You are more than your job
A gentle reminder as we slide into the Peak Reflection Times.™️
It’s the holiday season, y’all (or perhaps it has been since October, according to retail stores in America). Before we cross over into the Time of New Year’s Resolutions, we encounter what I’m referring to as the Peak Reflection Times. On LinkedIn, at least, it seems that everyone is sharing everything they’ve accomplished in their career over the course of 2023. And I’m here to remind you, as you scroll past these posts and perhaps experience some FOMO: you are more than your job.
And what a year 2023 was. In the tech sector, it’s been a very bumpy one. It seems like the news articles about layoffs have been coming at us at a steady pace. Maybe you’ve been impacted by these layoffs, or maybe you’ve been feeling stuck because of the tight job market.
We are not what we have produced.
I had the opportunity to do a lot of content creation this year for my job. I could join the Peak Reflection Times and tell you about the educational opportunities I have created at my company. If you’re reading this from somewhere in the United States, perhaps you feel compelled to do the same: the US really loves equating productivity and being busy with success!
But that isn’t what I’ve actually been reflecting on the most. In this final month of 2023, I’ve spent the most time thinking of what I’ve done outside of work and how I can keep that person growing in 2024.
So here’s what I’ve done outside of work this year:
Read 43 books. Maybe I will try to get to 50 before the year runs out. They were all fiction!
Completed around 275 workouts. This is an estimate because I didn’t actually count, but I usually exercise 5-6x a week, so I split the difference between 250 (5x a week) and 300 (6x a week), counting 50 weeks so far this year.
Taken 42 cello lessons. Plus lots of practicing outside of lessons!
Within all that time, I PRed some lifts. I learned how to reach basic sheet music even though I had no musical background. But I didn’t actually produce anything tangible (except maybe some muscles? Maybe?) I didn’t even track any of that as it was going–I just had to do some calendar math to figure out how many cello lessons I’ve taken and my Kindle has reported to me how many books I’ve read.
Reflecting on this stuff is important to me because I (for the most part) have control over the hours outside of my job. If I lost my job, how might I fill my time? Who could I keep being?
Did I meet my personal goals?
You may have noticed that I reported on what I’ve done outside of work this year without some kind of standard measurement metric that I set myself against. Like, I was I trying to get to 50 books? Or 300 workouts?
I don’t know! I kind of hate New Year’s Resolutions (more on that later) and setting personal goals for myself (more on that later too). So I didn’t start this year with any particular goals in mind. I just thought, “hey, I want to do this stuff. Let’s see how much I can do and if I like it.”
And I did like it. So I’m going to say yes, I did meet my goals.
Happy holidays from Teaching with Tech in Mind! That’s just me, Christie. I’m going to take off the rest of December from posting to this newsletter. January will be busy for me–lots of teaching workshops (for my job) and I’m also teaching a class that I must get ready! So I am going to take the rest of the month to prep content for January as well as my class.
Coming up in January: I’ll start off 2024 by talking about New Year’s Resolutions and goal-setting. And how I hate all that. How does that work as an instructional designer, you might wonder?
Thanks for reading, and see you in 2024!