Since I'm in a place in my life where I'm not home at 4 pm any more, I meant to set my dvr so that it would start recording at the beginning of the season. Well, I forgot, and then we had to get a new dvr box, and now I've finally recorded it.
I'm so glad I did. I've always admired Oprah's wisdom, grace, and poise. She's basically who I want to be when I grow up, insofar as I'd also like to be admired for my wisdom, grace, and poise.
Anyway, tonight's episode (the first I've seen) was about aging gracefully. The show is really interesting because Oprah gives her candid thoughts about interviews she'd done with famous people previously on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Though the majority of the episode tonight didn't resonate with me, since I'm not a) a supermodel and b) past 40, Oprah's ending thoughts rang true.
"I refuse to let a system, or a culture, or a distorted view of reality tell me that I don't matter."
Man, those are some good words, Oprah! Nobody should ever feel that they don't matter for any reason, not just aging.
In my work, I've found this interesting niche as being "the girl who knows stuff about tech." So far, that's gotten me pretty far- I wouldn't have gotten promoted to communications coordinator if I hadn't proven that I can figure out tech stuff on my own very quickly. And I'm proud of that.
But on the other hand, I don't want that aspect of myself to define me. Just because I'm proficient at Googling for whatever I'm looking for, and won't ever quit until I know how to do it, doesn't mean that that's all I am. I don't want the other parts of myself to not matter.
So I'm having an "Aha! Moment" that I probably need to broaden my elevator pitch. As a society, we are fixated on work. Whenever you are introduced to someone, the first thing you ask them is, "So, what do you do?" And then we get a boring answer about what somebody does behind a desk for 8 hours a day.
I don't want to not matter, so instead of giving boring descriptions of my job, I'm going to come up with interesting things to say about my whole self. It will take time to come up with what that is, because I've let myself fall into the trap of defining myself by my work.
I think there are 2 questions here. 1, what is the system/culture/distorted view of reality that's trying to tell me that I don't matter? 2, what do I believe about myself that is at my core, the thing that will sustain me as everything around me changes?
More exploration needed. I'm pretty excited about this.
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