I'm building myself right now.
I like these constructive metaphors, just like I love extended metaphors. (Can anyone tell me exactly how many brown cows came to the job fair? Anyone?! ...Another reason I love my day job. Also that I get made fun of for using words like syntax in a meeting. Not that it's the first time in my life I've been made fun of for that.)
Extended sidetracks aside, I am building myself. For example, I've been developing a newer, more professional and 20-something version of my creative style. I know that there are those (some very close to my heart) who will accuse me of being superficial for my meticulous attention to such compositions. There are so many factors to consider: whether it fits well and flatters my shape, whether the color looks good on me, whether I could wear it in the company of XX important official, the care and material, and how it fits into my budget. This is important to career development, and even to personal development. Who am I, how do I express that, and how do I fit into the greater system? Because as Mrs. Morse told us back in 7th grade English, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. (Please, temper your reading of this with a bit of critical questioning.)
I'm also learning new skills, and refreshing old skills, and reapplying all these skills over and over and over again. I'm learning new ways of communicating (welcome to the Twitterverse, Class of 2011) and, more importantly, how to recognize, diagnose and fix miscommunications before somebody/everybody blows up. I stayed after my shift at the restaurant on Saturday night to listen to the band, have beers, and get to know my coworkers. This is very exciting to me. I'm refining my own interests, desires, and goals. Not that goals are my strong point right now, but I do have small goals that are important to my daily functioning (i.e. keep the Tfol relatively cricket-free, keep the Bizz III engine well-oiled, get sweaty every day, blog 3 times a week). The long-term stuff can wait just a little longer.
The best part about this construction project is that it's so intentional, and we all know how I love intention -- BUT there are also all these side products, like a secret crawlspace in the attic eaves, that get worked into myself as I move forward. Or side to side, whatever. Today a man in a grey suit and navy blue patterned bowtie tapped me on the shoulder after church and said, "You must be the one who went to St. Olaf." He told me that his grandfather graduated from there (way back when) and that he himself is officially an "Ex-alum of '51" or sometime in the fifties... But he had to leave school there to help his father through some tough times on the family farm. His family members note incredible accomplishments, every last one of them. He advised me to take what I'm given and add to it, multiply it, make something new and unheard of out of it -- innovate. "My father always used to say, we know where we're trying to go -- but sometimes going straight from here to there isn't the best way to get there," he told me.
Hear, hear.
In terms of that visible "There," I'm seeing some old dreams come up again. The poetry cafe revived itself full-force in my ambition for at least a day last week -- my mind's eye pulled a never-before-seen updated blueprint out for review. I'm honing down my mentorship dreams to forming a church group for college kids struggling to balance real life issues with spirituality and connecting within their sometimes very separate communities. (Yes, I realize this is abstract, but it's still a work in progress.) At the Den on Saturday, Jeff spent a decent amount of time encouraging my professional development as a server: "Seriously, I think you could be making a lot of money. Take home a menu, learn it. You would be so good."
After my talk with Owen this afternoon, I'm also very seriously considering composing a collection of stories told by the generation closest to death -- particularly stories that don't often get told. I know the oldest members of the Swanson family have brilliant gemstones hidden away, and the next-oldest members have re-cut versions of those diamonds; I'd love to mine all of them. (Unrealistic -- I'll settle for many.) And I can never forget the time I sat with Sharon in the back of James Gang's Hideaway for an hour and a half, taking notes about her incredible life. The three-page "interview with an entrepreneur" is, as far as both of our lives are concerned, a Golden Scroll.
I am so happy in my current jobs. And I would never have got here without a few key influencers, cross-country phone calls, Facebook chat, and a whole ton of prior text. Sometimes these people know things about me that I've forgotten, or things I would never recognize without them. Yes, there are times when we just agree with our friends or tell them what they want to hear; but I maintain that mostly happens when we already know what we think about the situation and we're just looking for justification. I can't count the number of times my friends and I experienced life-changing realizations throughout the course of a conversation. It's just part of the process of figuring out where we are, and then calculating and recalculating the route ahead of us, in long or short form.
Someone asked me last week, "But really, aren't we all just point A to point B?" I think it was Andy Shearer, but I can't remember for sure.
