Rain Will Produce Success and Flourishing

Rain can blur visibility or create a huge mess (when non-stop for a prolonged amount of time), but rain also provides needed sustenance for life.

It seems as if I am a jack of many trades, but a master of none. I have learned to do many things I would have never thought myself figuring out how to do. And passing time adds more to the list of trades I must figure out how to complete. Being a master of none is disconcerting, not so much because my identity is intimately tied to being master of something or anything, but more so because monetary stability and success requires such.

Or, so I thought.

I am slow at learning that what I thought would be my life career may not look quite like what I had envisioned; and, I am gradually realizing that that is okay. The skills that were and are being refined, sharpened, and perfected, are still vital to the work I do, just in a different way.

My ability to see how things will look is not crystal clear; I can make out just enough to tell that what will happen will produce flourishing. I suppose that will have to do for now.

Success, based on What or Whose Standards?

By the standards of the world, my profession, and my paying work, I would be the model example of failure in my career. I am not attending conferences, hobnobbing with fellow colleagues in the field, and I am not keeping up with current research and publishing.

It is time to throw in the towel and call me done. Look up the word 'failure' (to do one's job well) in the dictionary, and my name and photograph will be found in the definition of the term.

Wait a minute.

I am still here. Do you believe that I have accepted the stamp of 'failure' to succeed in my career?

Sometimes I believe I might have. Looking at social media updates with "tenure" in it or noticing the lengthy running credits of friends' recent academic accomplishments can be quite unnerving and intimidating.  Or drive me into despair.

But, I have had a strong feeling that I should be doing the project that I have been undertaking, until the work is done. Whilst in process, I have nothing to show that convinces anyone that my intuition not anything more than a flight of fancy but is grounded in something significant and worthy of attention.

My (academic) training has no small role to play in the undertaking of this project. I love, with a deep passion, my field, my discipline. And, no one is going to take away how doing/studying the discipline has shaped and will continue to change my life.

Am I a success? Will I be a success? Let us not start from the unknown but the known. I am going to finish this (monumental) project I started. Godspeed, please!