Career-shaping Trauma

[edward333]

Hi all. I am 49 and trying to get a coherent sense of my career and maybe even a sense of purpose. I have put so much effort into recovery work that it feels like the dominant factor shaping my career right now, but I'm not sure that is going to help me find my next job.

I'm not sure the specifics matter... but years 0-28 were super-accomplished and years 28-34 I deliberately chucked a lot of my original accomplishments in the process of recovery work, and years 35-49 I've kind of staggered along finding a new path. Mostly I've been working on personal healing. Now here I am realizing I didn't ever care about a professional vision, and I'm 49 and I've been unemployed for 1.5 years and I've still got some of the same ambition I had as a kid, but I'm just feeling really disconnected from the work world, and feeling sort of like a freak who had it all when he was 28 and then--from a career perspective--threw it away. I want to have a career!

So I'm struggling to make this post coherent. Does this make sense? Sometimes I feel quite grandiose and then I'll feel like no one will ever take me seriously, professionally, again. I've done a ton of career discernment work and coaching etc., and it seems so hard to establish a purpose, and frustrating as my talent of my youth spins around for 20 years without connecting to a profession. I am adept at telling my story personally but really struggling to envision myself or pitch myself as a valuable employee. Blurg.

 

[Powder]

Keep talking to people to see where the universe can take your talents and desires and recovery work into something you can learn from some more.

Have you thought about a degree or an organization?

 

[edward333]

Thanks for your reply, Muse. Yes I have thought about a few degrees over the years (especially psychology and medicine). Ever since I finished my PhD in '95 I have found school to be really challenging, though. Partly because of the tedium of traditional institutional learning and also because of how indifferent I ended up to my original field of study. I've done more learning by doing since '95.

I'm definitely interested in working with an organization (I think that's what you're asking about). I sort of bushwhacked my way into self-employment 2004-2011. Then I got a couple jobs in organizations 2011-2014 that ended super-badly. So I have felt burned by those recent experiences, but lately I've come around to wanting another organizational role, rather than trying another go as solo consultant.

My career coach has suggested I "get in the soup" which is her term for the feeling of exploring 5 different directions at once. In some ways that invites me to trust my intuition and yet it also challenges my deep hunger for some professional community, when I'm pushing out into 5 different fields that don't talk to each other...

Thanks for listening

 

[Powder]

I hear frustration and boredom in your post, from being a doer and a thinker, more than the average person, and finding it hard to fit in. Whatever it is, I think it can be managed in some way, especially when the "Right One" is left aside for the time being and whatever takes your fancy replaces it.

Viktor Frankl's words in Man's Search for Meaning spoke to me about overintention. I can see this in most areas of my life. I try too hard, make the simple complex and I do this because I want the world to be as I perceive it rather than as it is.

 

[edward333]

Thank you, Muse, for that wonderful reflection. Very helpful!

I am also reminded of an exchange I had many years ago with a girlfriend who said, "I think you expect too much of yourself." And I replied, "You are right. From now on, I will expect exactly the right amount from myself." :p

These lessons are great and also hard to take in.