Life is Chaos — Embrace the Change
Bit of an odd post today. This one got long so for you who are like me, and have precious few moments, here’s the summary of the post…
If you use your career to define yourself, you will never be more than you are right now. When you define your career path using yourself, you will soar.
Be who you are, find something you love to do, and then use that to be as amazing as you can be. You have something unique to give to this world, something beautiful to contribute, that only you can provide.
Limiting yourself to one role will end in defeat. Change is constant, growth is unavoidable. Focus on doing the best you can in a given spot, be as awesome as possible, but then move on. If you stay put you will never grow, and your ‘self’ will never reach it’s full potential.
And now for the longer tail end of that summary. Yesterday was an ‘offline’ day, so I’m back. I signed in to a response notification, here.
Well, let’s see, what did I say originally? Oh, right, here:
Which was in response to a single line from Todd Brison’s post found here
Now, Matthew Dempsey, the whole article is a rather good read, but that one specific highlight stood out to me. You mentioned you’re sixteen. I’m so far from that point that my oldest child is half a decade over sixteen. I wish I has known back then what life was really going to be like. In my early forties, I am only now learning the ropes for this new world.
See, my grandfather’s both grew up when farming was normal, and education meant a long and prosperous career in a single field, with advancement (or not) but stability and company loyalty were understood to be a thing. My maternal grandfather in fact was of the stamp where the wife stayed home, didn’t work, and they were able to life (more than just survive) on his single income. He was a draftsman/engineer for a major corporation. My father, one generation on, started out (after the McJob’s everybody gets when they’re young), as a truck driver, then moved to factory work, then moved through retail (not a good fit) and finally into becoming a mason (brick and rock builder). Four major careers in the twenty years of his working life before cancer took him from us. That’s a change from the single life-long posting of a generation back.
Life is change, be ready to jump before the ship pulls you under with it.
Now I’m here, at forty, with no real footing, wondering what to do now. I have five kids I’ve been working for twenty years, and have cycled through six careers, and a half dozen side hustles as well. But at the same time I am in a better place as an individual.
When I refer to my generation, I am pointing to those who are still lamenting the fact that a single position should last a full career, or at least that they position and track they’ve chosen will define them for their working life. Yeah, you trained to be … [insert something that you’d train for], I spent a decade pushing towards becoming a registered public accountant. I’ll keep that designation, but it doesn’t mean that such a thing defines me, in fact the reverse is true. I will define what it means to me to be a public accountant. I can use it to help others who need my help.
Even through and within that somewhat restrictive field change is inevitable, they rules change, the tax laws change, the government that enforces it changes, and my place within that career changes (If I stay connected to that career). I have held seven different postings before just taking the plunge and becoming registered to practice in my own right after I was let go from the last post I held.
Now for the insightful part,
If you use your career to define yourself, you will never be more than you are right now. When you define your career path using yourself, you will soar.
Be who you are, find something you love to do, and then use that to be as amazing as you can be. You have something unique to give to this world, something beautiful to contribute, that only you can provide.
Limiting yourself to one role will end in defeat. Change is constant, growth is unavoidable. Focus on doing the best you can in a given spot, be as awesome as possible, but then move on. If you stay put you will never grow, and your ‘self’ will never reach it’s full potential.
The paradigm of ‘grade school to university, to career, then family and work until you retire’ is broken, gone and done.
We’re into the next chapter of society’s evolution, after the abortive attempts of the last fifty years or so.
Our jobs do not define us, we define our careers, and in doing so, we redefine the society we live in. No longer then promotion and safe track. Like surfing, (which I only dream of being able to do) life has become about reading the waves, embracing the coming change and riding it to the next conclusion.
So, figure out who you are, and then go be awesome. A contract, a paycheck, a job, these will help keep food on the table, but they will not define you. Even unpaid projects will define you only for a short time. Be true to yourself, not to your job. In all things, act with integrity, to ‘self’ and to others.
Cheers, I’m done preaching. Go be awesome.
Duke.
