So, I've been going through this quarter life crisis a year early, contemplating my career and trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life. Today I was sitting in a program management review and had a revelation. In this room were finance people like myself, logistics, contracts, engineers, program managers, a vice president, and schedulers. Everyone knew it was my birthday and before the meeting started, one of my colleagues asked how old I was turning, so in front of everyone I said "24". Everyone smiled and joked that I was the youngest person in here by probably twice that amount.
That is when it hit me; I am way too cocky and impatient. I was sitting there in a room full of years of experience in international business and a wealth of knowledge that expands far beyond anything I can probably fathom at this point in my career. I get so wrapped up in money, day to day corporate america bullshit, and spend way too much time thinking about what I don't have and what I want instead of what I'm actually doing and have. Earth to Lisa..YOU ARE VERY LUCKY! I need more time under my belt, I need to focus more about being better at my job than I already am, and I need to be open minded to the fact that yes, my job sucks right now, but that is because I'm still somewhat fresh out of school and I still don't know anything. No one really owes me anything here yet because I'm still learning. I am a preschooler in the University of Global Defense.
- So the question is this...am I to just take the monotonous, number crunching, dry, and BORING as hell work that I do, week after week, and just feel lucky that I'm even employed? Just suck it up and go through the same old motions that I go through every week because "someday" it will pay off? Stop being so impatient and take things as they come..whenever that may be?
OR - Do I say, F this. This job sucks and it has sucked since I've started. I'm not seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. Should I say, I went to school for four years, am getting my MBA and I deserve to make more money and people need to start realizing the value I've added so far? Should I waste 45 hours a week burning my brain cells on spreadsheets all day long OR should I really be putting them towards something FUN and that I actually enjoy doing and can actually feel valued and like I'm making some kind of difference in this world, rather than feeling like if I left no one would care
Part of me thinks the first stance is definitely the right and moral option. It is conservative, safe and resembles a "let it happen" person. The problem is that in my opinion, let it happeners are pussies. I am a "make it happen" person and I choose to say F you, Northrop Grumman and your weapons of mass destruction!!!! I want to work with people and change their lives! Not destroy them indirectly through Microsoft Excel!!!! I want to make even the slightest difference in anything, whether it be teaching some kids how to multiply in a Baltimore County school, protecting the Great Barrier reef in Australia, going away to the Peace Corps for two years and stimulating microfinance in Central America, or just taking pictures that inspire people or inspire their own creative thinking.
My last observation is this: Thank God for my sporadic and random train of thought and ability to reflect on horrible ideas like "being conservative". I would never make it out alive if I actually followed through with ridiculous ideas like that. Thank you God, or whoever, for giving me the gift of intelligent rationality.
Solution to my problem: Keep applying to random jobs that do not involve anything close to what I am doing now, and that only involve making an immediate difference in anything at all.
My latest attempts: Secondary math teacher in Baltimore County and http://www.islandreefjob.com/ (as improbable as it is...at least I'm dreaming).
I guess what is driving me to think about this problem so much is that I see people every day tat work who I don't want to become. My biggest fear of sticking in a job like this one is losing that ability of free thinking and just dissolving into the background drone of these awful fluorescent lights in these stupid, fuzzy cubicles. I don't want to be like that guy I see takling to himself at the copy machine, with a strange deer in headlights look, and who has the capability to multiply and divide ridiculously large numbers to the exact decimal point within seconds time and who has lost all characteristics of actually being a human being with social tendencies. I do not want to lose the ambition to be who I am and I want to stay young at heart by not succumbing to the pressures of bottom lines and Corporatocracy.
I won't give up. What is that popular saying? Good things come to those who wait? F those guys, I'm going after it.
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