What I Will Become

Thank you, Steve Jobs.  Thank you for this reminder, for this inspiration.  "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become."  These are strong words, words that resonate so deeply, so strongly with me these days.

When I started this adventure over five years ago, I was on a journey to change my life.  At the time, I was working for a large international technology corporation.  I got there because the small, start-up software company I worked for was acquired by this large corporate.  I was working a lot, too much.  I had no personal life anymore.  Job satisfaction was little, and there was quite a bit of stress.  I often had to remind myself that we weren't curing cancer or even doing anything really important to help others live a better life.  Where was the meaning in this work?

It wasn't an easy decision to make to leave a job that paid a good salary, provided multiple benefits, gave me opportunities to travel, taught me a lot, and looks good on a CV.  Resigning was a bit like cutting the lifeline to home and security.  But it was time to follow my heart. Something else was calling me.  Maybe it was that inner voice that Jobs refers to.

You see, when I was a teenager, people used to tell me what they thought I would be doing later in life.  There were two things in particular that always came up, and they both had to do with helping others.  I'm not doing either of these things.

I think back now to what they said and realize they were right.  How did they know?  How did they know even back then that helping improve the lives of others was work that I would find important, work that I would want to do.  More importantly, how did I stray from that?  Well, I know what happened, and I know when I knew I had to change it.

Since I resigned from that company, I've been trying to follow my heart to finding work in NZ that is meaningful to me. In Queenstown, I was told that I could reinvent myself.  There's a lot of truth in that statement, and I had been somewhat successful in that regard.  The last full-time 'project' I was working on in Queenstown was near and dear to my heart.  It fit the bill for what was needed, what I think of as meaningful work to affect change.  But that inner voice spoke up again.  The heart and intuition were telling me something.  So the journey continues.

I had two disappointments regarding the work journey this week.   Then I saw this quote by Steve Jobs again.  It reminded me that things happen for a reason.  Sure enough, by the afternoon, I had received more news, more positive this time.  So I'm following my intuition on this one, and we'll see what happens.