11.22.21 // My Radical Truth

My Radical Truth.
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I'm feeling a lot of shame around the idea of jobs and my identity with my career after returning back to North America.
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Since being back in North America, I've spent an unhealthy number of mornings on LinkedIn. Spending countless hours sifting through job postings, looking through my network, seeing the accomplishments and titles of my peers evolve as they climb the corporate ladders and startup hierarchies that we're told are "flat."
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It has challenged the hell out of me.
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Because for so long I yearned for those titles, the promotions, the money, the jobs where I would have built-in "friends" or be sold on the idea of a workplace being a "family," even though that idea is a one-way ticket to lacking balance and boundaries in my life outside of work...
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It doesn't matter that I know deep down these "career" milestones and markers aren't what I want, the last few weeks have still been hard because old patterns are hard to kick.
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I found myself starting to spiral in the last week, taking meetings with recruiters for jobs I don't want because they "sound cool" or "I'd probably be paid well." Only one company came up that had me thinking "wow, I'd like this company" and "it probably wouldn't pay well, but I like the mission." BUT even that feels like I'm abandoning a lot of my progress for the safety of a job title, for the safety of familiarity.
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But this time as I started to spike into old habits, I turned for help to my therapist who gave me a metaphorical kick in the ass with some stark reminders of where I've been, what I've learned, and who I am when it comes to my "career" and where I live.
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Of course, I'm a fluid-changing human being, but change and habits are hard.
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I share not for sympathy but to show the struggle behind the seamless photos. To show the triggers, old traumas, and how radical acceptance and radical truth can be an avenue to set you free from the heaviness of struggle.