I ain't stupid. I know what happens when you blog about your job. But something happened at mine today that has had me thinking every since. My boss, who is leaving at the end of the school year (much to my dismay because I really LOVE working for him, and I'm not just saying that in case he finds this and reads it--I really do love working for him), took me into his office to have yet another "What do you want to be when you grow up?" talk with me. We have these just about once a week, and I find them puzzling and intoxicating at once. On the one hand, it is so nice to have someone believe in me enough that he wants to push me in the right direction, to help me on my career path. I get so excited thinking about all I can do with my life. On the other hand, I wonder why we need to be so strategic, so calculated. I'm happy where I am for now and am not anxious to sacrifice my new little family for a power career.
Today's conversation took the issue one step further when he revealed to me that the big chief, the head honcho, el presidente has her doubts about me. Sure, she hears I'm great and sees the good work I do, but despite proving myself professionally again and again with every task they throw my way, I still seem a little goofy or inscrutable to her (granted, I make as ASS out of myself whenever she's around, but that's because she is so disapproving of me and it makes me NERVOUS). My boss boils the tension between me and Head Honcho down to her discomfort in working with right-brained creative types. Although in my work life I show some strong left-brained tendencies, deep down I'm just as right-brained as can be, and Head Honcho doesn't know what to make of that. I have other theories about what's at work here (gender), but I'm willing to go with this whole right-brain vs. left-brain theory to start to wrap my head around all the implications. From what I gleaned from my boss, I am supposed to prove to Head Honcho that I am left brained enough to win her confidence, earn her trust and assume a more powerful role as an administrator so we can all live happily ever after.
I'm the kind of person who hears something like this and springs into action. How shall I handle this? I wonder. Should I set up a meeting with her and address it head on? What will I say? How can I make her see I'm good and deserving? I drove over to darling C.'s daycare thinking of all the ways I could make this work, and it wasn't until I saw my friend Laura and began to articulate my conversation with my boss that I began to see a whole other side of things. For one, why is the onus on me to make this relationship work? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's the boss and I have to earn her respect, but I am one of the hardest working people in the whole place. Not to toot my own horn, but I've taken on huge projects well outside the scope of my job and aced them, I have found a way to balance the culture of the place and still push for innovation, I can work with just about anyone at any level of the spectrum, and I am damn good at what I do. Isn't that worth anything to this place? At some point don't I become someone they want to cultivate and keep happy?
But then the real issue that surfaced for me is why must I ascend? My boss isn't telling me stuff about Head Honcho to hurt my feelings (although it does as I'm pathetic in my need to be liked by people who don't know me)--he wants to fire me up to make things work so I can assume a bigger role in the place. He sees potential in me and wants me to realize it by way of an administrative position. He knows I shy away from it for various reasons, but he also knows I can't turn down a challenge. I can't see things undone or done poorly. I have to stick my nose in and right things, I have to take on more responsibility than I should and I always seek out new challenges when I'm bored. It's like a drug, and he can't stop pushing it my way. Sure, I've told him I want to hang back a bit, relax my schedule, collect a paycheck and focus on being a mom for a while, but I don't think he can stand to see it go down like that. He has total respect for moms (his wife has been at home since kid #1), but he's not convinced that's how I want to play it. Sometimes it makes me confused about how I want to play it. There's this success-oriented corporate impulse in me that I sometimes can't beat back.
Of course before I had a kid this was all well and good for the most part. Sure, I missed my writing (did you even know I was a poet? These days it's a well-kept secret because I've all but abandoned that part of me) and my creativity, but I was fulfilled by having a career, for getting validated in ways that writing and teaching never gave me. I liked that I had stumbled into a niche and could see a clear path to the top. But every now and then I remembered my old life, my poet-self. I remembered why I left academia (to find the real world, to interact with it, to write about it) but wasn't always sure how I'd ended up where I was. Just before I found out darling C. was on her way, I had reached a crossroads with my job and life and was considering quitting my job to see if I could rediscover my initial creative path. Having a baby made me feel like that was too much of a luxury, and new challenges at work distracted me until I went home on maternity leave and had my world rocked from top to bottom.
So here I am trying to figure it all out once again. To put it simply (too late after all these paragraphs, I know), I have to decide which should be more dominant: my left brain or my right brain. Do I want to choose the workplace 100%, sucking it all up, impressing head honcho and making a permanent place for me in this industry I've somehow wandered into? Or do I want to let my right brain take over, keep my job at a quiet simmer while I look for fulfillment after working hours? Better yet, do I want to take a total gamble? Throw caution to the wind (or family to the poor house--you decide) and switch gears entirely? I could find something that lets me make a little money without the pressure of ascension and advancement? Something creative, something closer to writing, to my once-and-sometimes passion.
God, I'm blathering. This is the second annoying post of the day, and I've already lost the opportunity to quit while ahead. I feel conflicted, and in my head I'm much more articulate about the hows and whys, the choices, the outcomes. But I still don't have the answers. DOES my right brain know what I've been doing all this time? Would my left brain be happy going back to how the other half lives? I really hate to be as confused as my boss keeps telling me I am ("I told Head Honcho you're not sure what you want to be when you grow up yet"), but I think in a way I'm hoping the decision gets made for me. I'm hoping Nate's interview or my boss' departure will shake things up enough that I have to move on, to take a risk, to redefine my relationship to work.
Or maybe I just need to stop thinking so much about it and get some sleep. I really do tend to overanalyze. Have I told you that story about my friend Travis in college? "You know what your problem is Amanda?" he once asked me. "You look at...at that gum wrapper on the floor there and you think about it. You think about why it's there and what it represents about the person who left it there. You think about why it should be picked up or not, about how it should be handled."
"Well what's wrong with that?" I asked. "What do you think about the gum wrapper that is so much better?"
"I just think 'Oh, that's a gum wrapper,'" he said. "It leaves my mind free for more important things."
I promise I will be lighter tomorrow. I have a camera full of photos of Clementine upload--that always does the trick.
1 comment:
Here's what I say: you don't have to apologize for thinking out loud about the direction you want your life to take. And I'm coming to believe that the "when I grow up" rhetoric isn't necessarily helpful--as though people figure out what they're going to do and then stick with it forever. You were grown up when you were writing poetry actively and sitting on that damned committee with me; you were grown up when you went on your wedding road trip; you were grown up when you took the job you're in now; you were grown up when you had Clementine. It's just another narrative trajectory that doesn't quite fit: first you do some things that aren't your real life, and then you grow up into your real life. Instead, I think you're figuring out which real adult life you want, and your choice doesn't have to be the final one. (I say all this hopefully, because I'm working on something kind of similar in my own head.)
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