Okay, if you've read me for any length of time, you've been cross-referenced to Brene Brown more than once.
She's done it again with this post, for two reasons.
- When I go to meetings, I tend to bunker in my hotel room given the chance- or go out to supper on my own, or go exploring whatever city I'm in. I socialize as much as I'm obligated to, but little or no more than that. It's simply too much work, too draining when I'm already out of my native environment. For that reason, her first comments resonated with me.
- If you read the comments, you see a short version of these thoughts....Her last paragraph contains this sentence:
"“If I do it just like her, I’ll have what she has” rather than saying, “If I stay open to learning new ideas and passionate about finding my own way – authentically and unapologetically – I’ll find true success and happiness doing what I love.” "
Yeah....about that....that's a hard one for me. Not because I don't want someone to look at, someone to ask the hard questions about the stuff I try to keep in balance, someone who has maybe walked some of the path that I'm walking. It's hard because, as I note in my comment, there are only 10 women in the U.S. who are full-time in my chosen/ called profession. 10. And if you line all 10 of us up, we've all gotten here by dramatically different means. We have very different personal lives. We have diverse interests. Other than the fact that we're all women, you would be hard pressed to find more than one or two commonalities between any of us. Only a very few of us have married, even fewer of us have children. Most of us do at least a bit of clinical research, a limited number of us have a significant research component to our responsibilities. I don't know of anyone whose educational responsibilities rival mine.
That's my long way of saying that there isn't anyone that I can look at and think, "I want what she has." I may want components of what I see other people having (Tina's research credibility, Nicole's amazing family life...), but at the end of it all I want and need to create my own space that is uniquely mine.
The obvious down side? I'm in uncharted territory every single day. Sure, there's something fun about making up your own rules and creating a unique existence. But every once in a while it would be nice to be able to look at someone else and ask, "What did you do about this?" or "What would you do about this?". It can get a little scary out here, and it's often pretty lonely.
One of the benefits, if it may be called such, about being a rare being is that by definition I get to map my course and decide what that space I exist and work in is. And honestly, most days I think I do a damn good job with that- at least professionally. That part I'm finally really getting right. The personal life stuff? Hell, I admit that I'm still figuring out exactly what it is that I want there (though I have some much stronger ideas than I did a year ago)....and as I figure that out, I'll wrestle with making it fit. I'm not delusional enough to believe that I can have it all at the same time, but I'm still willing to believe that I can have it all if it's important enough.
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