There was a time - call it the Baby Boomer's version of "Camelot" - when professional success meant following the rules. Sure some of us put in our time doing the counterculture. Then the Recession of 1974 put the kibosh on that. We cut our hair, dropped the profanity out of our normal speaking patterns, bought a few good outfits, and did what it took to land jobs in corporate America. You bet, we made it our business to understand the rules.
Then, here we are over-50 and those old rules don't apply. If there are new rules - now called best practices - which apply they haven't been put together yet. So, in order to make it we have to "make it up" as we go along. I now get it that to do that I needed permission.
Last night I received that permission from an expert in organizational development. Now an executive director of a program for the aging, she explained to me that not only Baby Boomers but all generations have to "make it up."
Finally, I realize that my instincts have been on-target. I tried on this and I tried on that to make a good living again. The niches I had been in for communications either have tanked or become glutted with Generations X and Y landing the opportunities which exist.
I'm not yet comfortable with making it up. My comfort zone had become figuring out the rules and being smarter at following them than others. Outside that comfort zone I don't feel like myself. Maybe that's a good thing, As Lewis Richmond explains in "Aging as a Spiritual Experience," aging means dumping the old concept of who we had been and accepting the new us.
Comments