I want to thank all of you who read this for your support and respect. That makes this worthwhile.
Today, 11/19/2007, was the day I started my new job. With that, I'm a bit overwhelmed. I will be writing more to all of you soon, once I've gathered enough reflection to make it a meaningful post. Expect to hear about aging in the workplace. Also, some new sources of inspiration have come by. I have only some generous people to thank.
Stay tuned....
- Jim Campbell
Monday, November 19, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
How fear can cage us
My news this week: I resigned from my corporate job and will be working, at least for the time being, as a contractor for a different company, in the same industry where I've always worked. I am thankful that I had this chance. The jobs are pretty easy to find at this point, and with luck, this new job will take me in some good directions. However, I don't know anything for sure, since life is a major game of chance.
My own nervousness about the job change was actually a little surprising. I've done it several times before. This one hit a little harder than usual, though, and for reasons that aren't exactly clear. The money, benefits, and situation will all be about the same. The work stands every good chance of being better and more engaging. The commute will be much shorter. Why, then, would I be lying awake at night in nervousness, instead of going out to celebrate?
I spoke to some people at my company before I left, some of whom admitted they had not been happy there for a while. Most all of them said they were staying at the company to avoid making a big change. That is certainly an understandable sentiment. Psychologists have long noted how "eustress" - stress over a good change - can be just as hard on the body and on the psyche as the "distress" of things going unexpectedly bad. I am a living testament to this phenomenon.
Even more to the point is the fact that any job change is a step into the unknown, and that is always provocative. Like all animals, our very survival mechanisms have us equating the unknown with danger. Anyone who has cared for a pet or for a toddler knows that a new person, animal, or mechanism in a house can provoke a completely primal and dramatic response. It is even worse when the whole environment is changed. It is only when we get used to that new place - once we see that it isn't dangerous - that we begin to adjust. Even when a new job is bound to be quite similar to what we already know, the fears and doubts can come into full gear, leaving us feeling once again like that frightened child on the first day of school. The fears do not fully disappear until we finally get the feeling that we'll be all right where we are. This is a lot to ask of anyone to go through, and most people avoid it.
The corporate world can certainly encourage us toward "playing it safe", which I've mentioned in various examples throughout this blog. It is not in corporate interests for individuals to take new risks or make unexpected moves, since to do so interferes with organizational business plans. When people are enough reprimanded for going too far or doing more than asked, they fall in line in progressively subtler and subtler levels, first behaving as expected, then thinking as expected, and, finally, being as expected. The fear we have for ourselves and our livelihood can easily become a powerful and imperceptible cage that keeps us in place - the "quiet desperation" that Thoreau famously described.
I was laid off from a different job in 2004. I stayed calm, but it was a stress. I was concerned about my family and how they would do unless I found income, insurance, and stability. After seven weeks, I found a new job - at the place I am now leaving. I was certainly thankful for the work in 2004, and I'm still thankful now. Yet, I often think back to a conversation I had with a fellow contractor there, which occurred inside my first week of work. When I told him of my layoff and of my happily finding this new job - in the same industry I had worked for twenty years - he made a very interesting comment. He said that I did exactly what the Buddha had warned against - that I had gone escaping back to my prison.
Could it be that my nervousness around this job change has something to do with that very idea?
My own nervousness about the job change was actually a little surprising. I've done it several times before. This one hit a little harder than usual, though, and for reasons that aren't exactly clear. The money, benefits, and situation will all be about the same. The work stands every good chance of being better and more engaging. The commute will be much shorter. Why, then, would I be lying awake at night in nervousness, instead of going out to celebrate?
I spoke to some people at my company before I left, some of whom admitted they had not been happy there for a while. Most all of them said they were staying at the company to avoid making a big change. That is certainly an understandable sentiment. Psychologists have long noted how "eustress" - stress over a good change - can be just as hard on the body and on the psyche as the "distress" of things going unexpectedly bad. I am a living testament to this phenomenon.
