May Hope Rise Again In You

Dawn as seen from space

As the new day

Lightens over the earth

Waking from the darkness

Of the day past and gone;

As your eyes open

To new possibilities,

Rising from the twin of death,

May hope rise again in you.

It is today:

Rise.

-Victoree

Victoree is celebrating Resurrection Day this week. Have a blessed Easter season and we will meet again next week.

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Notes From A Bad Teacher About Education Careers

Education Calculator on Notebook (Photo credit: nniknak)

Some people seriously consider going into education as their “encore career“.

Let me whisper something in your ear: fuggedabowdit.

Ask me what prompts that venomous phrase. I want to do my part in strengthening education by preventing one more idealistic, romantic  person with the wrong personality configuration from becoming one of the 50% of educators who leave the profession in the first five years of practice (and head off some chocolate OD’s and soggy-pillow-at-3am moments).

Yes, truly monstrous people continue to slip through the cracks and end up in education  judging from some of the  lurid stories in the news these days about abusive teachers. However, this is not that kind of discussion. This is intended  to influence people who ought not teach lower school grades to put the cap back on the pen before the application gets filed to any system anywhere. This is about the “rightness of fit” issue in the job search. I am lifting the example of early education because it is what I know, but the lessons can be widely applied to jobs anywhere:

when you don’t belong somewhere, you don’t belong. Move on.

In earlier posts this year there is a discussion about discovering the most appropriate place of employment. I collected the discussion in the section of the blog, “Victoree’s Shape-Shifting Job Gypsy Card Game”. Click on the tab  to review.

While re-doing my MBTI assessment with a professional counselor it finally dawned on me why I had so little success as an early educator. Education systems, like many other companies, slide up and down the scale of being candid about  fully disclosing why an employee “didn’t work out”. It seems companies rather go to great lengths to couch  bad comments on the “final report card” in vague terms, probably to deflect a possible wrongful termination/discrimination lawsuit.

The truth surfaced for me in cross referencing the results and finding several of the same traits  surfacing across several assessments, including the MBTI, skills, and strengthfinder2.0.  I came to the conclusion that I am basically unsuited for the lower school classroom. No shame.

The release of that shame felt like finally being able to wear a pair of jeans one size smaller. Releasing the shame might even make my dream of shopping in that lower-sized section come true! (You know stress makes you fat, don’t you?) I made a cowardly decision to look for “job security” and “normalcy” early in the job search and ended up in a place where I did not belong.

Wherever the ”ah ha” breaks through,early or late in the job search, give yourself a gift and let the revelation “work you”.

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Meditation at Equinox: A Job Seeker’s Rite of Spring

Image via Wikipedia St. Patrick's Day Parade, Dublin Ireland

Rite of Spring California farmer applies fertilizer to his farm

Spring approaches! Having made the daylight time adjustment (hopefully) we are sidetracked with wonder at the outburst of color and life everywhere. Personally, I begin dreaming in the Aisles of Michael’s Craft Store and  dive into a little “default activity”: crafting spring-themed wreathes and arrangements to cheer myself up after the seemingly endless grayness of the past season. Sometime during the week of St. Patrick’s Day, I clean out my closets and put my warm  winter interviewing suit away for the season (it’s one of those personal  rituals that helps me keep track of the passage of time without the artificial fixtures–like counting down the days to vacation– usually given by employment. Creating these personal time keepers is one of the other things that happen after 1/2 year of non-employment).

It is time to quicken winter’s snow-encumbered pace; to clear away the winter-kill of past failed projects; to lay out  new gardens and plant fresh seed of an effective search. Last season’ lessons  informs this season’s efforts. Some ancient cultures called this “horse back season” too, because it begins the time when plans for conquest and acquisition laid in winter’s cold can now be acted upon. A few centuries ago, a land owner would ride throughout the property to review the condition of the real estate holdings while collecting rents in person. Battles were scheduled to be fought. So it is with the job hunt.

Equinox is a point in the cycle of the year where the hours of  daylight and darkness balance. From that point, the light advances, becoming longer and stronger into the decadent  high productivity days of summer. If there was any time to “work your plan” this is it. Taking a lesson from the early rising bees, we know in our aching bones that all the hard work will pay off somehow at harvest time.

Beloved Eire

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Just Being Me: “Default Activity”

a featured illustration from Shay's Word Garden on Blogspot

Some people actually cannot imagine themselves alive on earth having nowhere to go every day that promises a monetary reward at the end of a week. It was from graduation to first job. No space between. It is simply mind-boggling for some folk to consider there could possibly be other places to be during the day and none of them involve parking on the living room sofa watching daytime TV.  ”Being me” happens in the spaces not filled up by “the job”. Satisfying the need for a more meaningful life while having a low-paid, boring job causes this space.”Disassociation” from a former job will open more of this space too.

