About that Whole Stepping Off the Ladder Thing

Hello There.  Been a while since I wrote anything here. I’ve been in a funk and as this often ends up about levity and fun stuff served up with sarcasm, I couldn’t really square that circle lately. But this morning I read this little piece in the Boston Globe Magazine called “Five stupid things I did and you should avoid when changing careers“. There is either a uptick in media on stories about midlife-career-change-reinvention-crisis management or big data has done a fine job exploiting my current station in life. Either way, it was a reminder I started this blog about the foibles of my own career change and lately the blog spiraled into a focus on food, my topic of my said career change.  So, I thought I would pull a ‘return to the roots and reflect’ post today.

I keep up with the buzz in the technology and innovation communities partly out of a continued interest in the tech world and partly out of a legacy of email subscriptions, and social media follows. Dan Lyon’s supposed tell-all book “Disrupted” is much discussed in those circles, but I am pretty sure the food world is largely uninterested in it just yet. Until I read this clickbait listicle, I didn’t have much interest in the book.  So, BRAVO, Mr. Lyons, you’ve peaked my interest.  I applaud that little milestone in your own career re-invention.

Mr. Lyon’s listicle really isn’t much of a listicle, but rather each point is a play on his first point – ‘”Reinvention” is real hard’.  A foreboding message from a guy who reinvented himself from technology journalist to technology marketer to technology tell-all author to a girl who decided to reinvent herself from mechanical engineer to world renowned food guru (or something like that. Considering I really have no idea what I am doing, that grandiose aspiration is fitting). It reminded me of the interview snippets from another author doing the interview and article rounds, Barbara Hagerty. I haven’t read “Life Reimagined”. Judging from Hagerty’s frequent reference to the lawyer-turned-farmer-living-happily-ever-after as fictional and reinvention being about small ‘pivots’ from your current course,  I imagine the book to be more of a rehashing of the many ways I fucked up my own career change.  So, BROVO again Mr. Lyon,  although you assert ‘reinvention is hard’, you’ve successfully pivoted.

I, on the other hand, am guilty of doing so many more than five stupid things that I apparently made pivoting into a much harder dance to master.

I am willing to venture, while basking in his recent literary success, Mr. Lyon has a softer view of this reinvention. As I am currently in the middle of my own not-yet-to-be-and-may-never-be successful reinvention and also at a rather self-indulgent, pity-party, low point of it, I don’t feel so rosy about it. So, rather than ‘Be ready to fail’, I would prefer to say ‘Be ready to really, truly, crushingly fail in humiliating and utterly incompetent ways’. And rather than ‘Be prepared to get fired’ I would say ‘Be ready to walk away, with your tail between your legs and your self-esteem in the shitter while knowing in the deepest darkest way that will have no choice but to have a go at it yet again’.   Think Rocky Balboa in round 10, but know you are not in a Rocky movie and defeat is really, real. Bad analogy, considering he actually lost in Rocky I, so imagine there might not actually be a Rocky II, yet you have no choice but to forge on into the blackness anyway.

I had several mis-starts. In my finer hours, I might call them lessons or opportunities to develop better models, but I am not in my finer hours today, so all I can say is they sucked. I took on projects that, in hind-sight, were destined to be a mess. In Mr. Lyon’s terms, my meticulous engineering and program planning background were not good ‘cultural fits’ for circuses run like shit shows led by underfunded and sloppy idiots (for those who know me, I am not referring to the project you think I am, that came later).

I took those projects on during the “I was panicked” mentality that Mr. Lyons mentions. However, given the financial successes of my past career, I had the luxury of being able to reinvent myself with a shiny new Master’s degree while not panicking about earning money or getting a job. I was panicking about the idea that I had to be doing something to move forward. So, I put on my idiot blinders, ignored the red flags, stuck with it longer than I should have, and regretted it.  Then, I hated myself and swore I would look where I was walking so I didn’t step into the next pile of shit.  And, then, I stepped in the next pile of shit anyway.

Now, Mr Lyon’s seem to lament his lost youth with ‘Age bias is real’, which, I might add, is not a stupid thing he did, but rather a stupid thing he observed. I feel for the resentment about young, idealistic, little, kool-aid drinking, whipper snappers making you feel old. They make me feel old too. But I do not waste a minute these days wishing to be the young, naive thing I was 15 or 20 years ago. While I might currently be busy stepping in piles of shit like a misguided teenager, when I was actually a misguided teenager (or a twenty-something) I was not smart enough step out of the pile of shit. Which brings me to being ready to walk away, licking your wounds with your broken heart in your hands.

My last foray of a stinking heap under my shoe sole was not a result of mismatched cultural fits. It was a result of an ill-defined, underfunded, under-resourced project. Except the project was like the star-crossed lover of my career change. It was the project I passionately and desperately wanted to succeed at. The project that I might have held up to a nay-sayer like Barbara Hagerty and said “See, it isn’t fiction. I didn’t have to pivot. I leapt.” And, had I been that younger version of me, I would have let that project crush me under 16-hour days with no lunches, no breaks and no reprieve of days off that bleed into restless nights filled with tossing and turning until the bitterness was palatable.

Instead, that older, curmudgeonly (your word Mr. Lyon) and, yes, wiser self picked up the pieces of that shattered dream and moved on. Saving my triumphant proclamations of success for a future date. . . hopefully.