Lately I’ve been having a conversation with both myself and others. The conversation begins with fear about something, moving forward into the unknown and all the impending anxiety that goes with that.
It’s something I was going to write about months ago but recently the idea has literally been stinging at my head like an angry wasp. Add to this the fact that I’ve been filling my morning commute reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and well, it was bound to get written down by me or find another suitor*.
* something that makes sense only when you know that Big Magic accounts that if you don't realise an idea it will find someone else to realise it.
The most recent incarnation of this conversation took place between my partner and I a few weeks ago when she was at a bit of a career crossroads.
She felt like she’d learnt as much as she could at the company she was working for and there was no sign of being able to learn new skills. So she had gone for and then been offered a new job doing something she hadn’t done for a while, so would effectively be starting on the bottom rung of the ladder again.
Her worry was, given the hiatus, she wouldn’t be good enough and that perhaps staying where she was would be a safer option.
We spoke at length about what her issues were with both options, she made a pros and cons list, spent a lot of time feeling worried and anxious about it and then ultimately took the leap of faith.
The thing is, you’ve only got one way to go when you’re at the top or bottom of the ladder.
When you’re not the most senior in an organisation you have room to grow. Moving jobs, becoming a junior again, in order to learn is not just ok but can feel really liberating. Being terrible at something, albeit for a small amount of time means we have space to move, to learn and to grow.
When you’re the master of something you run the risk of stagnating or worse: getting bored with your passion.
“Mastery is boring”
Liz Gilbert
I’ve been at this very same crossroads. The job I am currently in was, at one point in time, my second choice until I had the revelation that my first choice, though paid better, great benefits and for a huge well known brand, would have put me in a senior position. This meant I could teach others (and opened up a can of anxiety worms about being ‘good enough’ to embark knowledge on other people) but would leave me in a position where I would have no one to be taught by, which was my biggest bug bare with working for myself.
When I worked for myself I found it hard to feel motivated to learn on my own (nor did I have time to). The fear of asking for help from my peers made me feel like I wasn’t intelligent enough to be doing this on my own, a hack, and it stopped me from growing and learning. Ego is a little devil like that.
I now work as an understudy of sorts to someone who himself is still mastering the craft, the wonders of working with the web is that we are all scholars, it’s one of the things that keeps me totally in love with what I do for a living.
It’s not been without its threats of divorce however.
I still have days when I feel like a failure, and a fraud. It is a hard pill to swallow feeling like you can’t do something and learning things seems to get more difficult the older I get. However knowing I now have the means to be taught and am not the most senior person seems to have taken the pressure off a bit and I now am much happier to ask for help.
Realising all of this years ago has made me obsessed with how things work, it’s one of the things that I found so intriguing about web design and coding, it’s always evolving and you can never quite reach the peak.
I used to get frustrated with not being able to know it all but now I just see it as a means of never getting tired of something.