Living the Dream! by Jay Tatum
July 1, 2008
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Today I want to look back at what I've done over the past few months and register a complaint with reality! Why did I wait so long to move on?
After months (or years, actually) of planning and preparation, we loaded up the moving truck and left the farm in Ohio for a new life on the beach in Florida. We'd researched this move for months and when the time came to actually move, I found myself holding on to the security of. . .well, a job in an established community with colleagues and friends, programs that would not survive without me, and the peaceful tranquility of a house on the hill in the country. I took one last look back and sighed.
For the next month or so we staying with In-laws catching up on all the projects that had been put off for years. Once I was gone I knew it would be a while before some of the work around their house would be completed so I bit the bullet and wore myself out fixing and repairing things they were no longer able to do. In some ways, the transition between leaving the farm and moving to Florida needed something like this to occupy my time and anxiety. I mean, I gave up my job and a significant portion of my identity in that community and hospital.
Once we arrived in Florida and set up our house, my wife and I spent the next few months just being together with no particular agenda except each other. Now don't get me wrong, we love each other and still enjoy each other's company after 30 years together, so this extended vacation was HUGE PART of our Living The Dream reality. And now we were getting to do what we had always wanted to do - live at the beach! Sigh with me. Hmmmm!?!
What was I thinking back in Ohio when I thought I couldn't leave and things would change? Did i really think anyone would really care? I mean, ultimately, I would be replaced eventually, but I just couldn't believe how good life could be with my wife when I stopped over-functioning for everyone else in the world and became re-engaged in my life with her. I should note, here, that while my career was in high gear, my wife had been in graduate school for four years, gone as much as me, and still managed to work a few temporary jobs for academic purposes. So this move was really a re-engagement for us both. And after doing this for a few months I find myself asking that question over and over again, "Why did I wait so long to move on?"
Feel free to chime in and comment on this journey. Next time I'll continue the story with my answer to the question. Thanks for taking time to share my story. Jay
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June 20, 2008
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Over the past year I have made it my purpose in life to really engage the paradox of choice as a personal companion on my life's journey. I resigned from a very fulfilling professional practice of pastoral care and counseling in a healthcare system to be re-engaged with my family. For me, this was going to be paradise and I would be Living the Dream. We sold nearly everything we had, down-sized from a large farm house on 500 acres to a suburban setting on the coast of Florida. I wake everyday to the warm, southern sunshine of the Space Coast and spend several hours engaged in . . . nothing - no cell phone or pager, no meetings or appointments, no crisis to manage, no tragedy to address - nothing but the choice to take time off from an exhausting career.
Most of my days are spent at pool-side listening to the fountain, neighborhood lawn mowers, and the train as it passes by several times a day. I read, write, and reflect in the solitude of the quiet I have so valued in my busy career. I surf the net, write a blog or two, and respond to many of the posts on Fast Company's site. I prepare dinner for my wife and family while watching Food Network Cooking Shows. And enjoy dinner nearly every evening with my wife and family - something that was not always valued in my earlier career choices.
My time has been productive in the sense of my profession as a cleric and I've managed to do an online graduate certificate in healthcare ethics in my free time. What's interesting, though, is that in the solitude of my choice to take an extended vacation the paradox of choice has presented a number of challenges to my traditional way of thinking. In particular, my profession has been as demanding as it has been generous. My time has always been compensated at a level most clerics envy and my assignments have generally been plums. And after nearly a year of Living the Dream, I find the paradox of seeking employment echoing those famous words from the Psalms and the Prophets that asks, "How do I sing the Lord's song in a new land?"
My choice to return to the work force has presented me with a new paradox I hadn't suspected in this foreign land - Singing the Lord's song to strangers. Now to be sure, the delivery of pastoral care and counseling in a healthcare setting is generally on my terms and on my turf. Guests in the hospitals I've served were guests in my "house" and there is a certain security in being the "Spiritual Leader." Being a free agent and returning to the work force to offer my services to prospective employers finds me working with that paradox of choice from a new perspective - namely that of prospective employers. Now I am the guest waiting to be invited into the Inner Circle of Healthcare's Leadership as "The" Spiritual Leader. I offer this series of posts as my Living the Dream experience begins to awaken from a well-deserved vacation. I love paradox and I hope you will enjoy these posts and the challenges I have encountered by being paradoxical.
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May 14, 2008
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I joined the ranks of the so many people this past year when I gave up a very good position in a small health system in Ohio to pursue some new career interests. My wife graduated with her second master's degree and was pursuing a rather lucrative opportunity that would more than double what I was making. So like the Beverly Hillbillies, we loaded up the truck and moved to. . .Florida!
After a few months of lounging by the pool, reading, writing, and reflecting in the warm Florida weather, I finally decided it was time to start looking for a new career opportunity. Being on the coast where the beach is only a half a mile from my house, much of the local economy is geared towards leisure and recreation, hospitality and entertainment, and "The Florida Lifestyle." But at my age after working for 20 + years, I wasn't quite ready to join the AARP or take a job a Ron Jon's Surf Shop, I wanted to remain active at the executive level. I contacted Recruiters, had several resumes professionally written, and began my trek across Central Florida in search of "an opportunity."
Aware of the down turn in the national economy, Florida's economy seemed even shakier than anything I'd seen, but I had confidence in my abilities to walk in to an organization, introduce myself to the top brass, and land a job! Paradoxically, after a few months of this strategy I realized it wasn't working. Don't get me wrong, I've made some great contacts here and I don't regret my decision to "live off my wife," but what I didn't realize was just how much the job market had changed over the course of my lifetime. Being the outgoing profession I think I am, I continued to forge ahead with the assurance that it is just a matter of time before I connect with a potential employer who graduated from the Old School like me.
In the meantime, though, I realized that job-seeking in the present economy is foreign to me. I don't know the rules (not too old to remember the old rules, just old enough to know they are no longer the same, if, at all). Many employers don't want to meet a potential candidate before the interview and just as many have Human Resources staff over-whelmed by job-seekers through the On-line Application Process. And after months of being stone-walled by potential employers and their HR Departments I began to realize that my job search had become a kind of addiction. I NEEDED a JOB for my own sanity. I felt completely powerless and out of control (if such a thing exists). So I created a 12 Step Program for Job-Seekers. It's a parody, of course, of being addicted to job-seeking but the implications for many of the folks I've met in my process it echoes the tongue-in-cheek approach this 12 Step Program entails. Please feel free to use it, abuse it, criticize it, and/or embrace it. I don't even care whether you quote me on it but if it works, by all means, share it with others, if even for a laugh.
A 12-Step Program for Job-Seekers
- I admitted I was powerless over job seeking - that my life had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Job greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn my will and life over to the care of an Employer as I understood the Employer.
- Made a seaching and fearless inventory of all the Jobs to which I had applied, been rejected, interviewed, and rejected again.
- Admitted to an Employer, myself, and another On-line Application process, the exact nature of my ideal job.
- Was entirely ready to have an Employer remove all these defects in job seeking.
- Humbly ask an Employer to forgive my shortcomings and give me a job.
- Made a list of all Human Resources Departments I had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to the Human Resources Department wherever possible, except when to do so would harm others or keep me from getting a job.
- Continued to make a personal inventory of all the jobs for which I'd applied and when I was wrong for the job, admitted it.
- Sought through applications and resumes to improve my conscious contact with an Employer as I understood the Employer, praying only for knowledge of our Employer's Will for me and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, tried to carry this message to job seekers, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.
This writer graciously acknowledges the beneficent and nonmalevolent nature of Alcoholic's Anonymous' 12-Step Program
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