I have been dealing with what, I guess, some call a midlife 'job' crisis. As a result, I've been dealing with a particularly unusual Jungian projection...It's not like an Anima projection, which draws you towards a certain kind of woman over-n-over again, etc. Nothing so common. It's stranger than that, but just as haunting (and strangely humorous).
It's taken me almost two years to realize it had to do with my midlife crisis and 'Work' with a big 'W'; and I truly believe this has been responsible for keeping me unemployed. It's very bizarre... I described it recently to an old friend in an email, and I want to share it here too. I think this is probably quite common...
I worked for 7 years at a nonprofit classical radio station. I managed the membership and begged for money by mail, worked the membership database and the website... I did good by the station, literally raised millions (one 35 dollar donation at a time) for the station over a few years, and made a decent, modest living too; but the board changed, then the management changed... and we all tried to get along, but the 'law of two feet' was long overdue to be followed, so after many false starts I finally had to conclude it was time for me to leave that organization.
That was almost exactly 2 years ago... We've done a few odd jobs since then, but I've been slowly realizing that this new midlife thang I'm going through is plenty tough and, to me, a little mystical... And it's actually more than contributed to my inability to find to not only 'meaningful work', but any work at all. It has been strange... really...
I won't belabor the issue, but it is a story worth telling with a deep lesson to be learned. Simply put... I've noted I have issues to flesh out. We all have'em, and it's an old story-- around midlife you deal or you're dealt... In Robert Bly's Iron John he talks about katabasis or 'the rat's hole'... Well, I think I'm kinda there. But if I do the reflective work, I hope I understand correctly, and make a decision to go down the rat hole on my own, I'll be spared a more severe arrangement by the gods (an accident, illness, divorce or other tragedy) which will force me to look.
At first, I thought okay, I got skills and fundraising experience. I'll be able to get employment at another nonprofit within a couple of weeks... but that wasn't working, so then I thought it was my age, then my skin color, then the economy or some combination of all of the above... I tweaked and retweaked my résumé... Then after reading one career book after another, after then reading every self-help book and metaphysics tome in the universe, after vocational training to get my insurance sales license (so I can once again do the 'right thing' and just support family), after imploring the very universe itself with-- "The Seeeeeecret!"... after all of that... It began to slowly dawn on me that every time I did a job interview I was being sabotaged...
I don't mean self-sabotage with only verbal slips, etc. I don't mean self-fulfilling prophecy... I mean there was another Jungian something in the room with me...
I refer to it as "the elephant in the room"... but it's a little more than that. It's a Jungian presence made up of some combination of my issues. It's like entering a job interview with an invisible witchdoctor (like in the movie 'Beetlejuice'), who shakes a maraca and proceeds to tweak the results before I've barely started to speak...
The interviewer asks a question and I answer; the maraca shakes and the witchdoctor sings...
The other people in the interview don't exactly see me and my game face (no matter how good it is), or hear me... they see 'It' superimposed over me...It really is like my head is shrinking before their eyes or something!This witchdoctor is, well, really... another (unconscious) me... me and my (unconscious) dreams, spent or still present, my (unconscious) issues, my secret (unconscious) desires, my (unconscious) frustrations and defeats...
But this stuff I need to work on is 'unconscious' so it's particularly difficult to flesh out... Because this unconscious stuff is, by its very (unconscious) nature, unknowable! And there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it... except note it, work with it, work it all eventually and, ever so slowly, out...
There are exercises in books you can do, or which job counselors can help you with, which take you on a paths to finding new work...But a workbook and exercises mightn't work that well. They can tend to be too linear, which is attractive to your conscious mind; the unconscious abhors 'Linear'.
For instance, after being in theater forever, I thought that what I wanted to do (after using various workbooks) was still somehow closely related to something like theater. In particular, I was thinking events work and some kind of work with public speakers and the like... Logical, right? So logical, I even wrote executive summaries for business plans and designed brochures around this idea... I'm pretty sure that's not my path now... Working in a conference center might be an okay day job for me, but I know now that it isn't the expression my unconscious was yearning for.
Also understand, I do appreciate the difference between finding a job (in order to eat, pay the bills, etc.), and a vocation. I appreciate the difference quite well... Well... consciously, I do.
However, I'm not certain the subconscious makes, or is even capable of making, this same distinction...
So, after doing your exercises and workbooks, you might get that simple day job even, only to find it unfathomably unbearable on levels you can't even discern. Only feeling a generalized discomfort, and then eventually being fired or quitting. You will feel like you are going in circles... and you will... until the mystery is eventually truly solved... it actually may be more intuited at first, than discovered...
In fact, even when you're sure you've finally nailed the bugger down and brought it up to the splendid surface; you may find that you mightn't be able to do it for a living, but mostly as a hobby. What's important to know though, is that you've found not your living, but your reason to live; your 'expression'...
And after you've found this expression, and made a proclamation that you will pursue this path finally, then getting that day job gets easier, I think.
This has been my last 2 years. I really don't think this will turn out too bad. I really do believe I'm well on my own way by now, and I have done a lot of the head-work...
But, it has not been an easy 2 years with the witchdoctor.
Jerry'O
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Copyright © September 2008 by Gerald Ollison. All rights reserved.(Excepting the photos, maybe... My bad, Tee-hee...)
P.S. In fact, I'll share a book that's been particularly helpful for me, after reading it and working with it several times over (by the public pool where my 5 year old did his summer swim classes). It's called 'Living On Purpose', by Pat A Paulson, Sharon C. Brown and Jo Ann Wolf. It's the only workbook I've found which is nonlinear on purpose. This serves to speak to your subconscious a little better I think. After working with it for awhile I truly realized I was making some breakthroughs.
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