working it all out
I've always been the girl who likes to work. Who likes to earn. Who had to convince her Dad to let her get her first job. Who falls in love with her company. Who has worked two jobs at once. Who at that point didn’t really need the money.
I used to like to work. I thrived on satisfaction and interesting.
When did I change?
The engineering jobs have gotten me, as they have always gotten me. down. Emotionally, mentally. Engineering -- that lofty discipline of mine. School is a discipline of itself, and it is not even a relative of the thing it strives to teach. Engineering to me is all the loose ends, the lack of checkboxes, the lack of a plan. The ineptness. The lack of competence. The knowing that I may not be capable of a solution, or that I may have the wrong answer but not know enough to know it. I am a perfectionist to the core, and the dissonance is killing me.
Right now I am living with the guilt that comes from being paid a lot while doing an imperfect, and sometimes poor, job. I may have been good at school, but I'm not good at what I was schooled to do, and I can not keep living with that.
Always wanting perfect in an imperfect world, so I throw back to the nearest thing. The little jobs for big companies that have it all figured out for you.
I want large booklets of corporate propaganda. I want handbooks upon handbooks of employee policy. I want lots of forms to fill. I want controlling managers. Where is the time clock? The training videos? The merit badges? I want to work hard and feel like I've worked hard. I want to feel completely satisfied and qualified. I want to be excited about my job. Give me rules, give me order, give me a definite task that doesn't need answering, but doing. The spring of my satisfaction seems to flow from arranging, from helping, from delivering, from selling, and from doing it all well. But what about from thinking? I’d rather it, but maybe that’s not what it takes for me.
Some days I want a uniform. Some days I want busyness, hubbub, loud corporate mix CDs, and teamwork. But mostly I want a label and an identity that I can live up to. Something to file away in my mind's vault as an honest day's work.
Will I be the one to let me out of my self-made cage? To let me return to my old normality and the blue collar? Will I give up the prestige of a desk and a computer? At least I am tempted. But what is the price of respect? And of money? I can be paid enough to be miserable, but for how long?
Why do I have to choose between the respect of others and the respect of oneself? And would I still respect myself for doing a lowly, mindless job? Do I more want to respect myself at the end of every work day or do I want the self-respect that comes from making lots of money and working with other respectable people for a respectable employer solving respectable problems?
And if I turn in my engineer’s cap, I have a fine line to walk -- the one that runs the boundary between boredom and competency.
How would it be to talk to friends and family with oh so classy careers about a retail job? Easier at 17 then at 22 and degreed. And how would it feel to let them down? To let myself down? How will I cope with being viewed by society as 10 rungs below my husband?
I want to win, to conquer, to be the best, to know it all, and to have respect. And I have done these things in my life. But the game doesn't stop, won't stop. When will I? And why will I? I must stop soon, because I know my winning on this current path is over.
This is where all previous planning ended anyway. You take the placement tests to get into college to get the good grades that gets a degree to get the high paying job. My ending is over. Where is my next beginning?
I just need to exit this bad relationship. How hard will it be to start a better one? Do I have the time and money to get a degree that I am more at peace with? Will I even get it right the second time? I need something of a more defined discipline. Economics. Accounting.
One could argue that engineering was the most defined - defined by laws of physics. But because it is the most defined does not mean its steps are as clear to me. Girls are cut out to be engineers, I am convinced of that. I wish I was. I should have realized this mismatch a long time ago, but I was hell bent on showing the world and myself what a girl could do, and do well. I even enjoyed school, which made things more deceiving. But I would enjoy nearly every class I could take.
I don't know how to fit all my puzzle pieces together into my beautiful, big perfect picture. I won't waste my life, my potential, my gifts if I can help it. I do think it is better be happy, humiliated, and hardworking than to be something you are not. And just maybe I can find the perfect in between.
As of yet, I don't know how people turn their days at work into years. And are they happy? My only job is to string the weeks into months, and I'm barely managing...
I just want to want to work again.
I used to like to work. I thrived on satisfaction and interesting.
When did I change?
The engineering jobs have gotten me, as they have always gotten me. down. Emotionally, mentally. Engineering -- that lofty discipline of mine. School is a discipline of itself, and it is not even a relative of the thing it strives to teach. Engineering to me is all the loose ends, the lack of checkboxes, the lack of a plan. The ineptness. The lack of competence. The knowing that I may not be capable of a solution, or that I may have the wrong answer but not know enough to know it. I am a perfectionist to the core, and the dissonance is killing me.
Right now I am living with the guilt that comes from being paid a lot while doing an imperfect, and sometimes poor, job. I may have been good at school, but I'm not good at what I was schooled to do, and I can not keep living with that.
Always wanting perfect in an imperfect world, so I throw back to the nearest thing. The little jobs for big companies that have it all figured out for you.
I want large booklets of corporate propaganda. I want handbooks upon handbooks of employee policy. I want lots of forms to fill. I want controlling managers. Where is the time clock? The training videos? The merit badges? I want to work hard and feel like I've worked hard. I want to feel completely satisfied and qualified. I want to be excited about my job. Give me rules, give me order, give me a definite task that doesn't need answering, but doing. The spring of my satisfaction seems to flow from arranging, from helping, from delivering, from selling, and from doing it all well. But what about from thinking? I’d rather it, but maybe that’s not what it takes for me.
Some days I want a uniform. Some days I want busyness, hubbub, loud corporate mix CDs, and teamwork. But mostly I want a label and an identity that I can live up to. Something to file away in my mind's vault as an honest day's work.
Will I be the one to let me out of my self-made cage? To let me return to my old normality and the blue collar? Will I give up the prestige of a desk and a computer? At least I am tempted. But what is the price of respect? And of money? I can be paid enough to be miserable, but for how long?
Why do I have to choose between the respect of others and the respect of oneself? And would I still respect myself for doing a lowly, mindless job? Do I more want to respect myself at the end of every work day or do I want the self-respect that comes from making lots of money and working with other respectable people for a respectable employer solving respectable problems?
And if I turn in my engineer’s cap, I have a fine line to walk -- the one that runs the boundary between boredom and competency.
How would it be to talk to friends and family with oh so classy careers about a retail job? Easier at 17 then at 22 and degreed. And how would it feel to let them down? To let myself down? How will I cope with being viewed by society as 10 rungs below my husband?
I want to win, to conquer, to be the best, to know it all, and to have respect. And I have done these things in my life. But the game doesn't stop, won't stop. When will I? And why will I? I must stop soon, because I know my winning on this current path is over.
This is where all previous planning ended anyway. You take the placement tests to get into college to get the good grades that gets a degree to get the high paying job. My ending is over. Where is my next beginning?
I just need to exit this bad relationship. How hard will it be to start a better one? Do I have the time and money to get a degree that I am more at peace with? Will I even get it right the second time? I need something of a more defined discipline. Economics. Accounting.
One could argue that engineering was the most defined - defined by laws of physics. But because it is the most defined does not mean its steps are as clear to me. Girls are cut out to be engineers, I am convinced of that. I wish I was. I should have realized this mismatch a long time ago, but I was hell bent on showing the world and myself what a girl could do, and do well. I even enjoyed school, which made things more deceiving. But I would enjoy nearly every class I could take.
I don't know how to fit all my puzzle pieces together into my beautiful, big perfect picture. I won't waste my life, my potential, my gifts if I can help it. I do think it is better be happy, humiliated, and hardworking than to be something you are not. And just maybe I can find the perfect in between.
As of yet, I don't know how people turn their days at work into years. And are they happy? My only job is to string the weeks into months, and I'm barely managing...
I just want to want to work again.