I’m a high achiever. I was raised to be this way.
I was raised to assume I’m never enough.
If I wasn’t succeeding at the goals I put forward in life, it was plain and simple there was something more I could do in order to succeed at the things I wanted in my life.
This was the perspective I took while chasing my marine science career goals.
It started in undergraduate school. One semester my advisor told me I needed a summer internship to be competitive for graduate school. For that I needed to buckle down on my studies, increase my grade point average, and take a heavier course load. Oh and volunteer in a lab on campus because that would be helpful. I.e. What I was doing before wasn’t enough. I needed to do more.
I did all those things and sure enough, I got a summer internship. Not the one I most desired, but a good one. Did it help get me into graduate school? Honestly I’ll never know.
It did however, get me my first job after graduate school. That did help out a lot in my life. That job lead to my second job. At that point, I was doing enough in life.
After a year and a half in at that job, I started wanting more. I wanted a different job. A stable job. Not one that had me traveling all over the Mid-Atlantic Coast. One that allowed me to be in one place for a while, or I graduate school was still a distant picture on the horizon.
Over the course of the next 6 months, I applied to 25 different jobs in marine science and wrote 6 different emails to perspective graduate mentors. All of which, when they answered, said I wasn’t enough. There were better candidates, with shinier resumes. I needed to do better.
I needed to up my credentials and apply to more jobs/advisors. There was more I could be doing.
I did more. I got into a graduate program. I went to graduate school, simply to continually hear there was more I could be doing. If I did everything my advisor asked, there as never a “good job” at the end of the day. No there would be another task to do. In fact he would use those tasked (editing papers, writing grants, crunching data, etc.) as incentive for any and all of us to work harder. Because if we did one of those things for him, then there was a chance he would add us as an author to a paper. My name has still never been added to a scientific publication, because I was simply never enough in marine science.
The feeling of never being enough in your chosen career path, is why I left that career path.
Growing up, I was always striving to make the grades my siblings obtained with ease without any avail to the actual achievement. All my efforts were futile. My sister hates it when I say this, but I am the dumb one among us.
Or at least that’s how it felt for the better part of at least a decade in my life.
Until I completely stopped. I stopped playing the game. I started playing games, I knew I was good at. The ones I knew I could succeed at because I am smart, because I work hard, and I may be the dumbest of the 3 of use, but I’m also the most social and that accounts for something in this world.
So I played in the world of hospitality for the past 5 years. Honestly, I absolutely love it here. It’s easy. I get to come to work, do my job, and leave without wondering if I did enough or not. It’s done. Either the customers were happy or they weren’t. Either they left a good tip or they didn’t. There is no fixing it tomorrow. It’s simply over.
There is beauty in this path. There is peace.
Yet, at the end of the day, the work is cumbersome on my body. I’m not 22 anymore working on my feet for 10 hours a day, I’m 36 and my feet feel the difference in those years. I love this work, but this isn’t my end all be all work of my life. Also, having your financial future rest on things like the tourism, the economy, and the generosity of strangers.
Thus, I’ve started a job search again. And seamlessly, I fell into my old “I’m not doing enough” mentality.
Why? How so?
In November/December when I came back to the Keys, I applied to roughly 50 jobs. That’s not a joke, with easy apply on LinkedIn and Indeed you can apply for a lot of jobs in a short amount of time. Do you know how many interviews I’ve had from all those job application?
NONE. ZERO. ZILCH.
When you’re in your mid-30’s with two degrees and you can’t even get an interview for jobs you know you’re overqualified for, it’s hard not to resort to the old stories. You aren’t putting in enough hours. You aren’t applying to enough jobs. You aren’t reaching out to enough people. You aren’t networking enough.
You tell yourself there is always something more you could be doing, until the something more ruins where you are in your life right now.
That’s exactly what hit me on my walk to work one day as I walked past a small tree blooming in the most beautiful shade of yellow with an orchid nestled in-between it’s branches with 4 butterflies fluttering around the whole area, weaving in and out of the tree and around the orchid.
I decided, I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not sure if a remote job to pay the bills to take the pressure off my finances and feet is the right route for me. But I know being miserable, stuck in the cycle of never enoughness while getting to where I’m going is not the right route.
Thus instead, I’m taking my time to apply to the jobs I really like. I’m writing the cover letter for each position. I’m tweaking the resume. I’m reaching out the the hiring recruiters. And if they don’t get back to me, that’s okay. I did what I could do. And what I can do is always enough.
Hope you can find the place you feel like enough, and you don’t forget to stop and watch the butterflies along the way.
コメント