Well, my first week at the new job has been FANTASTIC. The man I'm assisting is awesome, we seem to work well together, and he told me once already that he was impressed. Score! I think it's going to be great.
But here comes the real question: where does it get me? Am I on a career trajectory that will pay off ten years from now? One might think that taking a job as an "Office Manager/Executive Assistant" may not be a clear and defined path on the way to riches and stability, so I feel the need to explain a few lessons I've learned in my first six/seven years of post-graduate working adult life (and therefore why this job is the perfect job for me)...
A) I never intend to be "rich," and I'm totally okay with that. I'm better than okay with it, it's what I want. If I had a passion or "calling" that led me to a life of wealth, great. But right now I don't. If I wanted wealth badly enough, I have no doubt that I could be successful in any number of fields that would lead to it. But I don't. I don't want to spend my life making money, I want to spend my life living.
B) The things I am passionate about are not things that will make me money. Period. They are writing, theatre, knitting, food, continual learning, sustainable homesteading, and reading. So if I can't make money doing what I love, then I need to have a job that leaves me ample time, energy, and opportunity to do what I love on the side. That means low on the stress level, not much overtime, a pleasant place to be, a place where I might be able to network or make connections related to my hobbies, good enough pay and benefits so I don't have to worry, and a place that is easy to leave behind and not think about too much when I'm not there.
When I went into this job search, I thought about the movie Sabrina (random I know, but go with it). In it, Sabrina's father is the chauffeur for an insanely wealthy family, we're talking the kind of wealth that's like modern day royalty. Sabrina and her father lived in a small servant's apartment on the estate, their apartment stacked high with books in every nook and cranny (her father was a passionate reader). She grew up in the shadow of all this wealth, never feeling like she could be part of their elite society. Toward the end of the movie, she finds out that her father, just a lowly servant, is actually a multimillionaire. Stunned, she can't understand why he ever chose to stay as the chauffeur once he gained enough wealth to be free and do something else with his life. He simply says, "It gave me something to do and the opportunity to read my books. I am happy here. Why would I ever leave it?" (I'm quoting from memory--I'm sure I got the words wrong but you get the picture.)
That's what I want.
C) I need to worry less about the future. While temping, I was forced to live "in the moment"--my job could vanish, I could be temping somewhere else the next day, I could get another job--anything could happen and the future was completely up in the air. I was so much happier. I wasn't worrying so much about the future because I felt (pretty rightly) like I had no control over it. I was making ends meet today, and I was working on stabilizing tomorrow but it was mostly out of my hands.
I'm not saying I'm going to start completely disregarding the future, like not saving for retirement or something stupid like that, but I do think I've thought WAY too much about the uncontrollable future in a way that is unhealthy. I can't control the future--and worrying about it is just one way of trying to control it. Will my job exist in five years? Will I still be happy in my current career? Will I be skinny or fat? Will I have gray hair? Will I have hit the lottery and not need to work ever again? Will I even be alive? Who the fuck knows! I can't worry about that. I need to be about today. Am I happy today? That answer is what matters most.
D) I don't need to have it all figured out, because I will never figure it all out. A career is not a destination, and it doesn't even have to be the thing that determines the nature of the journey. The rest of my life can pick the path, and the career can conform to what I need it to be. I'm going to be trying to figure out this life for the duration of it--I might as well be comfortable and happy while doing it.
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I'm not exaggerating when I say that I think I've found the perfect job. I wouldn't let myself hope in the beginning, but every day I've grown more and more excited that this may work out and actually be all that I hoped it would be. There are a few more "tests" this job needs to pass (mainly a stress test--what will it be like when everyone is crazy stressed out and the pressure is on?), but so far all the indicators are moving in the right direction.
With that said, I think I can safely put career on the back burner. Though I may not have written about all my thoughts and revelations, I can definitively say this has been a very insightful and productive month. I never dreamed I would leave this topic with an actual job, let alone one that may be everything I wished for. I feel like I should go play the lottery or something.
Next, I have to tackle Spirituality. Shit.
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