Trying, Really Trying, to Support Myself to Make a Decision... - Day 27 pt. 2

This post was written throughout the course of this afternoon/evening. It might be pretty disjointed. I'll give away the ending: I have not reached a decision.

Continuing from earlier today:
Supporting Myself to Make a Decision - Day 27 pt. 1

Time is dwindling and I find myself "in a tizzy" as my friend put it earlier. I'm stuck at that point between ambivalence and indecision, moving into indifference and apathy. How do I not go there? How do I move myself from the point of self-directive decision making and not let myself become so overwhelmed and exhausted that apathy moves me?

Well, I'll start by writing...

What I have come to is that neither decision is a "wrong" or "bad" decision, although I am still attached to the idea that there is a "right" decision, which is to say that there is a "better" decision or "best" decision.

However, I also see that if there is a "right" decision, it can only be "right" inasmuch as I identify it as being "right" for me through self-honesty. There is no inherently objectively "right" decision here.

Each job is what I make it, and my decision will be self-honest depending on my starting point. So here I have to have a look at what is motivating me toward or against each direction.

• New Job
• For: 
• ability to support others
• working in my field
• keep a commitment
• Against: 
• concern about the complacency and philosophy inherent within the program
• fear of the unknown, unfamiliar
• only way around this is to move boldly forward
• concern about the downtime and how boring the day can be
• concern about how effective I will be able to be within the confines of the program
• IF I stay with this job, I have to let go of all this mind energy I am creating and participating within and as. I have to get down to business and focus on making the job the best that I can, and forget about all this selfish energy I am creating in my mind. 
• I fear letting go of this energy because then all I'm left with is what's here. 
• I fear that I will not be able to let go of this energy and therefore will remain unsatisfied and grasping for something, anything, other than what is here. 
• I fear that I will just recreate the energy even after I let it go. 
• Old Job
• For:
• familiar
• work with people I enjoy
• easy
• get a discount on art supplies and able to frame whatever I want for free with professional grade materials TOTALLY MOST IMPORTANT STUFF IN LIFE. 
• stable
• with the stability of this job I have greater support to expand myself in other areas. 
• Against:
• 1-year commitment
• Limiting, but also stabilizing 
• I don't enjoy all the people I work with
• Room to expand myself and walk this point
• customer service
• customers can be extremely abusive and demanding, seemingly not recognizing that the individuals assisting them in the service industry are humans
• retail
• I have identified retail as basically meaningless, manipulative, deceptive.
  
  Within this and the point on customer service, though, I am better able to let go of my attachment then to these points and to just deal with them as they come as parts of my job, and in this way I am supported to be challenged in this area but to mostly have ability to focus on challenging myself in other areas not related to work. 

Practically speaking, my new job is not exactly what I thought it would be. There is a lot of down-time, not a lot of structure, not a lot of immediate support, and the individuals with whom I would be working are non-verbal and therefore there is not a lot of conversational interaction, which I enjoy. I think that one of my strengths is conversational support, so to not have that skill utilized here feels like a reason to not like the job. But the job is to support these individuals however they need support, NOT to fulfill my ego needs of exercising my strengths so that I can feel valuable and good about myself. I will do a good job, if I decide to do this job. I will be a consistent source of support for these individuals. So here I see myself completely and totally sacrificing myself and my own wants/needs in favor of performing this job in a selfless way. One friend tells me I will burn myself out this way, that I cannot save the world. How can I strike a balance between this kind of self-sacrifice which is required to a certain extent in this field, and still making sure that my own wants/needs are met, that I work a job I enjoy, and that I am able to support myself?

Some other factors to consider are that I have signed away my right to taking a lunch break or even the two 10-minute breaks I am legally required to take because the structure of the program is such that it is impossible for me to take any breaks while I am with my participants. Even if I have to go to the restroom, I have to call my supervisor to see if he is available to come watch my participants while I use the restroom. And it is unlikely I will be able to eat lunch, because my participants require such heavy supervision/behavior intervention during lunch-time. So here we see ways that the organization does not support me as an employee and therefore ways that I may end up quite unhappy in my job.

