When Alice was ten, she decided she wanted to be a writer. All those questions that adults kept repeating, like “What do you want to be when you grow up?” had the same answer: “I want to be a writer.”
She was also a great reader; her favourite spare time activity was being immersed in a good book and forgetting about the adults fighting around her.
Still, life got somehow in her way. Writing wasn’t “a real job”. Who earns money from writing? So, she needed to reset, and she chose a very cool profession then – she decided to be a lawyer. So, she spent years preparing for the challenging exam at Law School, hearing her father’s voice in her ear, who repeated that he didn’t have the money to pay for it, so she needed a scholarship.
After she graduated from Law School, things got even more complicated because nobody offered a job in an oversaturated industry for an inexperienced job seeker. So, when she finally found herself a job and got hired, she felt like she was in the seventh heaven and tried to prove her worth – that translated into long work hours, working harder than any of her colleagues, being there for 25 hours a day if you know what I mean.
She swallowed her pride whenever one of her colleagues was promoted, finding excuses because she was so young and inexperienced. Since Alice was the newest in the team, she sincerely believed she didn’t deserve any recognition until she proved her value with sweat and blood. She was the first to come and the last to leave the office, always there for the company that, in its great kindness, took a chance and hired her.
She didn’t even want a child because her most significant goal was to have a magnificent career and make a difference. Still, life has a strange way of showing us how wrong we are. She got pregnant with her first child, and suddenly, her priorities shifted the opposite way. Alice knew her child needed her, and she became a “9-5 worker”. She used to rush home to be with her child, whom she missed the most and naturally turned out to be the most important person in her tiny universe.
Nevertheless, her new type of behaviour didn’t go unnoticed by her managers, who didn’t appreciate it. Although she worked harder to finish her chores when the working hours were over and not to work overtime, her managers didn’t like that she stopped being available in the evening or on weekends. So, they skipped her when they analysed who should be promoted. Once again.
And then there were microaggressions, small mean gestures that made her feel awkward and unappreciated—getting through her stuff because they suddenly considered she wasn’t tidy enough—taking off her child’s photos. After all, “they didn’t look good”. They gossiped behind her, trying to undermine her capacity in every work circle.
Moreover, there were more minor but more hurtful gestures that made her feel more inadequate. She began to believe she wasn’t ever good enough. Still, she didn’t quit her job out of fear that she wouldn’t get another so well paid.
Nevertheless, after all this harassment, she began to break. Her will to work there faded daily until nothing was left. She rediscovered her passion for writing and finally found clarity: after years of denying her true self, her calling couldn’t be ignored anymore.
She needed to be punched in the a**, put in disgrace and humiliated until she reached that conclusion.
And now I ask you – did you find your calling?
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