I remain surrounded by people who desire recognition and leadership who believes that providing such to the people who they feel have done things in the fashion they choose to be relevant and desirable will best indenture the service of those individuals. In laymen’s terms, I presently work in a spot where folks are about the likes.
I used to be about the likes. I used to be all about the likes and I had an excellent mentor who told me the most important thing of my professional career. He said (I am paraphrasing here), If you’re in this job for people to say thank you, then you are in the wrong job. I really was that guy looking for the thanks and the camaraderie and the adulation. It came in thin streams like water from a spigot covered in grime. It was never worth what I gave to get it. Not the time or the energy or the sacrifices in other areas of my life. Instead I reached the point where my value to the people I care for the most was at its least. So, finally, I started to move on.
Now I can see from the other side of the process. I have moments where I laugh at where I was and how hot I would get at people taking credit for my stuff and or alienating me in order to advance their own agendas. My greatest agenda in all of it was to be liked and appreciated. That isn’t much of a goal and it led me to rolling back and forth between initiatives like an unmoored bottled on a ship at sea. I never gave my all. Today I give my all to a handful of things and I know damn well what I want. Everything else is just a job.
It helps to know what matters and what doesn’t. For me what happens inside the classroom matters. Working with my teaching partner matters. The community I create with my students and between my students matters. Though there remains a lingering sense of the life and self that was, I clearly recognize that the rest of the work experience doesn’t matter.
I ain’t in it for the likes.