How do I want to be?

Early in my career, I derived most of my meaning in my work. Talking to others, most of them do, too. In your 20s, you are learning at a rapid clip. You probably don’t have expert status in anything. But everything you learn and try is exciting. Everything is new and novel. You haven’t done it before! So of course, everything is new and novel.

In my 20s, I had many different jobs. Straight out of college, I worked in the mall. Then I got a full-time job at a cafe. Then, I was a technical illustrator for 6 months. It was my first “grown up” job. I went to an office. I drew things in Adobe Illustrator.

I quickly realized for myriad reasons that this was not for me. So I got a job building websites. I built a lot of websites doing HTML and CSS and JQuery (remember JQuery?). Toward the end of my tenure building websites, I wrote a PRD (Product Requirements Document) for a CMS system we wanted built for a client. It was fascinating, going through this process, deciding what to build.

I then worked with the project manager around implementation. Going back and forth was the first time I understood how things were decided. Should you be able to edit this text, or not? Should you be able to upload images anywhere, or in a specific place? All of these details coalesced into building a website with a robust content management system.

After that job, I became a Quality Assurance Analyst. I manually tested websites and their components to assure that they worked. After that, I became a User Researcher. After that, I became a Product Manager. Then I worked on 4 different products, before building a team of Product Managers. Then, I moved to Amazon. Then I started my own thing and built a tiny product agency. Then I moved back into being a product manager.

But what that doesn’t tell you, and what my LinkedIn profile can’t tell you, is that throughout this time I’ve been exploring what it looks like to hold space - both for myself, for others and lately for the spiritual.

That feeling we have in our 20s, where work is novel, we’re learning and being pushed to the edge of our growth, we lose in our 30s and 40s. Eventually, with enough reflection, I believe this happens to all of us. Work becomes work. This happens with good jobs. It happens with bad jobs. It happens with jobs where we have the best boss imaginable. It happens with the worst boss imaginable.

What I’ve found is that there’s often a big gap between what we’re good at and what we’re made to do.

Eventually, we find ourselves in a spot where the work just doesn’t have quite the same draw.

What I’ve found is that there’s often a big gap between what we’re good at and what we’re made to do. Sometimes, what we’re made to do and what we’re good at overlap and we find a lot of fulfillment in our work. Sometimes, we just need to shift what we’re working on or working toward.

For me, I’ve spent the last 7 years exploring this “holding of space” for myself and others. As someone with chronic illness, you could say I was forced to, and that might have been true in the beginning. But now, having held space for hundreds of people - most of them product managers - I love getting to do this. To create spaces where people can explore the deeper truth of what they’re made for - not just what to do, but how to be.

When I started asking the question “how do I want to be?” on a regular basis, I found some very consistent themes. Some needed unwinding and unlearning. But many were serving me and my neighbors well.

How do I want to be? What my is my way of being in the world? How do I want to show up in building and making products? How do I want to show up for my team?

PAYING ATTENTION TO

• This weird short film about AI. It both surprised me and made me laugh out loud.

• This site that catalogues cool apps from around the world. Curated by real hoomans.

• This quote from Oliver Burkeman:

You have to take a stab at deciding what matters most, among your various creative passions/life goals/responsibilities – and then do that, while acknowledging that you'll inevitably be neglecting many other things that matter too.

• These questions from Maria Bowler:

How much more of you could be present if you could trust that your knowing would unfold exactly at the right time? How much more would you show up if, instead of needing to have mastered all the moves for every unfamiliar or challenging circumstance, you knew that you were already that which is needed in the moment?

If you haven’t read Making Time by Maria Bowler, you are missing out.