Professional reconsiderations

I'd say that I seem to be entering a new phase in my life, but the fact is that all kinds of things are shifting all the time and "phases" are fairly subjective distinctions about where we identify turning points. At any rate, my interests, professional aspirations, and educational plans are undergoing some interesting shifts.

Professionally, I was thinking for a while about staying at M&I for some time in order to take advantage of tuition reimbursement and get my MBA. I figured it couldn't hurt in general if I got another corporate job, but it would also be an opportunity to put together my business plan and work towards opening my own small business. And yet I came to some realizations a few weeks back:

1. While I still think I would thrive in a small business setting, the actual businesses I've been interested in opening matter less and less to me. The particular businesses I used to care about feel less important, and I want to do something that... matters more? Maybe it's just that my definition of what matters has changed.

2. I'm somewhat disgusted with what I feel I'm contributing to in our department at M&I Bank. I believe the people I work with are basically good people, that our excesses are not really worse than our competitors, etc. but I think we're just another example of an industry gone wrong with no one willing to stand up and make a real change, working in a system that does not allow anyone but those at the top to do so in the first place. I have become better at managing within this system and being patient, and even so my real motivation to contribute is at an all time low. I am no longer willing to stay much longer than is necessary to find something else that will actually feel meaningful to me.

3. I find my interests shifting over time, away from the purely abstract, theoretical mucking around in thoughts for the enjoyment of it, and more towards the concrete, the scientific, the practicalities of living in the world and helping to make it better. And since consciously realizing that, I have found the beginning of some direction for where to put my curiosity and focus. More about that in another post, I'm sure. In a general sense, though, I'm doing more and more reading, listening, exploring - entering more of an active self-education phase.

This was all more fresh and exciting to me a few weeks ago, when I actually started writing portions of this post. Now it's more mundane to me, but I'm glad to see some new opportunities opening up for me. Funny how some days being glad or joyful is more of a mental awareness, and other days I FEEL it. I'm on a strange edge somewhere between right now, trying to totter myself back to something more visceral.