By Mala Nagarajan
Compensation is one of the greatest taboos in our current culture. That’s no accident: compensation is at its very core how oppression, in our deeply inequitable society, has been perpetuated across race, gender, class, ability, and other … Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
Figuring out what to do next in your career: the age-old inquiry.
You need a change. For whatever reason, where you are right now isn’t working for you. But you might not be clear about what exactly to do about it; how to start the career transition process. What you should be considering and prioritizing in order to make the leap?
Good question indeed. But before we get to what you should be doing, let’s remove a couple unfortunate job-search notions out of the way.
First up: our resume. It might be tempting to find clues for where to go next by scrutinizing our resume. it’s so easy to look to our resumes for inspiration. Ugh. What a buzzkill. Rather than inspiring us, it’s more likely to depress us. Rather than expanding our sense of what could be possible, it traps us in what was. First of all.
Also, why? I have been known to say that a resume is perhaps the most inefficient, inaccurate, even tragic way for me or anyone else to understand your gifts, talents, and drives. It’s baffling, the extent to which employers continue to use it as evidence of future job performance. Not that a resume doesn’t have its place; of course it does. After all, it’s a list of jobs you’ve held, and a list of things you did at those jobs.
By Vega Subramaniam
A couple months ago, I shared my deliberations about the fog I was in, that Mala was in, that I see a lot of people in our movements in. And since that time, not only has the fog not lifted, but things have gotten worse. They’ve gotten worse in my life as well as in our collective lives.
It’s one thing to talk about the importance of habits and rituals in our ability to maintain focus and productivity—and of course they matter. And it’s one thing to remind ourselves of the systems that we’re operating in, systems that are oppressive enough in the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances by a very, very long shot.
But what I still struggle with is how to stay positive, focused, and productive when wrenches keep tossing themselves into the works. I am quite sure you know what I mean. How do I; you; how does anybody find the discipline to focus on our priorities even when life keeps doing what life keeps doing?
By Vega Subramaniam
I sometimes have this sense that I, and almost everyone I meet, is walking around in some sort of fog or half-consciousness. Mala and I were bonding on this the other day. She’s got a lot happening in her life right now; no lazy days of summer for her, alas. On top of all that is her unceasing caregiving responsibilities.
Caregiving aside (you can never put caregiving aside), Mala was frustrating the living daylights out of herself by jumping out of bed and over to her desk at, like, 3:30 a.m. every morning, in an all-consuming panic about all she had to do. But then when she actually got to her desk, she’d putter (aka be pulled into the vortex of the first thing she touched and lose track of the THINGS she got up to do).
She said, and I quote, “I know what I have to do. I just don’t do it.” Which is shorthand for, “I can’t pull my attention back into focusing on the thing.” And then the next day comes and it’s still not done…which was what led to her plaintive, “when am I going to wake up?”
I think what she means by that, and certainly what I mean by that, is, “when am I going to find the discipline to focus on my priorities? and as a corollary, “when am I going to actively choose what I’m doing right now?” and as a final corollary extension, “when am I going to be right here, right now?” Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
As I was reading a blog post recently by Scott Eblin, titled, “How to Have Your Best Week,” I was struck by something. In one paragraph, he writes, “All of the great leaders set and enforce personal … Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
A few weeks ago, I talked about why I find the notion of “imposter syndrome” uncomfortable.
During a panel on which I presented last September, I mentioned my discomfort when clients brought up “imposter syndrome,” and my desire to contextualize it in our social/societal context. My friend Shige Sakurai, who was in attendance, commented to me afterward, “what if we flipped the switch and considered gatekeeper’s syndrome instead?”
Thoughts swirled through my mind at this. I was thrown back to my grad school days of the 1980s, when there was a lot of talk about “chilly campus climates” that contributed to gender and racial inequality. That’s basically gatekeeping, right? Which is to say, the underlying patterns are hardly new.
But how is gatekeeping being addressed now?
By Vega Subramaniam
“I really shouldn’t be here. Everyone else has so much more experience than I do. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and hope that nobody asks me anything. Please please don’t do a go-around and require me to state an opinion. You know they only brought me on because I’m brown/a woman/queer. Three for the price of one. Because it’s sure as hell not because of what I can offer to this project, which is a whole lot of nothing.”
Therein lies a window into my self-talk. You’re welcome.
Imposter syndrome?
Obviously?
Maybe?
I don’t know. I’m troubled by this notion of “imposter syndrome.”
I like to listen to podcasts in the morning as I’m preparing for the day. The other day, I was listening to a “Science of Happiness” podcast called, “Delight in the Unexpected.” Now, this podcast is worth
listening to for any number of reasons, but one that stood out for me is the powerful reminder of the value of slowing down…of savoring a moment. The narrator, Ross Gay, tells a story about watching a hummingbird alight on a tree, and the sheer joy he experienced watching its movements. And I was entranced along with him, savoring this beautiful moment of slowing down to notice the activities of a hummingbird.
Meanwhile, here’s what else is happening in my head, as I’m listening to this podcast describing the joys of slowing down. Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
There’s a project I’m working on right now, a book on toxic leadership behaviors in the social justice sector, that I have been “working on” (pfft) for the past four years. It sits on my cyber shelf collecting virtual dust, and every once in a while I’ll pull it down, examine it for a few minutes like it’s a foreign object, and then promptly return it to the cyber shelf.
Mind you: this book is a labor of love. I think about it all the time. I read articles and file them away because I’ll use them in my book. I talk about the problem incessantly. This book is important to me.
But…I don’t work on it. It sits gathering dust on my cyber shelf.
I’ve been in multiple conversations lately with people experiencing exactly the same phenomenon. They use other words: being blocked, or terrified, or even nauseated about doing that thing that they’re actually desperate to do.
What is that about? What makes it such that, even though I faithfully block off time on my calendar each week to work on my book, I equally faithfully over-write it with meetings, trainings…naps, TBH?
What makes it OK for us to continually let ourselves down? To know we have this undertaking in us that’s going to have such an enormous impact, with countless friends and colleagues cheering us on, and yet avoid doing it? Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
It doesn’t matter what year it is or how old I am. On December 31st, I am ageless. That instant before 12:00:01 a.m. holds every promise of every possibility I’ve ever felt over my whole life. This year might be the year. It is…exquisite.
I do realize that not everyone experiences New Year’s Eve the way I do, and I certainly have no desire to persuade you to change your relationship to it.
But I am guessing that at least some of us have hopes to establish new practices in 2019, break unwanted habits, spend more time each day doing what we actually want to be doing.
