a master in your field
I would also like to propose, in follow-up to the last post:
The “soft skills” and un-degreed traits and less official abilities are harder to measure and put down on paper, so they’re harder to teach in a structured, organized manner. You don’t get certifications for all the things that are so needed in a community and a workplace and a home and life. It’s trickier to organize these passions and abilities, you can’t test on them quite so well, they’re less visible. The work to develop vast emotional attunement, success, and care is often less visible than the work to become a test pilot, for example.
That doesn’t mean it matters less. Keep in mind, we must always take into account the different individuals and the scope of their specific lives and dreams and desires — we don’t all want the same things, so of course our lives will look differently and the how and what we learn will be different! Our values are different, which frames our forward motion entirely!
Invisible work is still crucially important and offers multitudes in return and impact. These skills and supports are often more noticeable when they’re gone or when they aren’t working properly. It’s like a silent, well-oiled machine that you never notice when it’s healthy and running as it should!
The soft skills matter. Caring for others is essential.
Tinkering and crafting and maintaining and any-and-all skills you can develop over long spans of time spent doing what you love and learning every day how to improve is just as necessary and fascinating and commendable as white-collar roles.
AND — I wonder if we can approach the blue-collar work and the invisible labor with a similar mindset for mastery and standard of excellence that is present in white-collar jobs and traditional education.
Imagine if you take the thing you love, the work you care deeply about, the interests and strengths you have, and decide you will invest all your passion and best intent on improving and viewing yourself as a professional in your field. Imagine if you frame your mindset and orient your effortful hard work, learning curves, and investment in your own education (whatever form that education takes) so you think of yourself as getting a degree in your own unique role and contributions.
I mentioned in the last post, most of my professional life so far has been “customer facing” roles, and this isn’t just going through the motions for me; I’m here on purpose, because I have such a strong, richly-felt vision and belief for what community can be and for how individuals who are well-supported, happy, healthy, and passionate can be better together and reach insane levels of potential, thanks to being resourced and emotionally and relationally tended to. I love people, and this is how I want to help. It’s really something I care about.
So imagine taking all of that, that role which sounds a little hum-drum and a little stereotypical and bland — “customer service” — or just hard to even quantify in the first place — like, “what do we call this? Community connector? Human supporter? Emotional, passionate team glue-er? Operational student/teacher/employee/staff affairs?” — and excelling in it. Picture pretending you’re getting a Bachelor’s Degree in Customer Care. A Master’s Degree in Team Passion and Connection. Put yourself in the path of learning more about the work that matters to you and trying everyday to improve and add valuable layers and abilities to your skills. Try to make yourself such a generous, impactful addition to the team, that things run so much better with you here, and you become a linchpin in whatever your niche is!
This stuff matters. What matters to you, matters. Believe in it. Find the other people to whom it matters, find the environment that needs exactly what you have, and then unleash it in full force and use it to have fun and do good! Do as much good with your passions and talents and personality and gifts as you can. Never, ever stop learning. Do not belittle yourself. Get as curious as you can. Keep seeking. Keep giving. When you look around at colleagues and others nearby, doing both the visible, measurable, spotlighted sort of work and also the invisible, unquantifiable, less traditional sort of work, remember to esteem and value all of it. See the bigger picture and how much better off we are together. Notice people playing to their strengths and how much we each have to offer in that beautiful dance.
Keep dancing. We need you, all of you, you weird, delightful, educated, uneducated, certified, hard-knocks, experienced, observant, crafty, problem solving, emotional, creative, scientific, generous geniuses.
