Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Guru available. Needs dental.

As time goes by I find myself writing less and less and feeling worse and worse. I think I need to write more to feel better. Not sure whether that's good news or bad or all of you...

I am looking for a meaningful way to spend my days. Though it would have been easier just to stay there, I left my job at UCSF because I have this need to do more than that job was allowing me to do. It's time for a challenge. I have this energy and knowledge and experience that I can put to good use, somewhere.  Now I just need to figure out where that is.

Of course, I feel like I should be standing on a mountaintop dispensing wisdom, and if I could figure out how to turn that into a paying gig, I would do it. Perhaps there is a website called "weneedgurus.org" that has the mountains and provides benefits, but I haven't come across it. I know something will revel itself in time. Patience is the key; but it is a quality I have never had in any great measure.

Really though, what makes me think I have so much to offer? I am past middle age, I have a checkerboard resume that doesn't include the twenty years of experience that really shaped me. How do I convey that the experiences I had and the things I learned raising Maggie are the very things that make me a valuable asset to a company. The workplace doesn't appreciate motherhood in its purest form and could not possibly understand the version I had. So what makes me the guru?  Swagger? Confidence? Delusion?  

Perhaps all three.

My friend Elizabeth posted this opinion piece from David Brooks of the New York Times yesterday. I suppose it's just a literary version of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." but it really spoke to me. The perspective I acquired because of raising and losing -- especially losing - Maggie  is the very thing that makes me think I am that guru.  It's worth a read.

What Suffering Does








1 comment:

  1. Sally,

    I think you should write a book. The one thing that sticks with me the most was when you told me " It never gets easier." I am sure new mothers sitting in that hospital room for the first time would find a book comforting from the experience you have.

    ReplyDelete

Hi Maggie loves your comments. It may take a while for the comment to post, but you will see it eventually.