about careers. Just a few months before I married, a client of the print shop I worked with told me she was retiring. She worked for the Waste District, in the recycling and programs division. I'd realized my boss, who was jealous of any woman young and pretty, would never let me be more than a desktop publisher and secretary. The Waste district job was actually a career -with advancement opportunities and a chance to grow. I really liked the Bolivar area, wanted to stay around there. But then Mr. Ips. proposed, and I liked him better. And I moved back to the city I swore four years before I'd never return to. Nothing against Columbus, I just don't like cities. As far as cities go, it is one of the easier ones to live around. And I really hate suburbs. Villages and small towns may have lots of small minds - but they do have minds and a heartbeat and a feel of their own. You lose all that in the white-bread of suburbia. Moving back, there were so many other people more talented, more qualified and more confident than myself for every job available. I was intimidated and frustrated and soon gave up, took a series of annoying small jobs until quitting to write (which, in those first years, I didn't do at all).
I do think though, that women who are successful at my age must have had an overall plan. For all my imaginary flights of fancy, I never could get a picture of myself in any career. Not in college, not even in high school. I could picture flying dragons - but a career? Never. I was a bit bewildered in college - oh sure, I adored it. I adored studying, writing papers, talking with professors. I chose English because I loved the professors and I knew it was something I could get an A in. No, I couldn't imagine what I'd do with it - but I couldn't imagine any other degree either. A serious depression my senior year derailed any confidence I'd gained as the professors' darling and I left college as bewildered about what I was going to do as I went in. Strange to say, if someone had encouraged me in hands-on jobs like woodworking and construction - I'd probably be a happy little craftswoman without a degree. But I think my own parents didn't have a clue what I could be (I felt like a nightingale in a crow's nest) and did not encourage my little scribblings.
I moaned to Mr. Ips tonight "why aren't I a successful woman with a good career?" and he answered "In a couple years, you could be," referring to the novel I'm editing. I'm on a career path without tangible signs of success. The milestones of a career - advancements, raises, promotions - don’t apply, or are unrewarded. I suppose I have been building, the past five years, a career. My milestones: first novel written; Second novel written, trilogy planned; third novel started, second novel in editing. Nothing to shout about, nothing that looks impressive. Just nibbles of success that look like a snail's pace to the outside eye.
Monday, May 19, 2008
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3 comments:
Ips, I hear you. In so many ways I am right there with you, though I'm less accomplished than you. At least you know you are a writer and you are busy writing. I'm still waiting to figure out what I am and what I want to be when I grow up. I am in a holding pattern while the girls are still home.
I am trying to learn the lessons in Tolle's books (Power of Now and A New Earth), about being present now and not getting caught up in the past or in the future. Some days are better than others. Can a person make a career out of simply living?
Love,
Shameless
Simply living is a war cry of the chronically depressed as well. "Live day by day" "don't think about the future" is what psychologists preach to get you past severe depressive episodes. But you can only live that way so long. Humans need to examine themselves, examine their past and think about their future.
I'm hoping the key is to get a good mix of hope for the future with nonjudgement about the past. Not something I'm good at. It is difficult not to look at other women and judge who I am as compared to them. But it's an impossible way to live life. There will always be someone more accomplished, more able, more intelligent. At the same point, there will always be someone less able, less intelligent, less accomplished - but we don't ever compare ourselves to them, do we?
As a woman who left a sort-of career to take care of family and "fix" her marriage, it's been a weird road. Had I stayed the course in the work I was doing, I probably would have advanced to a more senior position at another organization and been the type of person I'm recruiting these days. Many of the women I encounter are indeed extremely accomplished, many of them executives in very male-dominated, fast-paced arts-related fields, and I too wonder, "How come I didn't do THAT?" or "I want to be her when I grow up."
Make no mistake, though, life would be different if I really wanted that kind of success. You cannot have a life of your own if you want the "career". Most of the women I've encountered who have children have had it doubly hard even with supportive spouses; I know of almost no single women with young children who are about to become senior executives.
So be grateful for the entrepreneurial spirit in you that allows you to create your own way in your own time and to leave a legacy. There is a concreteness to what you do that does not exist for even some of the most "accomplished" executives, whose next move is always being anticipated by those who would take his or her place.
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