I read an article today in the Harvard Business Review about pursuing a passion outside of work.
Now, I don’t believe in the whole “follow your passion” thing. You should be passionate, yes, but not pursue it. Find passion where you go.
Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.
There is a part in the article that says, “When you stake your whole self-worth on your job, you become less resilient to adverse events, such as layoffs or negative performance reviews.” And this is something I see, and feel often.
When I look at myself, I don’t have other things that I’m good at outside of work – information technology. I write casually, draw poorly, and nothing else.
So this is probably where all my fear comes from. My brain is protecting my self-esteem from being destroyed because I’ve done something that betrays the one thing I may be good at, and everyone finds out that I’m an imposter.
It’s probably why I procrastinate so much at my job. It’s better that they think me unreliable than not good at my job. A bad administrator, but not a bad engineer.
Damn my brain!
So I need to be good at something else. The question is what?