Now You See Me...Now You Don't

Have you ever considered how deeply your ego is wrapped up in your job? Well, neither did I – until I began to reinvent myself. I quickly found that if you don't choose to do something awesome, exciting, sexy or daring you begin to be invisible. You fade quietly into the background until you're gone. I believe this is especially true for women.

It's important to know this. It might impact what you choose to do next. Then again, if your ego is strong and totally intact, it may not bother you at all. It bothered me when it began; it bothers me today.

Fading away appears to have a lot to do with social status. If you are what you do – you'd better be doing something people admire or covet. In my former life as a hospital marketing director others were covetous of my job and my success. They didn't care that I was miserable, heck I didn't care that I was miserable! I made good money, had great benefits, a modicum of power and prestige and, most importantly, a strong professional identity. When I quit I had none of that. But, being a good marketer I was able to re-package myself as 'new and improving'. I was still cool…but only among my friends.

While fine tuning my 'improvement mode' I engaged in a number of 'lesser;' jobs. You know what I mean. The kinds of jobs that don't require degrees or significant experience. I accepted these jobs as part of my reinvention experiment. (Or at least that’s what I told people). This is when I discovered that although your friends might think that what you are doing is cool, others (who do not know you) just don't see it that way.

I took service jobs – the kind of positions that require you to help other people. Sounds nice. What I did not realize was that many'other people' simply do not view service workers as people of any significant substance. Case in point: my brief career as an esthetician. While I have covered this ill-fated experiment in a previous blog entry, I failed to mention that one of my biggest problems with the job was the way I was treated by customers. Oh, they were nice. But they were also condescending. I, as a person, did not exist. My sole purpose was to cater to their whims. I am not good at catering. I got the sense early in that career that my customers assumed I was dumb and uneducated. I cannot provide examples of this because it was never that blatant. But it was there. How do I know this? Because every time I had an opportunity to share stories with my clients, I would talk about my former life in health care. And then everything would change. Right before my eyes. Invisible one minute; visible the next. How they spoke to me and the things they shared with me changed too. I was, once again, one of them. Go figure.

This pattern has continued. I experienced it in my brief (notice how my careers are brief) stint as a bridal consultant and as a receptionist in my friend's dental office. Is it a phenomenon of the wealthy area in which I live or is it just human nature to look down on people whom we think are less educated? Or do we all just need to think we are better than someone else?

Five years ago, while in grad school, I took a job as a caregiver for a 90 year old woman. I never meant to stay with her for five years, but I have. I simply love her. When I tell people that I am a caregiver most just say, "Oh.". That's all. "Oh". I can read a lot into "Oh." When I take her to the doctors the nurses will inevitably ask, "Are you her daughter?". "No, I'm her caregiver."…."Oh" and then, in most cases, they never speak to me directly again. I become invisible. It's become so bad that I no longer tell anyone what I'm doing. I talk about my part-time market research work but rarely mention the caregiving. I am, I guess, as bad as the people I'm talking about. I have let their opinions of what I do color my opinion of what I do. Shame on me.

There are a lot of 'service professionals' with amazing backgrounds. I have been massaged by a woman with a PhD in History, had my computer fixed by a man who was the former CEO of a large company, and been taken on a tour of Italy by a woman with a doctorate in languages. These weren't fall back jobs - these were jobs they chose. They all appeared to be happy with their choices. However, now that I think about it, I am reminded that they too found a need to tell me what they used to do. Makes me more sure that my experience is fairly common. Sad, but common.

If you need others to approve or envy or be awestruck by what you do – then do not go into service work. No matter how fulfilling it may be – you have to be able to weather the disapproval of others. I wish I were better at this. But I'm not. So, when people ask I often say, "I'm a free lance market researcher with a Masters in Counseling. I also help out an elderly lady in the mornings. It's a job I started in grad school and it's fun."