When I'm not working, I'm at...

Let’s play a game.Pretend suddenly you flew off to your favorite place to be; the place that could be called your “second address”…a place where if anybody goes there, they would find you. Are you there? Answer me honestly from where you are hiding. MARCO!

Who said, “POLO!”?

Found you. I know where you are. After the initial drama of joblessness, what might begin to happen is a rediscovery of joyful activity engaged in before there was any thought about paid employment. I call that “default activity”. For some, this kind of activity is laced up tightly into weekends and often called, “hobbies”. For others, it is what one naturally turns to when the day is over. It is what people do to “decompress” or “unwind”. Another word for it is “pastime activity”. Some people take chunks of time to do special projects like teaching kids to read in another country. Still others are gaming, treasure hunting, cooking, painting, sitting in front of the fridge inhaling more than the fragrance or on the dock of the bay “watching the tide roll away”. Default activity. It comforts; it relaxes; it probably started in childhood and it is organic to the personality. After the six-month anniversary of joblessness, default activity might be just the ticket to realign the soul with  authentic purpose. Who knows where a default activity might lead? A business, ministry and yes, a new career, may suggest itself that way.

Occupy Your Career

Image via Wikipedia

The gypsy lady has not hitched up the wagon because it is not time to move on but to take control. Power ceded to “the job market“, “the economic circumstances, “the cosmos”,”society’s expectations” and anything else must be reclaimed this year. As I mentioned last week, this is a “dragon” year, a year for bold moves.

First of all, who or what determines success in the job search and in life? Consider the nature of dreams. How does clarity come to answer the question about “what do I want to do with my life?” How are foggy dreams floating in space drawn down and wrapped in bones and flesh? KUJICHAGULIA.   Kujichagulia means, “self determination” in Swahili. The second day of the celebration of Kwanzaa is dedicated to the concept of respecting the self, exercising one’s own voice, and taking personal ownership of the products of one’s own mind. This includes the responsibility of owning, creating and managing the reality one brings into existence through accumulated thoughts and acts.

The District of Columbia may dislodge the occupation in McPherson Square, a public park. The forces of that occupation live in tents. Tents are temporary. However, each individual job seeker must fully occupy with intention and consciousness the individual “thought park” where a new positive reality must not just set up a temporary encampment but dig foundations and erect structures of a new thought reality. Deciding, “I shall not be moved”; occupying your career is the first step toward success.

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Listen

Image via Wikipedia

This week  makes note of explorer and exploiter Christopher. It seems through the entire month of October the USA will be commemorating one man’s landing point and many others’ start point. In this space we will celebrate “self discovery”. Sometimes a “compass reset” in life requires solitude and silence; a break from the routine. In case you will not be able to attend a retreat now, why not have your own personal “Discovery Day”. Click on the link for an interesting read.

This week, listen to your heart. Tell your mind, “speak to the hand”. Listen intently in silence and stillness. Listen.

and hear.

Namaste

http://discoveryourdharma.com/

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Careers And A Bit of Scottish Driving

Go back around again! I lost count!

The thing that causes me the most sorrow about driving the roads of the DC metro area is that they are not laid out in nice, left-sided sensible grids and they cross at an angle! I went to visit my sister in Baltimore, Maryland once. My husband and I left her house off Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., took the wrong side of a fork, and in trying to course-correct ended up in someplace called Druid’s Hill.

Brothers and sisters, six streets that meet in a circle or unceremoniously dump travelers on entirely different routes with a slight curve in the road might make lovely patterns if seen from the air. However, they are a curse to new drivers in the area.

I am reminded of the day I found myself facing oncoming traffic in the wrong lane on my first solo trip to Woodbridge Mall in New Jersey and driving down the street backwards at 40 miles an hour until I could back into a gas station. Heaven’s protection is why I am alive to tell the tale. Here I am, a much more experienced driver, living in Northern Virginia many years later yet occasionally, while driving I will misread the road at a crossing and accidentally track into the opposing lane of traffic.

I remember when my daughter and I taught summer bible school in Scotland a few years ago that people  seemed to us to be driving on the “wrong” side of the road.  When we returned to the States we both had to reorient because Scotland–including her driving habits– had so worked herself into our systems. Ever after when either of us accidentally headed into the opposing lane, we ribbed each other with, “where do you think you are? Downtown Glasgow?”, or “doing a bit of Scottish driving, huh?” It became our private joke.