I like these constructive metaphors, just like I love extended metaphors. (Can anyone tell me exactly how many brown cows came to the job fair? Anyone?! ...Another reason I love my day job. Also that I get made fun of for using words like syntax in a meeting. Not that it's the first time in my life I've been made fun of for that.)
Extended sidetracks aside, I am building myself. For example, I've been developing a newer, more professional and 20-something version of my creative style. I know that there are those (some very close to my heart) who will accuse me of being superficial for my meticulous attention to such compositions. There are so many factors to consider: whether it fits well and flatters my shape, whether the color looks good on me, whether I could wear it in the company of XX important official, the care and material, and how it fits into my budget. This is important to career development, and even to personal development. Who am I, how do I express that, and how do I fit into the greater system? Because as Mrs. Morse told us back in 7th grade English, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. (Please, temper your reading of this with a bit of critical questioning.)
I'm also learning new skills, and refreshing old skills, and reapplying all these skills over and over and over again. I'm learning new ways of communicating (welcome to the Twitterverse, Class of 2011) and, more importantly, how to recognize, diagnose and fix miscommunications before somebody/everybody blows up. I stayed after my shift at the restaurant on Saturday night to listen to the band, have beers, and get to know my coworkers. This is very exciting to me. I'm refining my own interests, desires, and goals. Not that goals are my strong point right now, but I do have small goals that are important to my daily functioning (i.e. keep the Tfol relatively cricket-free, keep the Bizz III engine well-oiled, get sweaty every day, blog 3 times a week). The long-term stuff can wait just a little longer.
The best part about this construction project is that it's so intentional, and we all know how I love intention -- BUT there are also all these side products, like a secret crawlspace in the attic eaves, that get worked into myself as I move forward. Or side to side, whatever. Today a man in a grey suit and navy blue patterned bowtie tapped me on the shoulder after church and said, "You must be the one who went to St. Olaf." He told me that his grandfather graduated from there (way back when) and that he himself is officially an "Ex-alum of '51" or sometime in the fifties... But he had to leave school there to help his father through some tough times on the family farm. His family members note incredible accomplishments, every last one of them. He advised me to take what I'm given and add to it, multiply it, make something new and unheard of out of it -- innovate. "My father always used to say, we know where we're trying to go -- but sometimes going straight from here to there isn't the best way to get there," he told me.
Hear, hear.
In terms of that visible "There," I'm seeing some old dreams come up again. The poetry cafe revived itself full-force in my ambition for at least a day last week -- my mind's eye pulled a never-before-seen updated blueprint out for review. I'm honing down my mentorship dreams to forming a church group for college kids struggling to balance real life issues with spirituality and connecting within their sometimes very separate communities. (Yes, I realize this is abstract, but it's still a work in progress.) At the Den on Saturday, Jeff spent a decent amount of time encouraging my professional development as a server: "Seriously, I think you could be making a lot of money. Take home a menu, learn it. You would be so good."
After my talk with Owen this afternoon, I'm also very seriously considering composing a collection of stories told by the generation closest to death -- particularly stories that don't often get told. I know the oldest members of the Swanson family have brilliant gemstones hidden away, and the next-oldest members have re-cut versions of those diamonds; I'd love to mine all of them. (Unrealistic -- I'll settle for many.) And I can never forget the time I sat with Sharon in the back of James Gang's Hideaway for an hour and a half, taking notes about her incredible life. The three-page "interview with an entrepreneur" is, as far as both of our lives are concerned, a Golden Scroll.
I am so happy in my current jobs. And I would never have got here without a few key influencers, cross-country phone calls, Facebook chat, and a whole ton of prior text. Sometimes these people know things about me that I've forgotten, or things I would never recognize without them. Yes, there are times when we just agree with our friends or tell them what they want to hear; but I maintain that mostly happens when we already know what we think about the situation and we're just looking for justification. I can't count the number of times my friends and I experienced life-changing realizations throughout the course of a conversation. It's just part of the process of figuring out where we are, and then calculating and recalculating the route ahead of us, in long or short form.
Someone asked me last week, "But really, aren't we all just point A to point B?" I think it was Andy Shearer, but I can't remember for sure.
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