Tag: money

Confluence

There is this confluence in my life where a lot of things happened together. A nexus. One was the five years of being the chaplain. I loved that job but after five years it had become stale. I wanted to try something new. Second, I became a parent. That changed my world outlook and made me more anxious. Third was the financial crisis. That disrupted our lives. I felt I had to make more money. I have gotten into a worldview rut. I don’t mind the things I have done. Sales, travel, operations. But I would like to feel that security and enjoyment of being a chaplain again at work. I am exhausted

Change

5:40am I don’t know how to change. How to be different. I don’t know what I would do if this blog were “discovered.” How would my world change if I received attention? I work in hospice. I have a public persona but the real me remains hidden. Writing these posts is a way to put myself out there to be discovered. But there is dissonance. The hospice director is a carefully crafted facade. It serves purpose. It is a image I use to make money and care for my family. The post writer is the inner me. He is the voice in my head. My best friend. what would I do if people at work saw these posts? What if prospective employers saw them? Family, friends. Strangers? I want more than anything to be known. I want more than anything to remain hidden.

Seeker

5:29am will I spend my whole life being who I am, striving to be what I am not? I am a seeker. I meet people where they are. I validate others. But those traits don’t make money. They don’t make me “successful.” I work jobs that do not reward who I am. I try to be different but fail. Then I try again. And again. I can’t stay put. I am not allowed to stay put. I can’t change. I am who I am.

Realization

what I once saw as a strength has become a liability. I wasn’t afraid to let go and leap into the unknown. While this has given me many friends, adventures, experiences, money and titles it has not afforded me stability or true sustained growth. At the beginning of 2021 I see what I need to personally work on to become better

Evolution

My first couple of jobs were rewarding. I liked the sense of identity, the purpose and lifestyle having a job afforded me.

When I was younger I liked being a student. I graduated from high school and went on to college, even grad school.

At some point I tired of being a student. I wanted to evolve and grow. That is when I got my first job.

After more than a decade of working jobs I strived to take the Next step and evolve again. But what is the next step? Being a student just happened. I was told to go, I liked it and continued. Getting a job took persistence but there were opportunities and I took them. Finding the next step is not so clear. Where do I go, how do I make money, support myself and my family?

Those questions and the answers you live with will be how you spend a majority of your years on this earth.

Subjective lag measures

Overall satisfaction is subjective. We can continue to work on the money part and constantly assess the other. And you know what, often times when you stop and look back, even if you didn’t hit your goal it is then you appreciate the journey.
Graduation from high school is a goal, graduating from college. But those are made up goals because you are paying someone for the privilege of putting you through a system. It is a form of entertainment though it does have value. You can put that on a resume and apply for jobs that have more money. When I got my MBA I was instantly able to check a box on applications I hadn’t been able to check previously.

The objective

Very few of us live in a black and white structured league with records and playoff systems and a shiny trophy at the end. We have only one quantifiable metric we can measure, money. The outcome most of seek for personal growth is to increase the amount of money we earn in a given time frame. You are trying to get you more income. Your goal is to make more than you made the year before. To keep moving up the scale and see how high you can get.
Making more money than the year before is the objective. You can measure it. One number is greater than the other.
From here forward that is the objective you are trying to reach. If you accept that, keep reading. If that does not sound like you there is no point to continue.
I am not saying growth and making more money are the only things in life that matter. But in the narrow confines of this work that is what we are talking about. I am not going to talk about much other stuff here.

You don’t get to choose

You don’t get to choose what changes. Something good will come from change and something will be sacrificed. Change does not automatically mean better, it means different. The positive side of change is if a situation feels stagnate and painful the possibility of something new is mostly positive. I made the decision about my job. I spent a lot of money and ended up with different problems because of the change. But when I look back at it I am glad I made the change. I feel better and more alive dealing with the latter rather than the former.