I recently reviewed a book about a woman who said she had worked in a field all her adult life and said she was there “accidentally”. It was a difficult review to write since I truly disliked almost everything about it — the style, the grammatical errors, etc. I found myself wondering, as I read about one disastrous job situation after another, why in the world this woman didn’t find something else to do. She explained her actions as being necessary to making a living.
It suddenly hit me tonight that one of the reasons this book grated on my psyche so much was that it reminded me of me…
Like the author, I worked most of my adult life in a field not related to my college degree (Psychology) or to my dreams (being a counselor and a writer). My first retail job was an after-school money maker while I was in high school. I continued working at the same place through college as I could work around my class schedule. When I finished my bachelor’s degree, I kept right on working there, my excuse being I might as well not look for anything else or go to graduate school since I knew we’d be moving when my husband came home from Vietnam.
And we kept moving. So I worked in retail because we needed the money, the jobs were easy to get with my experience, and it was a field where much of the workforce was transitory. I made a few attempts to go back to school for a Master’s degree but with a family and the constant moving, it seemed like one step forward and two back. The dreams seemed further away and I guess I settled for expedient.
To be fair to myself, I should mention that I was very good at retail, moving up through the ranks to buyer and manager. I managed to make a fair living.
There it is again — making a living…what does that mean? For me, it brought in needed income and kept me from the hassle of serious job-hunting. Maybe I wasn’t hungry enough. Maybe I wasn’t confident enough. Maybe I wasn’t in tune with myself deeply enough. I know I wasn’t brave enough to give up all that another path through life would have demanded.
For years, a friend and I have traded comments about what we want to be “when we grow up”. You know, I think I passed that threshold a long time ago. And, it’s the looking back and the realization that I’m near the end of my working life that has caused this angst. That and the fact that I have once again “settled for” an expedient job which is totally unfulfilling.
Life is lived through a series of choices. I made choices. Here I am. Would I have changed anything? Looking back, maybe, but at the time, they all seemed to be the right choices for that point in time. I even read somewhere that all the choices we make are the ones we need to make — to learn from them, to complete the process of becoming the unique being that each of us is. If that’s true, maybe I haven’t learned what I needed to. I just know I feel quite unsatisfied, unfinished, unfulfilled. That sounds, even to me, somewhat harsh in light of the wonderful blessings I have in family and friends — they are truly my treasures. Yet, when I look back at the hours I spent working, I wonder if I accomplished anything but earning money for that family. I didn’t make an impact on lives, on my community, on my environment. I feel that I should have.
I always wanted to follow the precept of this passge from Colossians: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men…” (Col 3:23 NIV) I think I gave my best effort to all my jobs. I believe that’s not just important but required of me as a professing Christian. But I do wonder if I honored God’s creation, me, by being less than I could be? (Bothers me a lot on my current job, as I don’t always give 100%. No motivation and bad attitude — not good.)
Self-awareness has come late to me, maybe too late. I have no answers for me. But, I want to find a way to tell my daughters that they need to live and work their dreams, and not just make a living. What kind of an example did I set for them all those years, working way too many hours at jobs I didn’t like? I wasn’t that good a mom to them, spending all my time and energy on those jobs. I don’t want them to settle for that.
Making a living is just not enough.
