Looking Ahead

As per my previous posts, I had resolved to get some help with the stress. I've seen the counselor 3 or 4 times now, and it's going fairly well. As always with therapy, I am being challenged a bit.

Caregiving is resolving alright. I have started taking better care of myself and I work on coming to grips with Dad's impending death and the quality of my care of him (enough? too much? not diligent enough?). I don't think Dad's going to die soon, but it is coming relatively soon.

I asked to talk about my job some. And, as good therapists do, my therapist has challenged me to think about my job. She pointed out that I am behaving as if this is the only job I could ever get and if I were to lose this job, I wouldn't be able to find another.

This is not true. I'm very employable.

I want to stay with my current employer until retirement, even though it is certainly not necessary. She challenges me to consider why I want to stay that long. That's about 20 more years.

I have a habit of staying on too long when it's time to go.

But I have a hard time recognizing when it's time to go. From a practical standpoint, any job can't be happy, fun, and personally fulfilling every single day. There are "down" times and there are times when things don't go your way. I have a hard time telling when it's a temporary down time and when a job can no longer fill my needs.

I value longevity and stick-to-it-iveness in a job and I had planned to stay with my employer to live up to those values. It was my way of thanking the healthcare industry for allowing me to join it so late in life. However (and I apologize for whining), I'm bored. And, this job is not giving me back the warm fuzzies that make a job fulfilling.

Right now, I don't have enough responsibility and leadership for this job to be interesting. The technical aspects of the job are no longer intriguing. I've basically mastered those. To get to the next level I would need training, and the company is not in a financial position to provide that training. Will it always be this way or do I just have to be patient? I find the politics in this organization a big downer - it seems unnecessary and an impedance to any type of progress. Even the politics are boring to me. Additionally, my recent history in this job is very similar to the frustrating situations that caused me to leave computer programming 10 years ago - I am the queen of the cancelled project.

Perhaps my perception is a bit off - surely everyone works on projects that get cancelled. Given my personal work history, I am unusually sensitive to it.

My therapist suggests that "I am not listening to all of the voices" that represent my values and needs for work. That's an interesting perspective. Now I need to figure out what these voices are, find out what they are telling me, and maybe then, form an action plan.