Unmasking in my career
If I can’t show up with my shadow, I’m going to be uncomfortable in the light
I’m interviewing right now for software engineering jobs, and I’m trying to figure out what I want and need from my professional relationships. There are so many big questions for me.
The thing is, it’s all backwards. The whole premise of job interviews. What motivates me is what I feel passionate about, and what offers the most fruitful connection for me. The connection I have with the humans I’m working with is very important for me. But job interviews are predicated on the assumption that you can decide whether you want to work there based on a few short discussions. I find it incredibly hard to get enough positive signal that way.
I’m also paying close attention to when I feel like I’m masking. I know very well how to perform in job interviews in order to maximize my chances of being hired. But whoever I’ve been in my interviews over the years hasn’t felt authentic, and hasn’t been sustainable either. Many times I’ve soldiered on through interviews while in a full blown panic attack. They weren’t meeting me, they were meeting my amygdala.
Many times I’ve soldiered on through interviews while in a full blown panic attack. They weren’t meeting me, they were meeting my amygdala.
It’s scary for me to consider bringing my whole self to these discussions. And at the same time, do I really have a choice? In the past, unsustainable work has caused me to burn out eventually. At this point, I think I’d rather switch industries than experience another burnout.
I’m also grappling with how to dovetail my tech career with my work with families on the spectrum. I’ll be finishing my cannabis coaching certification in a couple of months, and I’m eager to start working with people at the intersection of cannabis and autism. I keep seeing research released just in the past few years, pointing to cannabis being life-changing medicine for people on the spectrum. And my personal experience has been completely aligned with the research I’ve seen. Cannabis helps to regulate my body and mind in a way no other medicine has done for me.
I recently saw a talk by Harry Thompson (author of The PDA Paradox) about how he reconciles the demands of his career with his instinctual need to be free. He said something I’ve since thought about pretty much every day now for months. He said he wasn’t giving a talk, he IS the talk. He doesn’t write a book, he IS the book. Any space or separation between himself and a task is where the demand can slip in and infect his natural flow.
He isn’t giving a talk, he IS the talk. He isn’t writing a book, he IS the book. Any space or separation between himself and a task is where the demand can slip in and infect his natural flow.
Harry’s approach is what defines embodiment for me. I’ve realized that every time I’ve masked with colleagues, I’ve left a big part of myself at the door. But that part of myself is necessary for me. You can’t rip a car in two and expect to drive the other half home. I can white-knuckle it for a while, but it’s just not sustainable.
You can’t rip a car in two and expect to drive the other half home.
So what does embodiment look like for me?
In a way, my intense special interests have always provided the focus I need to make concrete progress on things. When I started using cannabis, I tracked my dosages and how I was feeling using an app (called Reporter) that would randomly poll me several times a day. That led me to build my own SMS bot called Calibrate (currently in beta testing), to which I could easily send conversational texts to describe a dose, and have it follow up a bit later to prompt me to log how I’m feeling. And I can loop in my cannabis coach into the text thread so they can see my progress, and maybe get some basic analytics from the bot to spot trends.
Writing the Calibrate bot felt natural for me. Nobody was expecting me to do it. It’s a creative experiment. It addresses a need I feel acutely every day, to really dial in my medicine to address my symptoms. And I see it being helpful to many more people for the same reason. I mean, I’m a data nerd, and even I have trouble logging things consistently. I need an extremely low friction way to log my progress. I send voice texts to Calibrate through my Apple Watch: “hey siri, send a message to Calibrate …. 10 drops of indica oil”. Then Calibrate texts me back in 90 minutes to prompt me to log how I’m feeling, because it knows that “drops” are a sublingual dose that takes about 90 minutes to metabolize. My response: 😴 . An emoji is worth a thousand words.
I also experience lulls in my interest, where it becomes increasingly taxing to devote energy to something. And I’ve been exploring ways to dance with that resistance, rather than just pushing through it. I’ve actually seen in hindsight that often when I felt that way, it was me picking up on something important that I needed to pay attention to. And that spidey sense just doesn’t go away. I need to give that feeling a voice, and I need my manager to welcome that voice.
When I feel resistance, I need to give that feeling a voice. And I need my manager to welcome that voice.
Ultimately, what I want is to leverage my sensitivity as a superpower. Too often I find myself trying to minimize anyone’s exposure to my inner fluctuations. But what if I’m the Geiger counter that is detecting real signal, and internally amplifying it? Maybe I’m uncovering an unknown unknown, and simply need some additional language to articulate its value.
The bigger picture I’m seeing is, I really need the passionate part of me to be fully alive. That passionate part is my shadow; the part of me that’s most like my father. But if I can’t show up with my shadow, I’m going to be uncomfortable in the light.
I too am finding my balance between authenticity and exposure. Finding what feels true to self in a way that can be shared with others is harder than it sounds!