Total Lack of Aspiration... 50 on the Job

In the middle of the afternoon today, I found myself with my eyeballs beginning to itch...it seemed like in the back of my eyes...yikes! I was experiencing eye strain from looking back and forth at two different screens and dropping in tedious details. Fortunately, this doesn't happen often. In fact, after thinking that this wasn't how I wanted to spend too many more hours, I remembered why I was doing this work. I picked up the phone, called the client who this effort affected, and we had a nice chat. She trusts me; I want to be an anchor for her. That's the way it works. Then the job is no longer just a job--it's an opportunity to help someone--to put them more at ease.

When I started this new phase of my professional life, I decided that it was going to be on terms that I enjoyed what I did; that no matter what the vocation, it needed to be one that, at the end of the day as well as the start of the day, put a smile on my face. And so this is what I do. I wake up, I smile, and I start the day. And, even if it's been a tiring day, I smile. Life is indeed too short...it simply can't be wasted on jobs that have little meaning, do one no earthly good, or make us feel generally rotten.

Being 50 can be a scary age in the workplace with job cuts, etc. The good news, though, is that we can shamelessly have no aspirations of climbing any corporate ladders--yet the young dogs do that and Godspeed to them. We 50s will just keep the ship sailing smoothly along...and keep smiling.