The old, blind dog's been walkative the last few mornings, despite the damp and unseasonable chill, and I've longed for the leisure to walk her to her heart's content without concern for having to be at the office. Life is short, and while we all have to make a living and performing an honest day's work for an honest day's wage is noble and character building, I don't think we should hold standards in our work interactions any lower than those we hold in our personal lives and that if we find ourselves in a job that isn't satisfying to us beyond a paycheck, we have some kind of obligation to seek change. If we don't, there is no one to blame but ourselves.
I know what it's like to love my job, to feel vested. I loved every minute that I worked for MississippiRiverLand Airlines (not its real name), and but for the confluence of a special needs child, a special needs husband and an air traffic controller's strike, I would still be there today, or perhaps taken an early retirement, with my pension and the company's future in question. I guess that turned out alright, 'cause I'd be pissed. I have also loved every moment in my life I've spent working in clay. I didn't even mind watching my creations go to their new homes, upon sale. The fact is, that I don't have much of what I made, but it's comforting to me that so many others do. This, I would like to do again, sooner rather than later. Finally, I loved working in our agency with The Husband With Whom I Have Completed The Cohabitation Phase Of The Marriage ("The Husband..."), doing things that had never been done before and realizing what it meant, later. It was exciting. We felt like we were doing something important, but, in retrospect, turning away from our traditional offline revenue stream to focus on our new interactive product(s) was a huge, huge mistake. I don't know if our business would have survived 9/11 even if we hadn't taken the advice of the fancy investment bankers and venture capitalists who told us they would be interested in us if we got rid of our offline revenue stream and were no longer a "hybrid" but I do know that they were fools and we were fools to listen to them. The Husband... hasn't really "worked" since then, although I don't think he looks at it that way.
I think we all look for meaning all of the time and that there are many ways to find it, in work, in our friendships, in volunteer service to our communities and in our families and deeper personal relationships. Unfortunately, if we've experienced from birth the often enticing, carefully crafted, overly self conscious false connecting performance that the narcissist substitutes where love belongs, we are confusingly drawn to it for the rest of our lives, lest we be cautious, and are just as at risk for being strongly attracted to a narcissist at work as we are in our "personal" lives.
Mikey asked me, in the comment section of his blog, what's up with my screenname, "Sophmom". I took the screenname in the summer of 2002 when my oldest son was a sophomore at UNCW and I signed up in the parents' discussion forum at The Princeton Review. It just stuck, from there, in various online fora, usually message boards, up to and including this blog, having nothing to do with whether or not I had a child who was a sophomore anywhere at any given time, although, for the last few years, more often than not, I did. It became more about being ever so slightly anonymous, but sounding similar to my actual given name and having about it some implication of seeking, but not yet having achieved, maturity. It was soft and comfortable and still is. Perhaps it is a bit of a place to hide, to connect with others and to choose the best parts of myself to expose, maybe to ease some of the isolation I feel in real life.
I think we all have an intense basic need to connect with others, to believe that we are seen as we are, and cared for, even loved, for who we really are, and that when either a personal or a professional relationship fails to provide the satisfaction that comes from honest interaction and fully self-integrated living, it's up to us to repair the disconnect, to seek integrity, to be our true selves, alone and with others. I think we spend our lives looking for this and sometimes it's hard to see amidst the clutter and business of our day to day lives, but it all comes down to being comfortable and feeling loved, just being ourselves.
I think the toughest part of love is knowing it when we see it. We all seek honest commitment and meaning wherever we can find it. Yet, there are lots of folks calling lots of things love, that aren't. I think many, if not most, are confused by all the romantic stories of old, whether in literature or newer media, that describe love as some intense feeling one has alone, inside themselves. I have said this here before, but it bears repeating. I do not think love is so much a feeling, but rather that real love, whether among lovers or spouses, parents and children, or even just friends, is a pattern of behavior one engages in with another, defined by loving interaction, that accepts and appreciates each one for who and what we are. If we want them to be what we need them to be instead of what they really are, it isn't love. I would like to love my work again.
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