Dear Anne
I have been working for the past 6 years now and am in my third job, 9th assignment, 6th location. I find that I keep looking for escapes from work and my responsibilities. As a result, I do not understand enough about the work, am not excited about it and soon lag behind others.
Luckily all my assignments have been in team environments where I have been able to hide behind my colleague's work or a paternal boss. I am afraid that this will all catch up with me and I will be disgraced. All my family and friends think me to be a intelligent, sincere guy. (It was the same during my education I'm an engineer, an MBA from a premier school - I used to escape to novels, sleep, tea-breaks, lounging..... so much that I barely made it.) Help! Luke
Dear Luke
I'm so sorry that you find yourself in this predicament. It's much more common than you might think, and you won't be the only grad or post-grad who's in the same boat.
So where do you go from here? As your email nickname suggests, the sky's the limit! Up to now it sounds like you've been living the life you're supposed to live: excellent education, great prospects, all the stuff that parents dream of for their children. But it doesn't fulfil you, does it? You don't sound as though you've actually been able to enjoy your life for years.
But this isn't anybody else's life. It's yours, and as far as we know, it's the only one you've got. Do you want to wake up when you're sixty and find that you've slept through the last forty years?
I'm going to make some suggestions. What you do with them is entirely up to you. But how about starting by daydreaming (preferably in your free time!) about what you'd find fulfilling? Making yourself a rich and rewarding social life? Learning skiing or sailing? Doing something creative with your imagination? Art, sculpture, novel-writing, film-scripting there are evening classes in all these and more! And they're available full- or part-time, which is handy for the finances. Or how about being an engineer on a project that really matters? Irrigation in the Sudan, building a barrage in Brazil? Then there's voluntary work like VSO which could take you to exotic lands. Of course, you could just save your cash and travel when you can afford it. Meantime, working through books like NLP: The Technology of Achievement by Andreas and Faulkner could help you find a direction in life that you actually want.
So do you carry on with your escape into novels and snoozes? Sure, you could. But will that change anything? The fact that you've spent years escaping from your life means you're not happy with it. Why not use your formidable intelligence and engineer yourself a more positive escape to happiness? Good luck. And may the Force be with you!
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