Careers sometime track into the opposing lane. The traffic–going with the field that promises the most money– and authenticity–doing what you really are– go in opposite directions more times than not. Quite an uncomfortable feeling to oppose family, culture, and education. Lonely. Disturbing. Stressful. There is always the danger of misreading the road; of ending up in the opposing lane of traffic; of loosing direction. But, that, including switching career direction, momentary disorientation and the odd bit of driving on the “wrong” side of the road, is all part of living life.

WHAT Career Path?

Turning things around and looking at them upside down. Nothing like it in

Come again?

the world. For instance: take another look at the idea of “career paths”. One favorite image is the “career ladder“. This evokes an arrangement of positions placed in vertical succession lowest to highest. The other favorite image is of a journey that begins at “point a” and ends at “point b” like Mapquest directions output. Notice how in each of these images the way is as straight as a gunshot going through a house in the projects–in through the front door and straight out through the back door because both doors are perfectly in line. Note also that the ladders always go “up” and the paths always go “ahead”.

I see denial of the real in these images. Neither of them acknowledges detours or potholes for goodness sake! Anyone who has ever traveled on any kind of conveyance public or private knows that delays, detours, washed out bridges, roads under repair, bumps, holes in the road, construction delays, closed exits and accidents along the way may arise in any trip. People get stuck in airports; get lost; pass their exits; arrive at the depot late; miss the train. None of the common things that happen in life is acknowledged in the so-called, “career path” or “career ladder” image of a working lifetime.

que?

Question: is there really such a thing as a “career path” or is that just a mythical /artificial social construct? I say it’s a mythical and artificial social construct; a bit of “wishery“. Do these ladders and paths always go up or ahead in a straight line? There seems to be a general assumption that they do. Here is the big one–what if the road traveled in a career lifetime is not a road at all? What if there is no real guarantee that it will go up?

Suppose the road is really a spiral or a helix? That would mean that there is some kind of central core and we live life circling around that central core in a spiraling progression. Work/career is but a series of knots on that helix revisited again and again. The direction may go up, move across or reverse in the opposite direction at any time in life.

missed the exit

In my short lifetime I have seen roads reduce to paths that get lost into the bush; streets with dead ends; wrong turns on the way to Piscataway, New Jersey that somehow end up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Do potential employers or recruiters understand the same thing could happen with careers?

Life Is An Interstate And You’re In the Wrong Lane

Never seen while choosing careers

I discovered a book that is like the high fiber cereal the doctor recommends people in their 50′s eat for breakfast. It will not give you a thrill, but it is good for you. The author looks like James Dean if he had lived to middle management age. Po Bronson‘s “What Should I Do With My Life” asks some of the hard questions we talk about here sometimes.

You know, the primary ones: Who am I and what am I doing here? As far away from a religious tome as you can get, it is a collection of stories told by real people who are doing exactly what we are doing in the winter season of a career–between jobs. It is like reading other people’s journal pages for as long as you can stand  in a session. For me, that is not very long. It has taken many sessions and I can’t seem to put it down. Guaranteed to wear your soul out. Check it out of the library twice. Buy your own copy if you can.

Question: if you were educated for one career and took a lot of time and other people’s money to get that education how long are you obligated to work in that career after you discover you don’t belong there?

What do you do with yourself, then?

1. Take the education into another job in the same field
2. Reeducate for a career in another field

I have done both in a lifetime. Neither was successful, so there had to be a third alternative.

Third alternative. When it is clear as a bell that being an employee may very well not be the divine mandate for life is it time to go jobless, the scariest alternative of all?

YES.

Victoree: True North And Expanding Horizons

Directions, please

A year or so ago this blog began as a kvetch, a protracted complaint about working and growing older and injustice. Career issues and growing older still concern me, but the blog will no longer have a kvetch session spirit.

As we were exploring the subject of career change, working and midlife, my idealist temperament began to show itself . I am realigning the blog to point to personal “true north” while remaining  faithful to serving our mutual interests. Oh, no. It’s not going to turn into a gooey, bouncy “rah-rah” either…regardless of the pink strip in the new header. There are enough empty-headed “career advice” blogs floating around the internet.

As we grow and change internally, it naturally follows that the change will at some point show itself externally. This is the day the first leaves of the idea seed show themselves above the ground.

“Victoree’s Blog: No White Flag” is expanding to embrace not only the midlife job search, but the general subject of  personal and professional development in “the third age” of life. The point is to remain faithful to the Divine Mandate,  the personal “prime directive” which goes beyond the job search and career goals.

gypsy wagon

Immediately noticeable is a change in the subtitle, which is now,”Conquering in the third age”. I will continue to talk about working in this blog, but in the larger context of an entire lifetime. This opens up  space for dealing with all the seasons of a career. In fact, I am working on “The Work Of Winter”, a book about  managing the season of non-employment–winter.

So, the journey of the gypsy continues. On toward the rising sun we go!