Busy Life updates: I Work a LOT. 60 hour weeks still... I don't know how I manage to do it with all these doc appointments, but I do. On a fun note I had little "mini vacay" in the city last weekend with Jason. What I like to call "one night in Harriman NY in a skanky motel honeymoon suite. Otherwise known as: GROSS." This most recent weekend I on duty which is what I like to call 48 hours of "Shut up, please." This upcoming weekend is CLASH OF THE QUADS which is like the pseudo-Olympics for the building complexes on campus, it's a lot of fun. This year's theme is super heroes, and we are one of my favs. So I get to say one of my favorite Sheldon quotes: I'm Batman!! (From Big Bang Theory my current fav TV show).
So that's what's going on in life I guess. I was able to go to tumor support group last monday. Lots of new faces to me, and so many different and interesting stories. I'm comforted to see that people live with this for a lot longer than my family originally anticipated. 3, 4, 8, 11 years... this girl has some living to do, because we all know how competitive I am. I wonder if they'll give a guiness record for person living longest with a brain tumor.
The biggest question on the mind as of late is career. I sat in a guest-lecture for a class I'm teaching last wednesday and realized I meet all the diagnositc criteria for an addiction to work. Feeling a lack of control, preoccupation and guilt if I'm not at work, and major interference with other aspects of my life- updating my blog, calling my parents and friends, leaving campus... etc.
So, 2012 is going to be another life change. I have to leave reslife. This is unhealthy, and apparently I needed a brain tumor in order to face it. If this was an ideal world, I'd stay here at Albany and work in the Career Development Center as a career advisor, Jason would start gradschool, and we'd have an apartment and cat. I don't think that this is a perfect world, so there is probably going to be a job in a career center sometime, but I think it may call for a location switch, Jason getting an industry job, and there still may be an apartment and a cat. Cat is the non-negotiable man, I want the CAT! My horoscope says that 2012 is going to be a wild ride and I burst out laughing. If 2011 wasn't a wild ride, we better buckle our seatbelts for 2012, karma has it out for me in some big way! I must've been something really bad in a past life or else I'm going to be the next Nelson Mandela or Ghandi... (Suffer first, big world impact later)
Thinking about career change is very different for me now. I don't know how to job interview as a cancer survivor. I've never job-searched where high-quality health plan is in the top three of my concerns. I've always been a super confident applicant, knowing I've got a lot to offer and that I am probably one of the best trained, lots of experience, and tons of dedication. Now, I don't know how much I can offer, or if I could become a liability instead of an asset. I'm scared to death that nobody will want me now.
And yes, ok, I scream bloody murder at scary movies, but most of ya'll know that one of the last words that define me is scared, or timid. Yes I'm a worry wart, but that's because I'm a control freak not because I am afraid. So, I've got to pull from some different skill-sets and try to rediscover my career confidence, because it takes confidence to land the job.
That, or I've got to let something else define my confidence than work. For at least the last 10 years, and probably before that my hometown, friends and family have cast me into a role of good-girl, works hard, gets As, gets a good job, etc. I work hard for all of that and now that I may not be able to work that way or be employable because of the tough market and the mass in my head, I don't know what to do with myself, which is silly because work is what you do it's not who you are. I am now also very afraid that I have created a very one-dimensional life for myself in the last three years if I am this freaked out. I need a job to live, like literally, something has got to pay these medical bills for one, and two, I need something to DO, a purpose.
So the soul search continues, where I try to be a good worker and something else, cancer included but not the only other thing.
In the meantime, I've got my family, friends, and Jason who would support me on whatever venture, even if they don't particularly understand it or agree, they'd be there. One less thing to worry about.
So that's what's going on in life I guess. I was able to go to tumor support group last monday. Lots of new faces to me, and so many different and interesting stories. I'm comforted to see that people live with this for a lot longer than my family originally anticipated. 3, 4, 8, 11 years... this girl has some living to do, because we all know how competitive I am. I wonder if they'll give a guiness record for person living longest with a brain tumor.
The biggest question on the mind as of late is career. I sat in a guest-lecture for a class I'm teaching last wednesday and realized I meet all the diagnositc criteria for an addiction to work. Feeling a lack of control, preoccupation and guilt if I'm not at work, and major interference with other aspects of my life- updating my blog, calling my parents and friends, leaving campus... etc.
So, 2012 is going to be another life change. I have to leave reslife. This is unhealthy, and apparently I needed a brain tumor in order to face it. If this was an ideal world, I'd stay here at Albany and work in the Career Development Center as a career advisor, Jason would start gradschool, and we'd have an apartment and cat. I don't think that this is a perfect world, so there is probably going to be a job in a career center sometime, but I think it may call for a location switch, Jason getting an industry job, and there still may be an apartment and a cat. Cat is the non-negotiable man, I want the CAT! My horoscope says that 2012 is going to be a wild ride and I burst out laughing. If 2011 wasn't a wild ride, we better buckle our seatbelts for 2012, karma has it out for me in some big way! I must've been something really bad in a past life or else I'm going to be the next Nelson Mandela or Ghandi... (Suffer first, big world impact later)
Thinking about career change is very different for me now. I don't know how to job interview as a cancer survivor. I've never job-searched where high-quality health plan is in the top three of my concerns. I've always been a super confident applicant, knowing I've got a lot to offer and that I am probably one of the best trained, lots of experience, and tons of dedication. Now, I don't know how much I can offer, or if I could become a liability instead of an asset. I'm scared to death that nobody will want me now.
And yes, ok, I scream bloody murder at scary movies, but most of ya'll know that one of the last words that define me is scared, or timid. Yes I'm a worry wart, but that's because I'm a control freak not because I am afraid. So, I've got to pull from some different skill-sets and try to rediscover my career confidence, because it takes confidence to land the job.
That, or I've got to let something else define my confidence than work. For at least the last 10 years, and probably before that my hometown, friends and family have cast me into a role of good-girl, works hard, gets As, gets a good job, etc. I work hard for all of that and now that I may not be able to work that way or be employable because of the tough market and the mass in my head, I don't know what to do with myself, which is silly because work is what you do it's not who you are. I am now also very afraid that I have created a very one-dimensional life for myself in the last three years if I am this freaked out. I need a job to live, like literally, something has got to pay these medical bills for one, and two, I need something to DO, a purpose.
So the soul search continues, where I try to be a good worker and something else, cancer included but not the only other thing.
In the meantime, I've got my family, friends, and Jason who would support me on whatever venture, even if they don't particularly understand it or agree, they'd be there. One less thing to worry about.
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