my people

We need our own to walk us home. – Tama Kieves

I love the feeling of walking into a room and wanting to throw your hands up, Evita-style, to shout “My people!” – in fact, I think a lot of my life choices have been about chasing that feeling of at-home-ness. And now I may be home. Pretty much everyone at ThoughtWorks wants to change the world through software development; some folk are even thrilled to talk about it all the time. That’s my kind of nerd.

There will no doubt be frustrations, but I hope when there are, I can come read this and think of how true that Tama Kieves quote is. We do need people who match us to help us get where we’re supposed to be.

resources from the job search article

This is a companion to my last post, with some sources for people who would like to take a similar path. I list these because I used them personally, and recommend them.

If you’re looking for a coach, I know several whom I haven’t worked with, but who are good people you might click with.

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looking for a job from the heart (looooong)

This is an article – or small book – that came out of a couple of blog posts I wrote over the past several months as I looked for my next job. It’s long for a blog post now, but since it started here, I share where it ended.

What do you think? What ought I do with it next?

Also, here’s a small annotated list of resources I used.

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give yourself to the rose garden

The Rumi-a-day thing was apparently a great idea. Maybe I should re-title this blog “all Rumi all the time” or something.

So. Here’s your Rumi. It’s a selection of related snippets I’ve enjoyed this month.

Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love.
We are running to contemplate its vast green field.
Do you want to come with us?
This is not the time to stay at home,
but to go out and give yourself to the rose garden.
The dawn of joy has arisen,
and this is the moment of vision.
—
Run forward, the way will spring open to you
Be destroyed, you’ll be flooded with life
Humble yourself, you’ll grow greater than the world
Yourself will be revealed to you, without you.
—
Heart, you are lost; but there’s a path
From the lover to the soul, secret
But visible. Worlds blaze round you –
Don’t shrink: the path’s secret, but yours.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

My friend D sent me this poem she published awhile back that I keep on my fridge. One of the lines is I know which mushrooms; it’s also about sorta forcefully stepping out on a secret path. Or rushing, running, not shrinking. The point is action. And knowing. And trusting.

I spent some time recently staring into my navel and asking it how I ought to be: dearest mister navel, what future do I want? I had my doubts – really, I thought I was being unbelievably self-absorbed and wanky, no matter how needed the navel-gazing might be. It was surprisingly productive! I went in knowing that I like coaching teams and wish I felt more comfortable being the flaming nerd I am, and that what I do right now – at work – is slowly exhausting my reserves without giving me (or I suspect others) much back. And I came out with the clear-yet-daunting purpose of, you know, changing everyone’s perspective on work. No big deal. Just an itty bitty revolution. I’ll have it to you by next Thursday. No one’s going to eat your eyes (this is my new favorite example of corporate speak).

Point being. All this Rumi was dribbling in each day as I contemplated. The thinking itself took effort – and scheduling; I finally had to declare a couple hours each day to be thinking time. Like motivating to exercise, it may be delightful (and indeed it was, a few nights I started my hours, then never quite slept) once started, but the starting’s the hard part.

And in the background, Rumi’s all get up! get up! This is not the time to stay at home /
but to go out and give yourself to the rose garden. I love the “give yourself” in this translation. It sounds trite and fatalistic, but I think a purpose (future, vision, whatever word you choose) often feels like something you give yourself to. You do the work because you have to.

I’ve read a ton of other people’s writing about how they just found that clear, sweet nectar of purpose and TADA there was life, hope on board, next stop purpose realization. Seriously? I thought they were… thinking wishfully.

Then I get maybe 2/3 of the way through this conversation with my navel, to the point where I’m all great, ok. HOW??? and it responds how would I know? I’m your bellybutton. Thanks. Super helpful. Aaaand… then I got a call [Technically, I got the world's most absurd Google Voice transcription of a voicemail, ever, and yet somehow knew what it was.] with a very nice suggestion of a how. TADA, hop on board, next stop purpose realization, albeit on a small scale.

Can it really be that easy? Run forward, the way will spring open to you? Just like that?

This seems implausible. Tiny reading population: has this happened to you?

a tiny efficiency

It is too easy, when making big change, to totally reject what you’ve built before. It is for me, at least. The astounding breadth of what I’m considering work-wise got me thinking that the work I built and the house I bought were all wrong. Too settled and unchallenging.

