I am more than the sum of my parts—and I’ll keep saying it until I believe it

 

It’s difficult when you’re itching to get something off your chest, but you know you can’t.  I’m not talking about family matters, or something juicy confided to you by a friend who’s sworn you to secrecy, I’m referring to workplace drama.  But in a time when people are losing their jobs because of an off-color joke emailed to the wrong person, or grumbling about things a little too loudly on social sites like Facebook, I certainly don’t want to write anything here that will cost me my job in the process.

All I can say for now is that things have been a little less rosy in my corner of the office these last few weeks. 

Whether it’s the assortment of fact & fiction about big changes on the horizon, or the recent realization that a certain person of importance isn’t as impressed with me as I thought they should be, my professional life hasn’t been as stellar as I led myself to believe.

So after a couple weeks of worry and frustration, I’ve come to a couple conclusions:  nothing’s going to be changing anytime soon (I mean that in both a good & bad way) and I’ve been focusing too much energy on that one part of my life, and not enough anywhere else.  And for what? 

Awhile back, I remember reading how most men tie their identities to their jobs, much more than women seem to.  Why is that?  One psychologist theorizes it’s because men have the ‘provider gene’ hard-coded into them (even if most women today are out there ‘providing’ right alongside us). 

All I know is, I’ve been relying on my job to define who I am for the last 20 years.  I’m sure that even Picasso considered himself more than an artist… is any of this making sense?   I’m just saying that for too long now I’ve only seen myself in one light—that long fluorescent one hanging above my desk.   For as long as I can remember, my evenings and weekends have been nothing but intermissions until I can get back on the job. 

(In fact, the last time I took off more than 2-3 consecutive days was in 2003, but I had to break a leg to do it!)  I often tell my sister that if it wasn’t for the office, I’d have no social life.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my job—and I’m thankful I have enough wits about me to get paid to flex my brain, but I need to start giving more priority to things besides my company.

So I guess you could say I’m having a midlife crisis of sorts, but when you don’t have things like kids, a spouse, a church or even a sports team to invest that extra part of yourself in… what do I really want to do besides read books and watch movies?  Oprah just aired her final show and there’s only so much history on the History Channel, y’know!   

I keep telling myself that I’m going to do all sorts of fun & different things after I retire (well, that’s the plan) but who am I kidding?  What’s going to be so different compared to now?   I just need to come up with some ideas.   Or buy a bigger tv.

Well, I know this was a pretty lousy blog, and I apologize for that; I just wanted to get out what’s been circling in my head recently.  (I tell myself that maybe there’s someone out there than can relate.)  I’ll write more again very soon, I actually have a couple things in the works.  (I’m about to dive into vegan cooking, and who doesn’t want to read about that--right?)   But for now, I’m done.