Most of us are trying to pull together a bunch of seemingly random threads of job skills, passions, and interests, into some coherent thing. It’s a complex process.
Have you ever thought you knew a lot about something, but as time went by you were still learning things about it that made you see that “OK, there is more to this than I thought”? And then suddenly you reached a point in the learning curve where you went from thinking you were gaining ground on it to having a sudden deflated realization that really, there was so much more to know about it, by comparison it was as if you knew zip about it?
It’s been that way for me about reinvention. Having embarked on my own, rather dramatic reinvention a few years ago, complete with chucking job, undertaking WomenBloom (I knew less than nothing about pulling together a website and community building), moving out of my house, etc., I thought I knew a thing or two about it.
Ha!
It began dawning on me about a year into it that oh ho, this wasn’t a linear process. There were detours, rabbit trails, wrong turns, hairpin curves, etc. galore. Oh, OK, it’s isn’t Point A to Point B with this, I get it. No problem.
WELL, then this summer I paired up with a friend who has been career coaching for a long time to guide a group of 10 women through 8 weeks of reinventing. Watching these ladies slowly unfurl, and assessing my own long journey, I reached that point where I’m wondering what, if anything, I DO know.
One thing I MAY know is that for most of us it really is a long procession of small steps, explorations, dead ends, experiments, and false starts that finally pay off. Most of us have constraints we have to work with, kids, spouses, financial obligations and the like that limit our space of possibilities. And then, most of us are trying to pull together a bunch of seemingly random threads of job skills, passions, interests, etc. (which we may not even have a handle on) into some coherent thing. If you think about it, weaving all those elements into a whole piece that works for us is pretty complex.
Reinvention is less a single dramatic stroke than a creative project.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. For today anyway. How about you?
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