Yeah. Because owning a nearly 100 year old house and making art are totally boring and complacent.

I’m counteracting the “everything sucks” backlash of big change with small refinements. This weekend I spent $40 and redid my bed in a way that lets me keep the temperature no colder than 78F. I imagine that’ll save a little bit of power & money, and it came along with more color. And orange.

The household economies are going well without throwing life out of whack (I wrote a post on my FB-connected LJ about my kanban board as a means of life balance, too). My garden is feeding me quite well, though food is still a thing I spend more on than needed. Most everything else is down, spendy-wise. I feel safe.

what do you want now?

What does it mean to look for a job in a way that makes the looking itself compelling? I suspect there’s a core set of values that everyone wants to honor in their process.

• learning (you develop new skills or have new experiences, you discover things about yourself or others)
• enjoyment (the search is fun)
• safety (your self-image is not at risk from rejection, you’re not in financial or physical danger)
• balance or integration (the job search complements your current life, or at least doesn’t overload you)
• presence (you feel like you’re really participating in the effort and experiencing the highs and lows)

Then each of us adds our own values. It’s important for me, for instance, to be open-hearted and rely on my emotion and intuition in this process right now. Presence for me is all about feeling, and connection with other people. Balance is all about feeling like the search itself is creative and leaves space for my artistic life.

Why think this much about what kind of job search experience you want to have? You could just start sending resumes out, or call your old manager who thought you were awesome. That whole process turns you and your next work into a bundle of keywords, skills and benefits. Great, if you want a job based on those things. If you want real fulfillment, though, you spend a fair amount of time deciding what job you want to do, where, in what sort of place and with what sort of people.

I say don’t wait for that new wonderful job to have what you want, where you want with the people you want. Have it now.

So, that’s part 2: decide what kind of experience you want to have while you look for your next great work. It may be a lot like what you want from the work itself. Or not. In either case, it will help you decide where to go on the map to your new destination.

open heartedness looks for a job

I’ve made a commitment to myself to find a job in a way that is itself lifechanging. Yesterday my coach introduced me to co-active coaching’s version of SMART goals. It’s like corporate SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely – don’t those words sound so efficient?) goals, but not soul-killing. Co-active SMARTs are specific, measurable, accountable, resonant and thrilling. Thrilling over timely! Resonant over realistic! I love it.

So. I’m also developing a guidebook for looking for a job with an open heart. Which means what? A map, I think.

Part 1 is this: decide what you want to do (in a way that is resonant and thrilling more than anything else).

Coaching is fantastically effective at helping to visualize this. Talk to your heart. Ask it. What is wonderful and shiny and good about you? How would you express that through work? What does an amazing work day look and feel like?

Be a kid about this. Remember when you were 5, or 10, or 18… or last week. A time when you dreamed big.

Do not, under any circumstances, take a skills assessment, sorting test, blah blah blah. It will be tempting, but don’t even think “how?” yet. Imagine and be thrilled. [Hey, self? This would be a totally rocking place to refer to all that "how to see possibilities" stuff in the book. Genius.] You’ll figure out how, find the union of practical and wow, in a bit. Get excited first. It’ll help your heart (or intuition, or gut, whatever you want to call your deeply feeling bits) talk to you.

I want to make the world more metaphorically sunlit by helping teams figure out how to build stuff together. And I want to do it in a place where people are excited about moving obstacles. I am superexcited about the idea of working at innovative tech companies. I actually like corporations even – I just want them to be places that think and move fast, fun and human.

There’s part 1, then.

what’s next?

I haven’t written my list of things I won’t do without. I’m not sure what goes on that list.

There is music playing outside that sounds like a mix of gansta rap and Jethro Tull ca 1977. What a mashup! There are thoughts in my head about work. I tried on a different form of coaching last week, and it fit perfectly some ways but horribly in others: I may be a vehicle for insight, but insight is uncomfortable and sometimes sucky. For others and for me. I had a couple of unsettling experiences that took me from ‘hey, this is a thing I could do’ to ‘oh, $DEITY, I can’t even be near this feeling’.

And bizarrely enough, everyone I know is not calling me to ask me to coach them. Clearly this will be a failure!

That is more or less a voice of ridiculousness. I know that. I’m creating doubt for myself.

The lesson? I expect a good path to come without resistance, though every fantastic destination I’ve ever reached came with tons of discomfort, even kicking and screaming. So what will I do about it?