Thursday, January 14, 2016

It's all just a game

It's all just a big game. Merit, ability, the best person for the job, opportunities to grow as a professional, promotions and other organizational rewards aren't based on any of those things. I've clung to the idea that there is some kind of meaning and significance to be extracted for earning recognition and rewards. I have lived my life with my identity and self-worth tied up in whether or not I can rise above my peers and earn whatever was coveted. Good grades, a spot on the varsity team, the job, the promotion, the raise, the top spot. I have been operating under the delusion that the achievement of these things in some way equates to my value and ability, my worth as a human being. I strive to be chosen, selected, singled out as acknowledgement of my inherent value. Recognition is not acknowledgement of my value. It's not worthless or unimportant, but it's also not the route to happiness and meaning.

My desire to transform my work culture is nothing more than me trying to create a space where the rules of the game match what I find to be the right and true way to determine worth. I see directors scrambling to hang on to some shriveled vestige of clout and power and judge them for not understanding what really needs to be done. I see their efforts to maneuver and criticize them for not getting what's really important. They're playing the game. I'm blundering around, blinded by my own self-righteousness, bloviating about the injustice of my value and worth not being rewarded by important jobs right now.

It's not the job that I crave. It's the acknowledgement of my worth. I've linked meaning to accomplishment and pursued accomplishment as a way to craft my identity. I'm not getting what I want to say right. It's more subtle than this, less strident and sure. I had a realization today. What I held true one moment suddenly felt hollow and empty the next. It wasn't a crushing blow to my sense of worth, but a relief. I felt like I could finally unclench and just be for a moment. I will work on just what it was. This is a good start, it captures the moment in a way that I can come back to later.


Friday, January 8, 2016

What I want?

Every year I spend a couple of days noodling different New Year's Resolutions. They are always very task based, read this, do this many workouts, don't buy so many books. There isn't really a general theme or purpose. There is an effort to change behavior to prevent something (getting fat) or to enable something else (reading books to justify buying more of them), but there isn't a conscious decision to actually change something about myself. The origins of my actions are never addressed by these resolutions. There is never an effort to change my internal dialogue or to pay attention to how I talk to myself.

I've always kept score (resolutions are one way that I keep doing that now that I'm out of school and work in a field that is difficult to measure in a way that spurns competition or data based comparisons). There are few things that I engage in simply for the sake of the experience. Physically pleasing things come to mind (eating, beer, sex) as exceptions to this rule. Spending time with my family. But when it comes to the way I spend time that is my own, there is always some kind of challenge pushing me forward. I read to finish whatever I am reading. My runs are about getting faster personal records. Work is all about doing things to get ahead. Doing something just because you enjoy it is an odd professional behavior. The expectation is that you do things you don't like or enjoy for the future opportunities they offer (including the future offer of a regular paycheck). Sticking with something you like for the simple fact that you like is much more an exception than a rule. At least that's been my experience. 

I certainly fell into the do unpleasant things now for future benefits trap. Unpleasant things, like working hard in school, would unlock fancy schools (the more competitive the school, the better) and other difficult to access resources. I played basketball and ran track, two sports that I wasn't particularly into, to earn a spot on the varsity football team (and than I moved, what a waste). I pursued the exclusive so I could wrap myself in that shiny wrapper and have the world see those things. I wouldn't have to show anything about myself. I wouldn't have to know anything about myself. The things I was part of would impress people and save me the trouble of engaging with the world in an open and vulnerable manner. 

My resolutions are just a continuation of that trend. I set up these challenges to distract myself from life while feeding a need to stand out, raise myself up (at least my own judgement) to a place that separates me from everybody else. My resolutions have just been efforts to keep me busy doing something that isn't a total waste or time rather than working on the parts of my life that really need attention. So the next obvious question, what areas of my life need attention?

I need to stop keeping score. This is all about separating what I do because I enjoy it from doing something because it gets me one step closer to achieving some arbitrary goal. Goals are great, but a goal should be attached to some larger vision. A good goal gets me closer to what I want in my life (or further away from what I don't want). So that's the challenge; setting goals that get me closer to what I want in life. Now the real challenge, what do I want? Not what other people want. Not what people expect me to want. What do I want.