Sometimes it takes a career change to find real purpose in your life... and sometimes your best career has nothing to do with a job.
My first job out of college was with a highly successful high tech company. It was huge. It was solid. It was a coup, to be offered employment with them.
I was a systems programmer, supporting the large mainframe computers that serviced corporate headquarters.
Yup.
The CEO and Chairman of the Board could not function without me.
Well, sort of.
At that time, in our company at least, systems programmers were like rock stars. Highly paid. Respected. Kind of famous.
In charge of BIG THINGS.
And yet, it was by far the most tedious, mind-numbing work of my career. We were working with a new operating system that crashed a lot. Some little glitch in the code would bring the whole system down and we would start getting phone calls.
Usually at three in the morning.
I would drag my sorry you-know-what out of bed and into the office and get on the phone with Software Support.
When the system crashed, it would take a “dump” (yes, that’s really what it’s called), writing tons of binary code out to storage, so you could trace exactly what was going on the moment everything went haywire.
I would sit on the phone with Software Support, staring at a black computer screen with glowing green characters, locating various addresses within storage and reading back whatever was stored there.
It would go something like this:
Support: “Please go to address Able-Charlie-Dog-5-2-7 and read the first two bytes.”
(Addresses were expressed in hexadecimal format, which was at least slightly more interesting than binary.)
Meg: (
Support: “Okay. Let’s try 4-3-9-Baker-Able-Baker, three bytes.”
Meg: “1-1-1-0-0-0-1-1 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-0 0-0-1-1-0-0-1-1”
Support: “4-Baker-Charlie-Easy-2-Fox. One byte.”
Meg “1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0”
Sometimes this would go on for hours. We would eventually find the bad code and figure out how to fix it. If we did it quickly, we were heroes.
Woohoo.
I did this so well that I was soon promoted, then promoted again. Then I started managing the people who ran the huge computer rooms that housed the mainframes that supported the CEO, etc. etc.
Ten years – and multiple promotions later – I got a call from a headhunter. So-and-so had seen me making a speech at an industry conference in Las Vegas and was very impressed. Would I be interested in a move to Boston?
Entrenched in a large financial services company ten years later, I was long past my systems programming days. I was managing large organizations, providing service to huge corporate clients with multi-million dollar contracts.
Living the good life.
And asking myself the same question I used to ponder at 3 am, all those years ago. “Is that all there is?”
Over the years, I frequently struggled to find meaning in my work. It wasn’t that our products and services weren’t useful, because they were. (Well, some of them were.)
And there were several truly wonderful moments, when I could see that I was helping someone else to be successful.
It wasn’t all bad, but much of it wasn’t good.
I think my biggest problem with my time at work was the inefficiency of it all. So many pointless meetings. So much wasted effort.
And the politics.
Ahhhhhhh, the politics.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Honest. I was blessed with a long, successful corporate career that allowed me to do lots of fun things.
I traveled.
I bought a house.
I adopted two children.
And hired a full-time nanny, to provide substitute parenting services while I was work, work, working.
It took years, but in the end, it was my life outside of work that helped me find the purpose of my work.
It was at work that I really learned how to take care of myself: how to manage a budget; how to plan and execute a complex project to completion; how you can get more things done faster, when you are part of a strong team.
I learned about computers, savings plans, health insurance and the stock market.
I learned how to benefit from my failures as much as my successes.
When the opportunity arose, I made a significant career change: Good-bye Corporate America, hello stay at home mom. (Thank goodness for “the package.”)
Why?
Because there were two little human beings at home, who needed more of their mom.
Because it didn’t take me long to figure out that everything I had spent the past twenty years learning could best be put to use raising my family.
Because I just couldn’t stand to miss another moment of the most important career I would ever have: Parenting.
Thinking back, the best memories of my corporate career are not about presentations or promotions. They are about people. The wonderful, dedicated, supportive and brilliant people that I had the privilege to hang out with each day, for over twenty years.
And maybe that was the point, all along.
Related Post:
For additional insight into my transition from corporate manager to stay at home mom, (and part-time blogger) I invite you to read, What is Your Parenting Style?
Recommended Products:
If you find yourself stuck in a life that just doesn’t feel right for you, listen to a professional... life coach, that is. Martha Beck is one of the best and Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live is one of her best. Good luck!
Comments