The Aftermath
I admit, for a short while, maybe a day or so, I was in a bit of a stupor. A great deal of self examination and self-valuation took place. Interestingly, though, I never went through a grieving, loss, or missing period. After 16 years of dedicating ones professional life to building a entity, I was surprised that not only did I not miss it, I was actually glad to be finished with it.
Life is funny. I believe in a creator who is actively involved in my life. As such I believe life events happen for a reason. I also believe that we create our own opportunity through our less than perfect attempts at progress and our effort is assisted when needed and rightly directed by a higher power. I am not going to get deeply religious here but the relation of this perspective, serves as a basis for understanding how I approach life: past, present and future.
In my self evaluation period, I went through all those questions that arise when a significant change in life occurs: How did this happen, did I do something to cause this, why me, what am I going to do, what will become of our family, what now, do I really want to go back into corporate life.... and a multitude of others.
As I said, I am 40. I am accustom to being very active and driven in my approach to work. I have also always espoused to those that worked with me to keep the perspective that we work to provide the means for life away from work not for the work itself. I often taught this principle better than I lived it, but at the present crossroads this philosophy did have a bearing on my evaluative effort. I felt I was to young to roll over and retire in the traditional sense. I also am not confident in a financial model of self sufficiency for the remainder of my life (a long one yet to be lived I hope) and the growth of our family and its needs. At the same time, though, rushing back upon me was myself. All the things I had wanted to do in life, the passions, hobbies, interests, and desires that I had for so long voided in my life activities in the name of career flooded into my mind. Did I really want to go out and begin or join another organization that would provide those "life luxuries" that we had become so fond of. Were they worth the state of life that it took to gain them? Not to me.
I have two children, a daughter who went from a baby to ten in a flash while I was out building the company. I have a son, now eight that is really beginning to need a dad not just a father figure. I'm not saying I was never there but in relation to the desires I had, the perspective of the type of father I had wanted to be for my children, I was not living up to that responsibility. I'll also admit that often my work responsibilities overshadowed those of my marriage as well. Certainly except the occasional production to make a recreational trip happen, most of my personal interests were merely background fanciful thoughts of things I would like to do again someday.
When I was young, the desire to help others, to try to make the world a better place was paramount in my thought process. I even went to college with the idea of becoming a psychologist. I graduated with at the head of my class with a psychology major and a minor in business administration. I had the intent of completing graduate school in psychology. Learning the path to what I thought I wanted was in a direction that I didn't want to go, I went to work in the corporate world telling myself that I could do good for others there as well. I do believe that I assisted many throughout my career and I attribute some part of my successes to those efforts. In reality, though, a much greater percentage of effort and valuable time went to figuring out how to move the entity forward. I think this, while it is the job that I was paid for, was the departure from and consuming effort that resulted in 16 years of business success with a severance package to show for it in the end. I am not falling into self pity but rather pointing out that while I was very handsomely bought and paid for over the years, my lives work was not the legacy I had hoped to leave, not yet anyway. It's a good thing this happened now! At least from my perspective it is.....
posted by Unknown @ 7:56 AM
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