Cafe Hitch-hike

2024-01-20

As Pluto leaves Capricorn (Part 2)

(Part 2: Or, I’m still me away from these matters.)

I’ve often told myself the reason I’ve stayed was because it could be worse elsewhere. My field is full of people who jump from job-to-job, usually lasting in a place for 3 years before they go elsewhere.

I keep thinking of my friend’s place in rural Kentucky, and how nice it would be just to live in that peaceful setting. I politically and culturally am in a completely different book than most of them, but just the land’s serenity and being around its slower way of life and less grumpy people really appeals to me. I remember feeling this way after living in the Detroit area for 3 years. Sometimes its coarseness really got to me (old-timers tell me it was always a rough place), and I longed to be somewhere less haphazard, better maintained, and more friendly. I got my wish and then found myself in the Deep South for a while where I got the 2 out of 3 things.

A headhunter contacted me and we had 2 phone interviews for a job. I really didn’t take it seriously and much of it was because they also tried to recruit my former boss before they died. I’d like to think it was the headhunter’s attempt to say their candidate pool was diverse enough (hahahah).

I’m not ready for a position like that, and the last thing I need is another trial-by-fire job which it would be if I took it because it’s punching above my weight. No, I’m not downplaying myself; if anything, I know there’s things I need to be able to do before even considering a job like that. However, I’m going through with additional interviews to be on the headhunter’s map for any future openings, and after I have the experience I need.

So where does Pluto come in? It left Capricorn today (for most of the year, and will dip back at the end) and that’s a bit of a big deal (look it up if interested). Going to a boss’s funeral would be a very Plutonian thing to do today. One meaning of Pluto is ‘permanent goodbyes,’ and that is so true today.

Perhaps I’d need to manage all the work build-up the same way I manage my relationship with my family. With my family, I recognized how miserable I felt, the insanity that was their normal (it was another thing where I got a lot of proof that I wasn’t completely crazy in my perceptions), distanced myself, and then lived my own life and attempted a lot of inner work. I

Maybe I need a similar approach to my career. I need to remind myself that I’m still me away from work matters, just as I had to learn with my family matters. I may be in various settings, but I remind myself they do not define me at my core and I still would exist even without those things in my life.

If anything, it’s best to define myself, at the core, separately from all of that. It’s like what I’ve heard a lot of these past few years: I am not my problems or dilemmas. I have varying degrees of responsibility and power over them (some things are not my deal and sometimes I have a little or a lot of power in a situation), but always have a choice in what to do (and not deciding is one form of a choice). Like with my family, I’ve been able to make meaning over many things and understand why some things happened the way they did. My career is an area where I’d need to do the same because just like with my family, ultimately I really only end up with myself no matter where I go.

I couldn’t resolve all issues with my family, but I have a better relationship with them and keep certain boundaries (they really would milk me for every last dime if they could get away with it, mainly because of where they are). I’d like to think my presence brought something good to it or made some things better than what it was previously. I healed a lot of wounds, but some are still sensitive and may never heal completely (like feeling pain in a bone that had been broken even after it fully mended). It appears that I’ll have to treat my career the same way if I don’t want it to let it consume me.

downwind | upstream