Today is Administrative Professionals Day. Whoo hoo for me.
I like my job, most days. Today was one of them. I was invited to lunch with some wonderful other professionals from my office group, given a plant (that we all know will die a slow and painful death) and got to spend a really good hour NOT talking about work. We talked about the housing market, restaurants in Monterey, how I kill all plants in my vicinity, the cost of shoes, and watercress soup.
What made me think to write about this is this feeling I get sometimes when I think about my current job. I wonder if I made the right choices, like everyone else, and the feeling that I wonder where I would be if I had made different choices. Would my life be happier, healthier, more fulfilling? Would I be writing this blog now, or celebrating the publishing of my third novel with a glass of champagne in my hand on my yacht off the coast of Crete.
Truth be told, I would never have made this plan if you had to make me swear an oath. I was going to be the first female Secretary of State, after having blazed my way through law school (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, whatever) and worked as both a public and private attorney, defending criminals and corporations with the same amount of tact and professionalism, even if I knew they were all crooks.
To that end, I was a poli-sci major for most of my undergrad work. I was on the Associated Student Council and was the Student Trustee for my community college. I did an internship in my local Congressman's office in Sacramento while enrolled at Sac State. I took Business for Pre-law as an elective (I hated that class, but whatever). I worked for Amnesty International since high school, starting two different chapters. I still do work for them. I also worked for Habitat for Humanity, and still like to swing a hammer whenever I have a chance. So with the impressive, going-places resume, what changed? How did I get to be an upper level secretary for a Dean on a military installation?
Here is how: I changed my major my senior year, becoming a Child Development major, with a Political Science minor. It does not seem like much of a change (still both dealing with childish attitudes, but I digress) but it helped me focus on the fact that I wanted people in my life, and not policies. I needed the policies that I did work on to focus on the good of the kids in the world, and not just on the needs of the adults. I realized I could not really break into the ranks of the Ivy League on a blue collar education, but maybe I could influence children who could. My children, even. I accepted that I was a "behind the scenes" small time player. And while I know I am smart, and can usually see and understand politics and the back-play that goes on, I did not see how I could be the front man. I was just not that charming, and definitely not that sexy, to get noticed.
So I started teaching, running preschools, then resource programs, then working with Developmentally Disabled adults. I taught a severely handicapped, full-spectrum autistic, and visually impaired man how to sort his laundry. He was never going to be able to do his laundry by himself, more than likely, without at least some minor help, but I taught anyway. Why? Because his dream was to be a brain surgeon. And brain surgeons need to wear clean clothes. I was the only one that could frame it for him in that context, and get him to attempt a true life skill. Everyone else had told him he could never be a brain surgeon, and so he had refused to pick up his clothes off the floor. Most of the time, before I met him, he refused to change his clothes or shower. Once he had someone acknowledge for him that being a brain surgeon was not a stupid idea, and one that he could control by working towards it, he was willing to try to do many basic things, including eventually shower and do a load of underwear.
So when I burned out of doing that job (it is hard to teach someone the same task, twice a week for 2 years, with no chance of them getting it right, and not burn out), I had two children, a husband who was drinking all the time and not working much, and a windfall chance to go work for the federal government.
I mention all of this now, because I am becoming okay with the road I am on. I am the mom to two amazing and wonderful children, who would probably have been spoiled brats being raised by nannys on that yacht a few paragraphs back. I am a writer who is learning to speak my soul, and I am sure that is a gift I cannot be anything but grateful for. I am learning that I matter, and maybe (as a very wonderful friend recently reminded me) I get to be a gift to someone else eventually.
I will eventually not be an Admin either. I will be something else, and it will just be part of the journey. I will, however, remember that my dreams change to fit my life. And that dreams, like being a brain surgeon, are wrapped up in what I value. I always valued being progressive, I always valued making things better. I have just seen that those big dreams of being in charge are not going to be how I define a good life. It is a good life in the "living", more than in the "doing".
And living it is more important than the titles it comes with. I make no promises on the plant though, it is on it's own.