I want to have a look at some of the emotions/thoughts/words that come up for me when I think about choosing to quit my new job and go back to my old job:

• Guilt / Shame
• I have made a commitment and I am breaking it; I am not good enough to work this job as is evidenced by my deciding to quit; I will have to retract the employment change on my facebook page and field any questions others might have about why I decided to quit; I have been given an opportunity and I am rejecting it
• Disappointment in myself and from others
• I want to be able to keep my commitments; I want to live up to expectations of myself and the expectations of myself I project out as others having of me
• Letting someone down (new supervisors, participants)
• My supervisors are depending on me to be their employee; my participants are depending on me to support them through each day
• Retreating in fear, choosing to do what is safe and already familiar
• Even if I am not retreating in fear, I have such an extensive history of retreating in fear that it will be easy for me to tell myself that I am retreating in fear because that is "what I do"
• I see a challenge and an opportunity to push myself in my new job, and a sense of relief and safety in my old job. Are these merely feeling states, or are they practical? I can challenge and push myself no matter where I am working, and I see that I have many areas where I can challenge and push myself without the extra challenges of work. But at the same time I know that I do not want to remain in a comfort zone simply because it is comfortable. 
• Potential for complacency and resentment of myself and my choice
• There are reasons I kept looking for a new job. I wasn't particularly content at my old job.
• I have to make a 1-year commitment if I return to my old job
• If I don't like it, too bad. If I find something else I want to try, too bad. 
• This would eliminate the friction I create for myself when I desire to find a new job and not be satisfied with the one I have. This would be an externally imposed source of stability in employment to where I know I am not making a change and so I can feel stable in my employment and go on challenging myself in other areas. 

Whereas if I were to stay with this new job and not go back to my old job:

• Fear
• Of what is new, unknown, of moving forward, of facing new challenges
• Potential for boredom
• But really, even if I am bored, am I not getting paid a lot to be bored? 
• Room for growth/promotion
• Inconsistency/discrepancy between my philosophy within this field and the philosophy of the company
• How much room will there really be for me to be innovative and creative in assisting my participants to grow and learn? 
• Can I get behind a company that is concerned with how the public views the participants such that they tailor the behavior of the participants, curtailing their engagement in activities that interest them, just so that the public sees them a certain way? That is not giving autonomy to the participants. 
• Can I get behind a company that is interested in treating these participants like autonomous adults but refusing to see the ways that these participants are developmentally not able to make healthful supportive decisions for themselves and therefore sometimes it is actually in their best interest to approach them at their developmental level rather than their chronological age? 
• Practically speaking, a loss of access to the perks of my old job, which were my discount on art supplies and the ability to frame whatever I want with professional materials for free

Within both jobs I can support myself, because I am learning to support myself no matter what. Neither job is going to last forever; in fact neither will probably last more than the next year of my life. So here even if I am dissatisfied in my job, it will end. 

One of my mom's greatest concern is my own mental and emotional well-being. She says:

"I believe that it will tip you into depression quickly. You have proven that you can lead a satisfying balanced life at [old job]... great foundation from which to pursue your career next steps... you will have many opportunities to positively impact lives in your field in the years ahead... and in capacities much more fitting with your skills and talents. I really seriously am concerned for your own emotional/mental well being if you work daily in a setting as isolated, routine, and uninspiring as [new job]."

But it could also be said (and in fact has been said) that I could enter depression easily by staying at my old job, especially for the next year. The fact of the matter is that many of these potentials and possibilities exist in both jobs in some form. The point here then is for me to direct myself. But direct myself to and within which job? Ack.

What are my priorities for myself right now and how can I meet them? 

My number one priority for myself right now is myself, intimacy with myself, supporting myself, trusting myself, being responsible within and as myself, expanding myself.

I am meeting a lot of friction and resistance to where I think "I can't do that" (the above, in regards to myself) if I stay at this new job. Is that true? I don't know. But I feel a sense of relief (ohh how it all just goes away and I can breathe again!) when I think of going back to my old job, to the familiar, to what I already know, as a kind of safe place to really have a look at myself, to challenge myself without the excess challenges of a new job. Is this a fear reaction? I don't know. I don't know these answers. So I'm still here.




I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as resistance to what is new, unknown, and unfamiliar.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make a decision and a commitment and then to want to back out of it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hear that small voice inside me and want to ignore it, squash it out, disregard it, or not trust it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not trust myself and my abilities.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bounce back and forth between all of the possibilities and all of the potentials and all of the reasons and justifications.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be directed by my fear.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to come up with justifications for resistance to where I am identifying my assignment as less important or beneath my abilities to where I am not seeing all life as one as equal.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to come up with justifications for resistance to where I am picturing in my mind hot days at parks herding my participants away from trash cans and away from each other's food, not able to eat my own lunch. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify this as miserable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am incapable of making this decision. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see time dwindling and to feel the pressure of making this decision from a place of impulsivity rather than a place of self-honesty.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as my ego to where I think that I am more skilled than what this job requires and that it is not worth my time to offer what I can, which is a lot. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to value my time more than I value the quality of care that my participants receive.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that making a decision is the end of the world.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed and exhausted and want to just go to bed.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want someone else to make the decision for me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that there is anything about this job that is not doable or that I will not be supported through or that I will not be able to support myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this decision is some kind of permanent thing to where I am operating as if I have to keep this job forever.