“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
– Chinese Proverb –
Just like their trees, money arborists can have wildly varied approaches to the application of their craft. For some, tree tending is simply the expression of a passion that has consumed them from their youth. Others follow in the well-worn footprints of familial generations of money arborists gone before… And then there are those, like myself, who grow money trees as a result of being shoved head-long into a would-be orchard as Life smashes a dried lemon in our hand, slaps us in the head, and screams, “Hey you! Grow a @$#&%@ money tree already!” When that happens, there’s no real choice but to grab a shovel and get to work.
In my particular case, I thought I was puttering along just fine. However, Life got fed up with my mere contemplation of growing money trees and decided to inspire some action. It was around that time that my career came to an unexpected demise.
To be clear, I had always maintained a rather lackluster relationship with my career. Contrary to what you’re thinking, I had consistently given it “maximum effort!” It’s just that the feelings didn’t seem to be reciprocated. In return for my work, my career provided a lavish multi-six-figure portion of educational debt and a lifetime supply of empty promises to return on the investment. While the work was rewarding, the pay was never quite sufficient to keep up with overhead, expenses, or the ever-extended hand of good old Uncle Sam.
Despite all that, I believed that things would get better in the relationship between me and my career. I held out hope until that fateful day in just-barely-still December when it finally hit me like a bolt of lightning. My career had reached a terminal state, and it wasn’t going to pull through.
Why? Because my personal life and career were systematically and diametrically opposed. They had been designed for two very different people. Why I’d never realized this before, I couldn’t say, but I knew in an instant that the assessment was true. My career was designed for a single independent me, who’d chosen her career while living primarily without responsibilities for anyone but herself. The current me was a vastly different being. Functioning as a wife, mother, healthcare coordinator, family COO. Furthermore, the current version of me couldn’t take a sick afternoon without triggering a household meltdown of apocalyptic proportions.
There was no way for my poor unfortunate career to bridge the gaping crevasse between those two versions of myself. I knew in a soul-crushing moment that the fat lady had sung her last. I heard the final few tinkling notes of music die, and the knot in the pit of my stomach told me that the career that I’d spent my entire life building had reached a final level of stick-a-fork-in-it done.
I was dumbfounded.
My brain simultaneously refused to accept the conclusion or deny that the finality of the realization was correct. There was simply deafening silence in my mind. It was the kind of stark conversational silence that occurs when a statement is made that no one wants to endorse but everyone knows to be undeniably correct. Fortunately for me, the silence only lasted for a moment.
A millisecond later, I found myself too shocked to be upset, too furious to accept the verdict, and besieged by a multitude of questions. How could I not have seen this coming? What about the people depending on me at work? This couldn’t be happening. Was there really NO way to revive this zombie career? Why the heck was I arguing with myself over this?!
The sad twisted little heap of job aspirations persisted in its lifeless repose. The end had come. I finally decided to call time of death, send for an autopsy, and try to preserve whatever shred of dignity there might have ever been in my relationship with my career. Life had won; my career was over. Time to go plant that money tree.
I’ve had to learn the hard way that the best-laid plans of mice and men regularly go horribly awry. If you’ve ever experienced the awful realization that your line of work no longer works for you, you’re already familiar with the artillery barrage of self-doubt that follows. In those times, it’s all too easy to blame yourself for not working the perfect plan, choosing the wrong side of your double major, or presuming to tend to a new baby and a business at the same time. Simply put, the brain does mean things to us when we’re tired, alone, and afraid.
In those moments, it helps to keep a few things in mind.
- Hindsight is 20/20. – Meaning, you couldn’t act on information that you didn’t have in the past. All you can do is use what you now know to make better decisions moving forward.
- Don’t make any rash decisions. – Fear can lead us to think that busying ourselves with action is the same as applying useful solutions to the source of the problem. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Before you take action to fix the situation, try to take a step back to gain perspective. This will probably involve getting some rest, decompressing, and brainstorming as many options as possible. If you have yet to take these steps, the wisest course is probably to hold off taking any definite action until you have a clearer head.
- You aren’t alone. – You’re reading a blog describing a similar experience to yours. This means at least one other person has shared your journey. The odds are that are there are more than two of us out there.
- You aren’t hopeless; you just need a plan. – Fortunately for you, realizing this fact is half the battle. The next half is actually generating the plan. The problem is that when money becomes involved in these kinds of unexpected life changes, rationality tends to be thrown to the wind as emotion takes over. If you can cycle back to reminder number 2 and resist the urge to make drastic decisions before thinking them through, it becomes much more possible to generate a successful plan.
… As for the actual process of constructing the plan, we’ll cover that in greater depth next time. For now, if you’ll just hang in there, it’ll be enough to buy time for the growing.
D’Loreyn