The idea for Center Based Marketing has come over a lifetime of attempting to find work that resonates with my ideals. My personality is such that I am uncomfortable doing something without feeling a connection to what I am doing.
I don’t have any statistics to indicate if this is common or uncommon. I do know that the places where I’ve worked most people tended to be content with doing their job and getting a paycheck. For me, there has always been some discontent… a nagging feeling that something was amiss.
I didn’t really become aware of how much discomfort there was in fighting against that nagging feeling until it came to a head and I slipped into a terrible fight with major depression.
Even after I took a couple months off in order to get through the depression, I didn’t feel like I had any answers as to how to proceed. In essence, it felt like I was putting a band-aid on it and going back to work. The same work, at the same place, with the same people. The only difference was I was now taking medication and seeing a psychiatrist regularly. Nothing underlying really changed.
After all, that is the way it is. Right? Put on your name tag, paste on a smile and head back to work.
The only problem is that didn’t take care of the underlying problem.
After I went back to work, I did have a shift in my job responsibilities to the point that I was doing more programming and development tasks rather than simply focusing on accounting and analysis. My role was that of a financial analyst. With the new changes, I shifted more into a business analyst position.
I enjoyed the work more, but I still didn’t feel fulfilled….not a part of the benefit package. ;-) The job had all the typical benefits that come with a good job—nearly 4 weeks of vacation plus another 10 days of holidays, 401K matching, health insurance, eye insurance, etc. etc.
Looking at the number of people who are dissatisfied with their job, it seems most jobs don’t come with job satisfaction included in the benefit package. I’m being facetious here but when we look at a job we tend to only look at the numbers related to it (salary, weeks vacation, 401K matching, etc).
Through the course of my career, I have taken quite a number of personality profiles in order to understand myself better. They would all hint at something. [Need more here]. I thought I was doing something that I cared about it. I know I was doing something I was good at and was being adequately compensated for. But there was something missing.
One of the things that attracted me to the job I took was that the company’s mission was to “enable it’s customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.” That sounded like a good cause and one that I could get behind.
I’ve always been an environmentalist and an idealist. Making the world healthier, cleaner and safer sounded like something good to get behind. And I can’t really deny that the company’s efforts did lead to the world becoming better.
For whatever reason, it did not fulfill me, though.
After a couple more years of work with the new responsibilities and an increasing sense that something was wrong, I ended up constricting whooping cough. I was miserably sick. Passing out on the floor from coughing so hard. Naturally, I couldn’t work in that state of health, so I left again for a few weeks on short-term disability in order to recover. Doctors orders and all.
When I went back to work, it was evident from the moment I stepped into the department that I wasn’t welcome there. I had crossed whatever threshold and there was no opportunity to turn back. HR was called in and I had a slew of charges filed against me. Some of them were legitimate. Others, well…
I immediately fell into the worst depression I had ever been in. I had just fought for my life with whooping cough, taking significant amounts of hydrocodone, and fighting frequently for what seemed like my last breath. At times, it seemed like my life was passing before my eyes.
And here I was, back at work, and I was being handed my life in a basket. It was more than I could take, and I snapped. But I did it on personal time, so I was back at work the next day as if nothing had happened. Only a couple people know how close it really came.
Internally, though, something had snapped and I had crossed my own threshold of no return. I didn’t know where my life was headed but I knew something was about to change.
And this time, instead of looking outside for job (and life) satisfaction, I began to look within. I didn’t really know what that meant. To be honest, I probably didn’t even know I was doing it.
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