Skip to main content

Forced Reset

This story and the several comments resonate with me. I would be one of those "Tech vets" looking for a reset. A few weeks ago, I chatted with a woman who calls herself a career pivot coach. She told me that she talks to a lot of people just like me - at some cross-roads in the life where they must have a choice to change or reset on their own or will have the choice made for them. I had set up that appointment with L because I have the very same fears. Pushing that reset button feels incredibly hard because it is easy to keep doing what you have done for the longest time and got good at even it happens to deplete your soul of joy. There is a certainty and control that comes with staying in the rut. A few of my peers are waiting for the choice to be made for them. 

I can think of two women one in her mid 40s and the other in her mid 60s who are in very comfortable tech jobs and think they could be cut in the next round of layoffs. Both seem to want that decision made for them almost as it it would free them up to push that reset button. But knowing them I know they will find it emotionally difficult even though they wish so much to have a forcing function to reset. Lucky are those who can find a gentle path to transition into a whole new world without it needing it come in the wake of a traumatic event. The short conversation with L gave me plenty to think about but it also clarified to me how unready I was mentally to do what I have long craved to do.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more