Uncaging a flower
“It’s like caging a flower. Like taking its sunshine away.”
🥀
At my last corporate job, I was in a role I really loved. People told me they saw me as a competent, caring, trustworthy colleague they could rely on to project manage, be creative, organize, and give compassionate advice. I was the captain of fun in the office too. I took responsibility for making the workplace better for the staff.
I identified so strongly with the job, it became dangerous in a way.
Whether things were going well or not, I was always thinking and talking about work. I cared a lot. Too much.
Just over a year and a half, the department re-organized. My team was dissolved and my role was eliminated. I was crushed. They gave me one option to stay and do a completely different job. Very administrative. No creative work. No project management. No fun. A lot of processing requests and compliance. Important stuff but…
If you know me, you know that I pour my heart and soul intensely and enthusiastically into things I’m passionate about. If I’m not passionate about it, I am like kind of dead inside. No heart and soul to be found. My highs are high and my lows are low. I’m rarely neutral. A good thing to know about myself, right?
So when I started to tell my work friends outside of the department my role was eliminated but I was going to give this new role a shot, I got some very strong, very blunt reactions:
“UGH. It’s like caging a flower! Like taking its sunshine away.”
“Oh nooo and you’re definitely going to hate that and then you are going to leave…ugh that sucks.”
Ha! I started to train in the new job. My friends were right. I was dead inside. Miserable. Gave my notice 2 weeks later. I knew I’d figure out something else and I did…which is a story for another time.
I tell this story (with gratitude but still a bit of heartbreak) because it never feels good to leave a job when it isn’t on your terms. This was the 2nd time that had happened to me, having been laid off from a job about 2 years earlier, but I learned some different lessons this time around.
This time, I understood on a deeper level the importance of having strong identities outside of work. I put a lot of my energetic eggs in one basket and then my basket was dumped out and all those eggs were broken…it felt like an identity crisis. So, yeah, we need to embrace that WE ARE MORE THAN OUR JOBS.
I learned often others who know us see our truth before we see it ourselves. My colleagues and work friends saw what was coming. I had to see it on my own, of course. But it helps to have people in our life who are willing to be supportively blunt when we need it.
It also reinforced a really hard truth: people are always going to make decisions about us and for us behind closed doors without our consent or input. Jobs, auditions, raises, contracts, etc. It’s just the reality.
Now I know when people decide I’m not the right fit for an opportunity, I have faith it’s because the universe has bigger things in store. And I have experienced major self-discoveries and big adventures in the blank space created by letting go of that one work identity.
And I believe big, sunny things are in store for you, my flowers! 🌻
I can help you see the sunshine. Book a free exploratory session with me, your personal career re-energizer, and I’ll make sure you walk away with some fresh perspective and clear next steps towards your fulfilling career change.
Image: Lauren, a white women with teal and brown glasses laying, in a hammock wrapped up in the blue fabric like a cocoon, with only her head revealed. She’s smiling with her eyes closed, enjoying the sunshine on her face.
