Today at work, I had my bi-weekly one-on-one meeting with my work husband boss. He's usually jolly and happy. Nice man. There I was sitting across the meeting room from him in my new favorite brown boots, a denim pencil skirt and hot pink velvet blazer with my curled hair pulled back (it wasn't a wash day) and he asked me the question he usually asks: "So tell me, how are you doing? What's going on?"I could feel tears coming on, and I got choked up. I reminded myself, "There's no crying in the boardroom." So I held back.
I told him that I just felt like my work seemed so futile lately, and that I just didn't feel like I mattered. I know. Who doesn't? But I'm lucky to have a job and not about to go elsewhere looking for some other frying pan to jump into. I was like, "Our worlds are not here. When you think about your world, you don't think of your job at Dell. You think of your wife and kids. M and J (my coworkers) think about their families. But here we are, and every day I wake up and my motivation is I don't want to be homeless. So I come to work and do my job and earn my income so I can get back to my world, which is not in here."
He agreed and said maybe one day he'd like to own a resort and watch his kids grow up there and build a life for his family that way. I said, yeah, I'd like to sell sandwiches out of a camper, but I don't need a college degree for that. And even then, I might get tired of it, so I really don't know what my path is. He said he didn't know what his path is either.
I wish I could tell every kid and college kid and young person and even convince my friends or anyone else for that matter to DO WHAT YOU LOVE. Follow your dream. Don't wait! The path that society tries to impose on people - go to school, get a good job, retire and maybe get married and have a family sometime in between - is not the path for everyone. Who's path is it to sit in a fucking cube all day? The only person who likes cubes is the guy who invented them, and at this point, he's probably retired and living at his own resort. Or at least he has a hard-walled office. What I love to do doesn't necessarily require a college degree, other than if I decide to go back to teaching. So why is college so necessary? I guess it's easy for me to say since I have multiple degrees. George W. Bush went to Yale and Bill Gates dropped out of college, yet who do you think has changed the world more for the better?
After the meeting, I left the office pondering this. I ran around Town Lake, and it started to rain. I realized I need to meditate more and clear my mind in other ways. I mean, clear it the fuck out because running sometimes makes my mind wander. I'd been thinking during my run about what is my path? What am I doing here?
I've been holding my breath for years because I finally have to own up to the fact that I am an anxious person, so that is probably getting in the way of my path. As a toddler, I'd hold my breath until my mom let me pass out because she wouldn't let me get my way. I've been diagnosed with sleep apnea, a disorder where you hold your breath while you sleep (not that it is related to anxious behavior). And I hold my breath and take long, loud exhales sometimes at work because it's how I contain my stress. So why am I so anxious? Meditating. Maybe that is where I'll find the answer and calm the fuck down.
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