Paths and Directions

Tags

career, choices, direction, path

Hi Kumud – 

  When I was in ninth grade, I filled out a form for the school counseling center with the title that approximated to “What I want to do when I grow up.” It was a one page document and I filled in What I enjoyed doing, What I felt were my gifts, What I wanted to do for recreation, and What I wanted to do for a potential career.

  I recall very little about my replies except that somewhere on the page I wrote the words “Writer”. Now being a writer is a challenging career path and I’m not sure if I would recommend that path for my children. My parents certainly didn’t recommend that path for me. I ended up in Engineering and when it didn’t work out, I transferred to a major called Communications.

  For the past 3 months, I have been looking for a new career job. My recent titles have been Project Assistant, Project Manager, and Business Analyst and I consider myself a very seasoned technical communicator. This past Monday I received a phone call and I was offered a permanent position with the same enterprise that paid me as a contractor a few months ago. The problem was that this was the second job offer within a week and I was already entertaining the other position. I was in the humbling position of having two positions “on the table”.

   The world is full of choices and paths. Late yesterday I wrote the hiring manager at the enterprise where I worked as a contractor last year and turned down her job offer. The hiring manager wished me well on my journey. I enjoyed seeing that word, “journey”. We are all on a journey. I selected a career role with a very visible government agency that I consider perfect. Maybe that journey will be 15 or more years or maybe the journey will have twists and turns before then.

   Each year I am surprised and grateful that my wife and I have enough (income) for food, shelter, and a modest bit of entertainment. While I am not fond of job transitions, it always works out. I am grateful the path led me to an incredible opportunity where I will enjoy growing and contributing in areas very closely aligned with my technical communications ability. I am grateful that I had two offers at one time and in a small way, the universe allowed me to evaluate and confirm “Yes, position A is the perfect fit”. When presented with multiple choices, we are able to confirm that a selection is not arbitrary or just good enough. And that’s what makes me thrive – trusting there is a perfect fit – and it certainly happened this time.

Best,

David Tumbarello

Today listening to Forest Birdsong 2.

David Tumbarello is a technical communicator with over 50 years in the growth industry, with 49 of those years communicative and on two feet. When he is not technically communicating, he enjoys hiking, biking, and writing. Feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn.

Harmony and Color

Tags

color, discovery, diversity, harmony

Dear Kumud,

   I was in a school band concert yesterday attending my step-son’s Spring band conert. The auditorium was filled with the music of clarinets, flutes, trumpets, saxophones, drums, xylophones, and probably a few more instruments that I missed. Today I am reminded that beautiful symphonic music cannot happen by chance. I recall the quote by Carl Sagan, “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe.” Applied to the concert last night: “If you want to invent a symphony, first you must invent the universe, and then human beings to communicate and create culture and art, and then instruments, a composer and so on …”

   The music depends on the composer, who is depends on instruments. Music that sounds “just so” here in the States would sound different if it were imagined in Tibet or Madagascar or Southeast Asia. I spent some time in Indonesia and there is nothing in the world like the sound of gamalan, with anywhere between five and fifty circular gongs of various sizes played by five to fifty performers. Put together, gamelan is symphony with essentially one instrument and a wide array of tones.

   The symphonic band I heard last night, here in the States, consisted of brass, wind instruments, percussion, and strings. The conductor stood at the front, animated and dressed in black, and we were even fortunate to have a student teacher conductor lead one of the songs.

   Every composer is ideologically, culturally, unquestionably trapped by the instruments that swirl around in their heads and sometimes around their studio. They can be exposed to instruments and music from other cultures (and even compose in that style, as did Paul Simon in Graceland), but they are predominately influenced by their home base. Their schema.

   Schema refers to the structures in our brain that classify how we perceive concepts, especially new concepts.

   And yet the metaphor of the day isn’t simply to say that a symphony is a collection of various instruments that make beautiful music. Or that beautiful music is the result of the structures fixed in the composer’s brain. This isn’t what I was thinking yesterday when I sat in the school band concert. Rather than thinking about specific instruments, I was thinking about the kids playing instruments. Their make-up. Their color. Their background, identity, orientation, gender, and the tone of their skin.

   This was not a diverse band. I am remarried and at this event, I observed 3 bands and at least 180 performers who, in terms of the tone of their skin, look predominantly like me. I can observe but I can’t judge. This is just where we live.

