..that’s what I’ve felt all my life..
I’ve always felt like I am on the periphery, on the edge of it all.. always peering in and trying to get in a foot edgewise and by the time I do.. people have left that circle and moved on. Like I have just missed the point.
I’ve worked for eight years and counting now and I still come up short on what I ‘like’ to do. I know what I like to do but appraisals and bosses have told me otherwise. That’s it’s not something I do well. Maybe my talents lie elsewhere. Really? Like where? I can’t work in this world of words?
That puts me in quandary. I get jobs doing what I like but March-April-May every year are torture for me. I don’t fight gracefully but I don’t agree with them either. I land up giving what I like to do only because I can’t fight effectively.
I leave with an exhilarating feeling and wonder whether I was cutout for the job in the first place. Which leads me to believe that I may not know what I ‘like’. This, of course, leads to more existential debates none of which get me anywhere.
And that peripheral feeling returns. I look at people who are so focused — they know how to get where they want to get. Though they grumble through the process they are still more or less where they thought they would be. They mesh so well — with the job and with all the nitty gritties that concern the job and all I do well is my job and I always hate the fact that merit isn’t the only thing considered.
Friends and acquaintances are keen to help and look at me, askance, ” What do you like to do?” And my search for that perfect job ends right there. Some one said to me recently (and she meant well), ” Maybe you are one of those who never finds her groove and have to make do with the job because you have to be doing something.”
That foxed me.. not find what I like to do? What about things I already like.. even love doing.. and find jobs in them? Why is merit not important there? Why is respect not a factor there? If I like it enough, why can’t fight to keep it?
What’s missing…?