This November marks my 20-year anniversary at work. I’m not really sure how this happened. I started out as a part-time employee with a baby at home, and here I am, still doing the same tasks in university administration. Sure, I make more money, have more confidence, and have learned new skills over the years. My coworkers are great and the work feels meaningful, but still…20 years?
Starting out, I thought I’d have a career trajectory more like my friend Sarah, a structural engineer in Arlington. She is hard-working and ambitious, and she recently started a new job as a senior operations manager. I have no idea what she actually does, but she posts pictures of herself wearing a hard hat on a scaffolding a hundred feet in the air, and her LinkedIn profile says things like “I thrive on learning and challenging design work.” Sarah is a superstar. She’s energized by this stage of her life, and in comparison, I sometimes wonder what happened to my work motivation.
A dozen years ago, I naturally read “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” by Sheryl Sandberg. Her insistence that women can succeed if they just change their mindset felt aspirational. “Leaning in” became part of the working mom’s vocabulary, and I wanted to be the kind of person who knew her worth and demanded that others see it, too.
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But then, as they say, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. My job had the flexibility I needed once the second kid arrived, and the two kids took turns getting sick on a bi-weekly basis. I took advantage of free courses for staff at the Harvard Extension School, but instead of following a practical track, I took seven years of night classes to get a master’s degree in English. Unsurprisingly, my insights on “The Great Gatsby” didn’t lead to a skyrocketing promotion. Instead, I rediscovered the joy of writing, leading to publishing my first novel “April in Paris in June”
Even Sheryl Sandberg questioned “leaning in” after her supportive husband died suddenly in 2015, leaving her with two young children. What really burst the balloon for me was learning that her tireless devotion to her career at Facebook led to destructive achievements, such as customer data mining and allowing foreign operators to infiltrate the algorithm. It’s not enough to have a high-powered career just for the glory of it. I need to feel like what I do is making my life better, and that means looking beyond my job.
At this stage in our lives, many of my Gen X friends are also finding meaning outside of the jobs that pay the mortgage. Pia is a lawyer in Watertown who works four long days at her law firm so she can have Fridays free to write. My friend Jill, whose oldest child just started college, took a new marketing job where she can still rehearse with her dance company during the week.
Maybe I have been in the same job for 20 years, but in that time, I’ve had the space to grow as a person. Incidentally, being a fulfilled person has also improved me as an employee. I’m a better writer and researcher, and I even host the monthly podcast our center produces. The skyscrapers I’m scaling are metaphorical instead of Sarah’s real ones, but I’m still climbing to new heights at work and in my life.
Jessica Barnard writes about Gen X for The Belmont Voice. When she’s not writing for The Voice, she’s a program manager at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.