Mental health though?
Surprisingly good! Possibly even great.
I had lunch with Knut last Friday and he told me this is the happiest he has ever seen me. We’ve known each other, what? 5 years?
I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on this – not necessarily in a terribly structured way, but there has been a lot of thinking thoughts. Being located in another office with physical and operational distance from the utterly dysfunctional and chaotic SML has provided an excellent opportunity to do this thinking.
So much of my identity has been bound up in that place – for almost 15 years! Endless people-pleasing, endless praise-seeking, endless (endless!) thinking and ruminating about it. And for what exactly? I do have an excellent job, I’m paid well and have a wonderful team – but none of that is predicated on being a 100%-SML-bot.
I realised that my life has been that 100%-SML-bot for quite a long while now.
Thankfully I’m starting to create some much healthier boundaries. I’m beginning to accept that there things at SML that I cannot change or fix and to make peace with those things (this doesn’t mean at all that I have to like those things!)
more of this
I’m trying to extend my boundaries – reaching out to people to catch-up, making sure I have a proper lunch break. There is absolutely nothing in the SML universe that cannot wait for at least 30 minutes.
2999 days.
Yes, there are lots of different parts of your career identity. I’m moving into the “wise elder” mode. It’s unlikely I’ll move into a “higher” career position now (I’m almost 54), but a slight sideways upward move is on the cards. I’ve also become more “confident” in my role, more willing to call things out as “the right thing to do” as opposed to keeping my mouth shut. I gave some mid-career advice a couple of years ago to a friend, which I know he’s found useful. I wish someone had told me about this phase, so I could have planned for it.
I like this “wise elder” idea, though probably I could do with a little more of the wisdom. Five of my direct reports are younger than my oldest child, which is about as trippy as you think. I’m probably more “mummy” than wise, but it was immensely satisfying when one of the kids told me last week that one of the reasons he didn’t want to make a lateral move at SML was because he would no longer report to me! Awww.
My biggest challenge in moving upward in my organisation is to call things out less – yes, I’m one of *those* people.
Oh yeah, and put “Lunch” in your Outlook is a good thing to do. Yeah, you’ll sometime cancel it, but mostly it’s a good thing to do, to avoid “lunchtime meetings” where they don’t actually give you lunch.
Lunchtime meetings are such a scourge! Even when lunch is provided, it is rarely worth the trade off.