Fears!
Phone home. If you dare.
If this post’s photo doesn’t scare you, it should. You should be trembling in your shoes. You should be opening your blinds, checking to see if this alien’s ship has infiltrated your backyard. You should seek therapy ~30 years from now as the image of this unholy animatronic puppet haunts your nightmares and makes weird cameos in your dreams.
If you’re 7-years-old.
Whoa, you explicitly said you like TV shows and movies with Muppets in them. True. True dat. But E.T. holds a special place in my heart. Specifically, the back left artery, that’s blackened and charred by Spielberg’s worst idea made blockbuster - the stuff of fever dreams for years to come.
To be fair….. it’s watchable up to the point where he turns white and gets sick in the woods. Anyone remember that sequence?! The kids find him and he’s all decaying and gone. Ugh. Oh man. Ahhhhh!!!
Phew, now that THAT’s over: our life and career-related nightmares have a way of dissipating over time. Maybe not completely, but certainly with age/time/perspective their ridiculousness begins to become less cloudy and more clear-eyed. Chances are if nothing else, an overcoming of our deepest insecurities and doubts about what we can’t, or couldn’t have, possibly achieve(d).
Sometimes I hear from folks who’ve been with a particular organization for more than 20, or even 30 years that they’re proud of the fact that they’ve been loyal to that org for as long as they have. To each their own. But at the end of the day, there’s an element of courage to leave a job that’s cushy to challenge one’s self with something that’s new and different, and outside your comfort zone.
And ‘comfort zone’ could mean a couple things in an employment context. Comfort in terms of, the work itself - the career progression and/or stagnancy. Ergo, there's one path, you took it and stayed on it. You’re a loyal person [hey, ain’t nothing wrong with that]. Or conversely, comfort in terms of the perks. You’re spoiled. You’ve got golden handcuffs and know it. Why jeopardize giving those up at the thought of a more challenging and fulfilling day-to-day?
Fears, they’re fluff. Otherwise how is it that E.T. traumatizes a kid, yet that same kid as an adult loves District 9?
Whatever’s holding you back, it’s solely in your head. If you’re in that 20-years of service demo, it’s not too late. 30+…. maybe. But hey, never say never.
As a kid I had an unreasonable, illogical reaction to E.T. and this post serves as an apology mini-essay to my father who, to his credit, loved the movie when he saw it in theatres as a very young man. Years later, I too unexpectedly traumatized my son with an alien movie that he’ll (hopefully) laugh about 30-years from now.
In your career and in life, fear is a repeating yet fleeting thing.
-Matt