Back in 2008, after thinking about my ideal day, and starting to incorporate parts of it into my reality (non-ideal) day, I thought I was on my way to having my ideal day in reality. At least in part.
The absence of work outside the home from my ideal day list still bothered me, though. I have to work outside the home. But part of me wished I didn’t….
Be Careful What You Wish For
As my mother is fond of saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Days after I wrote the post back in 2008, I was blindsided. Five minutes before I was due to leave work for the day at my client site, the contractors were pulled into a room and told that the all the contracts had been canceled. We were told to pack up and get out. The next day, my own company laid me off, to “get me off the books.”
So I had a chance to implement my ideal day, as I worked on deciding what to do next.
How Does This Apply To Now?
I’ve decided to bring this article forward to the present because there are many without work right now, and business are still closing as the pandemic drags on.
Don’t get me wrong: if you have spent the first year of the pandemic simply surviving, you are in a great place. It was world-wide trauma, and you deserve a medal for getting through it.
But if you are still in the place where employment isn’t what it used to be, and you feel like maybe doing some self improvement, ask yourself what your ideal day would be.
It’s a scary proposition. It scared me to bits when it happened to me in 2008, and it would scare me today.
But structuring my day to move closer to my ideal gave me a sense of purpose and structure that allowed me to pivot and find my way out. It allowed me to choose what to do and exert some control while being swept up in things I couldn’t control.
Looking at Choices
As a direct result of that experience in 2008, I worked at having a other sets of skills that are high in demand so that I could always find work with little down time.
I pivoted and started learning more about customizing WordPress sites with the goal of helping people set them up quickly. And looking outside IT, I began to toy with the idea of heading to the classroom.
While I am the first to laughingly point at my teaching license as a mid-life crisis, I realized that if things go wrong with my career in IT, I will always be able to get a job as a teacher.
And those WordPress skills came in handy at the beginning of the pandemic, when several groups that I work with needed a website yesterday.
I hope that if you are in a situation where you need to shift and pivot your employment that you consider what your ideal day might be. You might find that it opens some unforeseen avenues.
Deliberate Days
It’s all about choices. We may not be able to have our ideal days. However, knowing what those ideas are may allow us to work toward them, and perhaps even help us get back on our feet.
As a total coincidence, my answer to “when do you know it’s time to look for a new job” over at Productivity501 came up today. I guess I need to amend my answer to add that when you’re laid off, that’s a pretty good sign you need to look for a new job 🙂