A lovely surprise this week when the Squiggly Career crew sent me a cope of their new book You Coach You (and rebranded it Eleanor Coach Eleanor, class). Very honoured to write a small insert for them. They sent the book in a box which said ‘Drawing a line between work and rest’. Again very clever!
So, it got me thinking.
About our squiggly lives. How we think it’s going to be; be born, grow, school, job, house, family, work, retire. And we think (hope) it’s going to get easier. That tomorrow has all the answers. That’s the linear line?
But life isn’t like that. We twist, turn, loop the loop, propel forward, dive backwards. And any major squiggle can feel like a huge failure or a huge success depending on where you are on your imaginary linear line.
So it feels like embracing the squiggle more can help us enjoy life more. Be ok with the twists and turns, whatever they may be. Know there will be good days, know there will be bad days, but know that whatever they are they are equal in your squiggly life.
Maybe we don’t need to draw the line between work and rest if we can be ok that whatever we are doing right now is what we are meant to be doing.
I don’t know. Maybe squiggles gives you more rollercoaster nausea than rollercoaster adrenaline.
Either way feels good to know that we all have squiggles in our lives.
eleanor
Do you have a squiggly life?
I started in a very linear way. School, university, Graduate scheme, moved to London with boyfriend! Then it started going squiggly, I had health issues, was made redundant twice. It wasn’t what I wanted, but It has made me more resilient.
I squiggled early on, an ambition to do a maths degree morphed into an engineering degree and then the graduate engineer moved into IT quite quickly. These days I don't think I'm quite so squiggly