Even more to the point is the fact that any job change is a step into the unknown, and that is always provocative. Like all animals, our very survival mechanisms have us equating the unknown with danger. Anyone who has cared for a pet or for a toddler knows that a new person, animal, or mechanism in a house can provoke a completely primal and dramatic response. It is even worse when the whole environment is changed. It is only when we get used to that new place - once we see that it isn't dangerous - that we begin to adjust. Even when a new job is bound to be quite similar to what we already know, the fears and doubts can come into full gear, leaving us feeling once again like that frightened child on the first day of school. The fears do not fully disappear until we finally get the feeling that we'll be all right where we are. This is a lot to ask of anyone to go through, and most people avoid it.
The corporate world can certainly encourage us toward "playing it safe", which I've mentioned in various examples throughout this blog. It is not in corporate interests for individuals to take new risks or make unexpected moves, since to do so interferes with organizational business plans. When people are enough reprimanded for going too far or doing more than asked, they fall in line in progressively subtler and subtler levels, first behaving as expected, then thinking as expected, and, finally, being as expected. The fear we have for ourselves and our livelihood can easily become a powerful and imperceptible cage that keeps us in place - the "quiet desperation" that Thoreau famously described.
I was laid off from a different job in 2004. I stayed calm, but it was a stress. I was concerned about my family and how they would do unless I found income, insurance, and stability. After seven weeks, I found a new job - at the place I am now leaving. I was certainly thankful for the work in 2004, and I'm still thankful now. Yet, I often think back to a conversation I had with a fellow contractor there, which occurred inside my first week of work. When I told him of my layoff and of my happily finding this new job - in the same industry I had worked for twenty years - he made a very interesting comment. He said that I did exactly what the Buddha had warned against - that I had gone escaping back to my prison.
Could it be that my nervousness around this job change has something to do with that very idea?
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Remaining days of service
I don't believe a man can consider himself fully content until he has done all he can to be of service to his employer. - The butler James Stevens in The Remains of the DayI saw the movie The Remains of the Day in 1993 or so, when I was younger. Some of the themes, I admit, may have gone over my head at the time, but in reflection, I see a lot now that I have a "mid-life" perspective. The character James Stevens was a manservant for a Lord Darlington, a prominent English nobleman. Stevens's work in this role was exemplary, and he rose to the rank of "head of the household," managing the other workers as they attended every detail in the physical upkeep of a large, sprawling English manor. The story is set in the 1930s, as the social and economic consequences of the first World War were stripping English nobility of their influence in a dizzying spiral. Like many members of the landed gentry at the time, Darlington was operating in total denial of the facts, maintaining the operation of his home and interests as if the British Empire were still in its full 19th century glory. This all seemed to suit James Stevens just fine as he dutifully and cheerfully executed his responsibilities to his boss, lording over every minute detail of the home's operations with military precision.
As one might gather from the context of the story, reality came crashing into their lives with heavy-handed lessons. Darlington, of course, failed to maintain his prominence, particularly as he threw his weight behind a conciliatory approach to the Third Reich, just one grave error among many that ultimately cost him his fortune. In one scene late in the movie, Stevens and a colleague travel beyond the home to a modern day urban environment, with electric lights blazing around them, in a stark visual contrast to the panached, antique feel of practically every preceding scene. In essence, the style of the movie perfectly conforms to the tone of its story - the characters' attitudes and ideals are mired in a past era - and when the movie finally veers outside that age and into the present, it is a startling lurch forward in time that seems unreal.
The events of the movie form the backdrop for the similarly jolting spiritual reckoning that James Stevens endures. At the end of his working life, Stevens is still holding on to his deferential, tenacious mannerisms that he learned from his father, also a manservant. Though he finds his soul aching as his old age glares at him from just ahead, he is still not quite ready to confront how his servile attitude, once so satisfying, may have actually betrayed him. Late in the movie, he attempts a daring denial by deliberately omitting mention of his job as he informs strangers of his involvement in Darlington's politics. Unfortunately for him, though, his decades-old mannerisms are still so built in to his every word and gesture that he is easily given away.
From the earliest days of our childhood, we are directed to please others. We do not necessarily understand why - just that if we make our parents happy, it is right. As such, this attitude can follow us well into maturity and beyond. We seem wired to please others in a more powerful position than us in an effort to gain approval, sustenance, and protection. When our parents yield their positions to teachers and then bosses, we serve them just as dutifully. We need to challenge this habit just as forcefully as we keep it. Unless we do, our very programming will be that of a servant, and the longer we go in this mode, the harder it will be to stop.
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