There was a time in my life I worked and I don’t mean I had a job when I say worked. I buried myself in what I referred to then as my career. When I was not at work I read and learned to improve. I might have been at work too much.

Today I have basically the same job but when I am not on the clock so to speak I do not work. My reason for working in the capacity I once did is no longer present.

I worked the way I did for a reason and I lied to myself at the time what that reason was. I told myself all the things one says or hears about such behavior, it was, for the most part a guise. I gained from this and in many of the expected ways. I am pretty good at what I do, or so I think so and others seem to express this as well.

The real reason I worked and pushed as I did was always there, yet I discounted that. I needed to escape from my own life at the time. I was in a place I did not belong and I was not who I am. I used work in a feild that has frequent emergencies to distract me. I needed this. I needed to buy myself time to get to where I could be, where I could be alive. It took a very long time, decades in fact. I did it eventually. I broke free from the life I lived in hiding.

Today I work to have some structure, schedule and of course pay the bills. I use what I have learned through my experience to do my job. I also bring myself, my whole self be it good bad or indifferent with me. The work I do is technical and I have allowed my creative self to inject more and more. Showing up with humanity, creativity and technical skills I tend to push the boundaries a bit at times.

I like what I do but wish I could do something with my abilities that means more than supplying a fortune 500 company with my knowledge and efforts. One day that may be a reality but I am not there yet.

I have grown through work but more importantly it bought me time and taught me lessons so I can be here and alive, both literally and figuratively, today.

I have said more times than I could recall over the past year plus; it took everything in my life to get to exactly where I am today. I hold no regrets.