As the day of my birth arrives I've been having some conversations around goals for my next year of life as well as just reflections on life so far. I'm still young, a spring chicken in some ways, I like to think.
I've been reflecting on the fact that I'm not particularly career driven. This feels like a shameful fact to admit. Don't get me wrong...I love my work and I seek to do it well. It is an incredible honour and privilege to do the work that I do. It is more rewarding, humbling and inspiring than I ever could have predicted. I cannot picture myself doing anything else.
But in that I'm not focused on basing my success on my career success. I have written and deleted so many sentence in an attempt to explain this and I now think I understand why my husband hates so much to fill out random personality tests I excitedly present to him. There are just too many variables to explain. Would I pick a seminar on a topic on something that would be useful to my work over meeting a friend for coffee? Maybe. But if I hadn't seen that friend in a while or was just missing them and could access the seminar at another time...I'd go with the friend.
In high school and university this played out in that I would study enough to understand and pass but not enough to miss out on time or good late night talks with friends. I think I often felt like this meant there was something wrong with me because I wasn't willing to give it all for my education and wanted to pick the more "fun", "momentary pleasure" and while I 100% know that this was all it was at times- I also believe we're all just wired differently. If everyone was wired like me we wouldn't have any of the advances in medicine or science we have today...or probably many of the incredible works of fiction.
And yet, at the same time, if no one was wired like me (and the many others who are wired similarly) there would be things missing as well. It has been a helpful shift for me to define how I want to measure success and then shift my choices based off of that. Especially when I start to play the comparison game in my head. It's helpful to ask myself, are there things that I would have had to sacrifice to be "further along" that I don't really want to sacrifice? Does it make it wrong that person did pursue something different from me- absolutely not! We're just different people.
So, this year as I head into my 36th year I want to challenge myself to ensure that I'm being my version of successful. Am I doing the work that God has called me to or where He has placed me well? Am I parenting, counselling, writing, friending...wife-ing (hahaha) as well as I can with what I have available and what God has given me? Because if I am...then I can be successful anywhere...doing truly anything.
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