lifeinflux

Thirty five is a very attractive age…

// October 12th, 2009 // Uncategorized

At least, so says Oscar Wilde. I’m inclined to agree for purely personal reasons.

T.S. Eliot once said: “I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.” Stagnate was a great way to describe my mental state for the past few years.   In 2004, I was 30.  I was separated from Jason and trying to make it on my 1997 salary after several years out of the traditional job market while at home caring for Drue.  In 2005, I was divorced and for the first time in a long time had to think about things like affordable health insurance.   By 2006, 55 to 60 hour work weeks were the norm, not the exception and I was fully entrenched and moving forward quickly in the career path I began back in 1994 when I left school and left in 1999 when Drue was born.    In 2007, I left that job after 2 years and jumped quickly into another.   My intentions on leaving my job in 2007 was to take a few months off and figure out what I really wanted to do.   However, I was promised the opportunity to build a system and manage the team that would support that system ongoing, which was the next logical step in my career.  Unfortunately, that promised opportunity never came to fruition.  This was no one’s fault; but the reality is that I worked for more than two years at a job I did not enjoy for a myriad of reasons.    Ultimately, I think the issue back in 2004 was that I wanted a paycheck and re-entered the workforce in the same career I left back in 1999 without taking full accounting of my growth, interests and passions developed during the five years I was out of the traditional job market.

Over the last five years, I’ve let go of a lot of those passions and interests I developed during the five years I was home with Drue.   In doing so, I let go a large part of myself.   While the paycheck over the last five years has been nice and I feel a sense of accomplishment at tripling my income in less than four years, the money is not enough.    And I’m at the point where I’m no longer sure what interests me, what my passions are and where I want to spend the bulk of my time.   My former boss once asked me what I wanted from my career.   My answer was to give him a list of what I did not want and he was justifiably disgruntled with my response.   I think the issue for me then was that there wasn’t anything I did want from my career other than not to have that career anymore!   I was depressed and physically and mentally exhausted.     I felt… well… old.    My career was progressing but the rest of my life had stopped and the part of me that makes up me was deteriorating.

My primary focus the last three months since leaving my job have been on healing emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.   The last few weeks I’ve been waking up with a sense of excitement and purpose.   There hasn’t been much forward momentum but I finally found the time to just be.   I’ve volunteered at my daughter’s school, connected with some wonderful folks, reconnected with some wonderful friends and had the time just to be.  I’ve taken a lot of walks, thrown a lot of balls for Kodi, cooked some wonderful, healthy food and taken account of my life.

That said, I’m a goal-oriented, type A person.   I need challenges and when I don’t have them, in my career and in my day-to-day life, I start feeling antsy.    Starting my new company has focused me but I was tired of my day-to-day complacency.   I need to push myself out of my comfort zone.

To accomplish this, I decided to join the Day Zero Project.   The mission is simple.  Identify 101 preset tasks and accomplish them in 1001 days.  The criteria are pretty straight forward.   Tasks must be specific (i.e. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined.    A task must be realistic and stretching, which,  according to the site,  means it represents some amount of effort on my part.    For me, each task had to be something that ripped me out of my comfort zone and plunged me into facing a fear, finishing something I started years ago or requiring me to connect with people I normally wouldn’t (or pathologically avoided).

So go visit my list, 101 things in 1001 days. I will blog about each item as the work progresses towards meeting my goals. This will keep me honest and accountable. I’m pretty excited and look forward to dragging a few friends along for the ride.

Happy 35th to me!