   My son goes to school 30 miles to the south and I’ll be attending his band concert next week. I’ll sit next to a diverse collection of parents – at least in terms of the tone of their skin – and the band members will look like they are painted with a different brush. Hues of white and brown and shades in between. Along with diverse colors comes diverse family background, diverse heritage, diverse religion. Again, I can’t judge. This is just where he lives.

   Symphony and color. Instruments and skin. My son goes to a relatively diverse school and I appreciate that he sits next to kids who look different and who come to class with different heritage, different religious backgrounds, and ultimately different perspectives.

   We live in a diverse world. The spiritchat community spreads across the states and across the globe. Call me crazy, but I believe we should seek out and embrace differences – skin, culture, background, and every difference that makes someone unique. A mosaic. A symphony.

   I am going to challenge myself during the next week to have one meaningful conversation with someone culturally different than myself. During the next 7 days, I want to encounter someone who is culturally different than myself and with a healthy dose of empathy, risk being changed. Feel free to share with me in this small challenge. Bring new color to your life. Create a mosaic. Create a symphony.

   One thing we know: the spirit is happy with color. Or rather, the spirit is happy with colors.

   It is in differences that we grow our perspective, our schema. And this is not just a good thing, it is a necessary thing.

David

Today, listening to Tambazako and Tsy Ferana.

David Tumbarello is a technical communicator with over 50 years in the growth industry, with 49 of those years communicative and on two feet. When he is not technically communicating, he enjoys hiking, biking, and writing. Feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn.

Spirituality at the Movies

Tags

growth, leveling up, spiritual goals, writing

Welcome to the first post in our ‘mid-week’ series of guest posts by #spiritchat members, tentatively categorized, “spiriflections”. I hope that you enjoy the author’s efforts, and maybe even contribute a comment (to encourage them) and/or contribute to this series in the future. Thank you. – Kumud

Spirituality at the Movies – by David Tumbarello

I sat in the dark theater and watched a beautiful movie about growth and strength. About battling demons, learning about sacrifice, and learning about love. The main character began the story literally and figuratively without a body. She was also soul-less. By the end of the first act, she was given a body. After battling a demon, this replacement body was destroyed and she was given a second, upgraded body. This one was more mature and she integrated with this one far better than the first. In a moment, she “leveled up”. Due to her desire to fight for justice, she acquired accessories that integrated with her body. She brought these accessories to battle and “leveled up” once more.

I sat down the other day to watch another movie, this one twelve years in the making. During those 12 years, the protagonist grows from a boy to a man. As a six year old, he rides a bike, and then as a 16 year old drives a car, and when he graduates from high school, he drives off to the university. His parents divorce, they remarry, and divorce again. He struggles with his classes and learns he is an artist. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes 12 years for him to be okay with his art. It also takes 12 years for him to grow from boyhood into something close to being an adult.

I think about maturation versus leveling up. For me, spirituality does not fit with the model of a person leveling up. A spiritual deposit today will not increase the size of my spiritual bank account tomorrow. My deposit today, however, may contribute to my growth.

It has been said, “When you open your heart and mind up to allowing yourself to experience the doubts, tension, and discomforts associated with facing fears and making changes, you allow the possibility for real growth to occur.” Should we shy away from pain, discomfort, loss, and fear? If our mindset is growth, we should find ways to embrace these difficulties because in their purest form, they are not barrier but rather gates to growth.

I recall sitting in therapy one afternoon and the therapist and I talked about trying out new behaviors. She turned to me and said, “It’s a stretch.” She wasn’t asking that I change overnight or level up. She was asking that I consider doing something just a bit outside my comfort zone. Something that would stretch my self-care muscles. Something that would help me grow.

As I write today, I embrace my flaws, blemishes, bruises, and aches. Even with these spiritual difficulties, I aspire. Without them, how would I stretch? How would I grow? I write today to address spiritual weakness. For me, writing today is a stretch. I address weakness and with this stretch, I grow. Will I have aches? Yes. Will I stretch and grow? Absolutely.

And when you mature, when you truly grow, others around you will notice and in the right circumstances they are changed as well. You change, they change. Would you want it any other way?

– David Tumbarello (@davetumbarello)

David Tumbarello is a technical communicator with over 50 years in the growth industry, with 49 of those years communicative and on two feet. When he is not technically communicating, he enjoys hiking, biking, and writing. Feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn.

Spiritual Reflections (photo by @AjmaniK)