Has anyone ever said that to you? Or looked it at you? Like: they didn’t actually say it, but they communicated it with a malevolent (or even benign) glare?
You don’t belong here.
Or have you said it to yourself? Maybe you looked around the town you live in, the people you work with, or the people you live with, and whispered to yourself—
I don’t belong here.
Maybe you never belonged there. Or maybe you used to belong there but just that moment realized you didn’t belong there anymore.
Or maybe you’ve been blessed with being in the right place at the right time all this time and this sounds totally foreign to you? Read on anyway. Life does indeed come at us fast and it helps to be armed with a story. Even if it’s someone else’s story. Maybe especially if.
I didn’t belong There
A friend pointed me at a contractor position with the right work for the right people at the right rate. It was the perfect storm of gigs. I could work from home on the side of Good, use a variety of my best skills, and earn more money than I’ve ever made in my life.
It took me precisely 10 days to realize I didn’t belong there.
Right work, right people, right rate, wrong workstyle. I can do a lot of things, but I can’t do mirage deadlines that appear and reappear on an ever-distant horizon. I can’t do sending documents for feedback that never actually comes back, and I definitely can’t do finish lines that whisk away on rails. Every. Fucking. Time.
I’m not built for that. Not.
And working 400 miles away from corporate office drama did not save me from it. Oh no, it di’n't. I wasn’t in the thick of it, but the ripples reached me eventually. Oh yes. Oh yes, they did.
So when they talked of extending the contract another 3 months (remember: their finish lines move fast and far), I envisioned three things: more work that I like, more money that I need, and being tethered to a situation I neither liked nor needed.
And I said No.
I didn’t say No right away. I debated with the Husband about security and student loans versus sanity and passion. I rationalized. I hemmed-and-hawed. I ground my teeth in my sleep when I could finally finally finally get to sleep.
And then I stopped thinking altogether and went to the heart of it, a la Mark Silver. He calls it Remembrance, some would call it meditation or prayer, I call it Tapping In.
Which is how I found my answer. In the middle of the night, in the quiet, by myself (but not alone), there it was—
You don’t belong there.
Let it go.
And so I said No.
I said No to work that I really, really, really like. I said No to supporting people who ensure big businesses around the world are doing right and keeping it real. I said No to (almost) enough money to bring me out of the red. I told them I should make room for someone who would thrive in the environment that was driving me raving fucking batshit crazy.
Well, I didn’t say the “raving fucking batshit crazy” part. It was way hard to not say it, though. Way.
It was hard to say any of it. Harder than disconnecting from my troubled-and-troubling father. Harder than leaving my sweet-but-ill-suited first husband. Harder, even, then leaving my familiar East coast for unknowns in the West.
I haven’t done that last one yet, actually. We will do it though, and soon…though in many ways not soon enough. I’ve been itching to go West for 20 years…I even imported my husband from Seattle to have a part of it. But it took @chrisguillebeau (and a memorably good beer) in a basement bar in the center of Washington DC to get me gone. He said lots of things, but I mostly remember this one thing—
…come to Portland.
You don’t belong here.
He also asked when I would come out of my self-inflicted exile from blogging. Which leads me to the next bit…
I do belong Here
I never imagined I would land in a place like this, which is both nowhere and everywhere. Among folks like—
@pamslim, who sees and sparks entrepreneurial potential in everyone who comes to her,
@charliegilkey, who signs permission slips to say No,
@etherjammer, @intuitioneer, @michelewoodward, et. al., who have just about filled my Love Bucket,
Mark @markheartofbiz, who told me where to go and what to do there,
Naomi @ittybiz, who tumbles headlong into greatness with bodaciously cunning strategy
@risingstarideas, who finds stuff that makes anything—maybe everything—possible online
@havi, who, in sharing her Self, makes it not entirely impossible for me to share mine
@chrisguillebeau, who has set the pace and lights the ways,
and @reese, my sister from another mother, who believes.
I feel like I belong here among them. And I feel like I belong here with you.
I said No to a heap of pretty-sure income, which felt crazy, but I also said Yes to independence and insecurity and joy and confusion and delight and frustration. Which also feels crazy.
Whatever. Here I am.
And I’m happy to sit here telling you stories and making observations and dropping F-bombs. And asking you to ask yourself questions like this one—
Where do you belong?
Last week I asked, “So. How’s that working out for ya?” This time I’m asking:
Do you belong there?
Wherever you are: Does it make you feel right and good and whole? Does it give energy back to you, drain you dry, or simply leave you in peace?
Do the people around you make you laugh, make you think, make you feel safe, make you feel cozy? Or do they make you cry, make you mad, make you want to fly far, far, far away? Do they make fun of you? Do they make you want to be someone else…just to fit in?
And: Do you love your work?
This is the most important question of all, I feel sure. If you work 8-10 hours each day, you spend more time working than you spend on any other single thing. How your work affects you affects everything else. Everything.
I’m not asking if you love it every day…no work is lovable every day. But do you love it mostly? Or is your gut saying you’re doing the wrong thing in the wrong place? Or—oddly enough but possible—the wrong thing in the right place? Or—like me—the right thing in the wrong place?
Do you belong there?
Are you sure?
.
Walking the talk…with absolutely no idea of where it will take me,
