I read a long time ago now, George Leonard's "Mastery", where it looked like I was doing the right thing in many ways, and my career and other ahem, issues in life were kind of subject to a string of bad luck and the odd impetuous decision casting me to the wolves by my own hand.
I was not really in his worst of all sinners category - That of the "DABBLER".
The dabbler of course merely dabbles. They take up new sports or try a new level which challenges them a little, persue it for a while, gain some success and then fall off or fail.
EEK! Not me!
Well perhaps other people SEE me like this when they read my CV or get an impression of me.
To me my career has been about putting a lot of painful threshold crossing, then some trial and error in, running on the plateau of experience, and then notching up to achieve things a little higher. However I have been a little generous with myself perhaps?
From the outside I can seem a little unenthusiastic, reluctant, sceptical and maybe lacking confidence. Certainly looking back I lacked a lot of positiveness in front of asshole bosses I had to put up with to get a couple of year's experience under my belt in each of my three or four chosen career routes. There is a pain barrier, because of this dynamic and me being a little too big an ego when it concerns my 42 hours a week base line of work and commuting. I'm here arent I? I'm qaulified, and if you explain the task and your expectations I will do it brilliantly, However it is that little dynamic there eh, that breaks down.
The thing is I have had to work with a lot of this type of employee as people I have had to either cooperate with or manage within project groups, and it is just the nature of, well, most males in particular,. I never learned to suck up and shit down though. Well a little when that type of dull response with a generous squirt of skepticism comes my way. I only get on by in large, with weak bosses, and have only had a couple of good, strong bosses in my entire career spanning now quarter of a century.
I have had a number of bosses, direct and by proxy, who work by the mantra 'anything is possible, as long as someone else is doing it for me' . That is my pet hate of course, being a healthy sceptic and having a good deal of insight now, and knowing a little that folk thought I was wet behind the ears twenty years ago.
In fact my career, and current malaise is really down to having rather bad bosses and either not suffering them long enough, or suffering them too long. So if the job was good and I could shine in it, I should stay longer, while the reverse if the job was shit and the boss was shit, a double negative game outcome, which I just had in my last position and in my consulting contract before that.
Throughout my career, being a boss boss has meant marrying your job, I have only ever done that in stints of up to 18 -24 months, before divorce or the project ending.
Moving on from that little rant, then I just dont really have the service mindedness, or maybe it is that I seem to be a YES man , CAN DO man, WHIPE SHIT OFF YOUR SHOES, OK man at interview, but I am a beligerant bastard who likes making decisions with external bodies, customers or suppliers, wih the final say.
The trouble is then that I am an APPARENT DABBLER because after a big effort I just kind of move on, while from my point of view I have learned, practised, done well on the plateau, and moved on to the next challenge by changing jobs or contracts.
I am not really one of the other two bad guys in Leonards book, the Hacker and the Obsessive. I don't hack my way up anymore, I used to a long time ago and then kind of plateau out and maybe refuse to accept I was in a comfort zone and needed to go forward. I am far from obsessive in character, but do obsess about somethings with a weird emotional attachment to doing a good and complete job. On paper, my CV, to the world outside I am a dabbler.
The cure for me I know has always been doing something steadier for a time. But I have had some exciting private life opportunities and taken my sports where I have wanted to by in large before in life, and remain in an area of learning and wisdom to help others in those sports, while advancing a little slower physically of course, from a middle age spread low point a few years ago.
I can't do steady because I am not very interested in being loyal to a negative situation, while I am too idle and oddly committed to doing a good job, to get out of a bad position. The last two times I extracated myself, it went kind of badly and then left me here, with a CV more holey than swiss cheese, and about as solid infront of an employer's eyes. I just havent got into really good vibes, but then again I havent always made very good vibes in jobs where other people's negativity could have been over come by my positivity.
Coomunication falls out as I have been told on a number of occaisons, because my ego keeps me off the same side, and sometimes kind of stalling around in trying to comprehend how facile a task I have just been asked to do is, Often it is that I just could not see another way of cooperating or working around other people's stubbornness or egos.
Body language has a lot to say, and that 'oh whit a gift to gi us, to see ourselves as others see us' is there in that part of my personality, THe part they know and I dont
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