Do you have moments in your life, where you let yourself dream whether it be out of frustration or an out of body wish experiment? In that conversation with yourself, do you say "If I could, I would" _____________?
If so that is the key to unlock. It's the blinking light saying listen to me. It's the beep you hear when the pilot turns off the seatbelt light. These are the moments of internal dialogue to listen to as you strategize for forging your own unpaved path, detour in the current trajectory.
Maybe learning a bit about my story, you can condense the amount of time you take to implement action - big or small.
I was caught up in a career trajectory that took quite a bit of time and investment so I was very stubborn and reluctant to give it up. Jobs in academia are only available once a year and are a long process to potentially be the top candidate. They are so coveted that once someone has secured that position they hold on tight so it's possible to create a toxic workplace for everyone else because of that. I didn't really know what I was getting into at the early stages. A professor of mine had planted that seed of maybe I should teach as I guess he saw the qualities in me during our interactions in the classroom. I had a nostalgic perspective of the life of a professor. Time was on your own and the schedule was most definitely not as demanding as a 9 to 5 50 weeks a year. I was all in and passionated about my subject as well as the teaching experience. But in that terrain there are personalities and turfs that are being protected without your initial knowledge. Teaching jobs that are offered once a year require you to relocate and start over. In my younger adult life, that didn't phase me because I grew up moving around and starting over. But when I found myself in my second tenure-track position after the first tenure track option blew up in my face due to those personalities and a female administrator who had very conservative perspective on how I should 'behave'. She also thought I was much younger than my actual age so being in an academic career sometimes felt like people were putting me in a box where if I got in trouble I was being called to the principal's office. And I was not the kind of kid who got in trouble. A conundrum. In any case, not to get into all of the gory details of what an outsider may consider a boring and safe life with a guaranteed salary - why rock the boat? Well if you are slowly losing your soul and becoming just a shell of the person you used to be, that's when you know it's maybe time to jump ship. In the second tenure-track position, after relocating yet again, I was on a relative high of feeling accomplished and making an impact on students. After the 'honeymoon' stage, things just spiraled and it took me several years to actually recognize and identify that I was in that toxic workplace with a bully. I would commute to work on broken roads over multiple bridges into one state and back into the other. I became so tired I became more secluded. Bullies really do a good job of isolating you from others and yourself. Almost to the point of being numb and feeling like a hamster in a wheel, I started having conversations with myself about what else maybe could I do. Some of it was simple in that maybe one day I would have a garden. Or wouldn't it be really great to own backyard chickens. Or wouldn't it be really great not to be so tired all the time and constantly having to prove my worth to a bunch of supervisors who had no clue about graphic design - my discipline - and by extension me as a person, a professional, and an expert in my field. I knew that I would be awarded tenure because of the year long drama that occurred before my application was in the system. I knew that if I wasn't awarded tenure that the administration knew they would have a lawsuit based on the voluminous amount of evidence of being targeted by my colleague. In fact, in a disciplinary action against her she was removed from the tenure committee only to be reinstated by the faculty union because they didn't feel that was a fair disciplinary action (against someone who had been documented in this severe case against the colleague she was supposed to be 'judging' for tenure and promotion). The University administration had no choice but to allow her to be on the committee, but she was supposed to recuse herself from my case - she didn't. All of the fighting to keep my position because of the efforts I had made over the years including 3 years of an MFA program, relocating multiple times, teaching and professional conferences, required service activities for the university and the extended community. It was all exhausting. Then I realized I hated where I lived. If I hated the job, the system, and also the city and state, maybe it was time to listen to that internal voice of "if I could, I would..." That started with "If I could, I would...." live in the countryside. One day as I was driving on that broken highway across those bridges from one state to another and back into the state, the conversation with myself became more clear with more practical and tangible possibilities. By the time I got to my office I was ready to look up something on the computer. Instead of preparing for my classes that day, I got onto some realtor websites and found the listing of where I am now. I searched other listings and kept coming back to that one. A few weeks later I made an appointment with the listing agent for the weekend I would be in the closest city attending a friend's wedding.
And so it began. I put the next steps in to achieve that "If I could, I would..." internal dialogue. What might be your first step?
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