It Me! Workplace Boomerang

It was a brisk late summer day in 2015 and I was on a walk in Golden Gate Park, SF. The lush canopy in the park was dreamy. I spent a lot of my leave with my then 3 month old in that park. On this particular walk we were headed all the way out to the pacific ocean. To an external observer it would have seemed like an ordinary outing, but for me it was a life changing moment. It’s the walk during which I asked myself “Why am I in such a hurry?”.

No, it was not an internal dialogue about my pace that day. It was in fact an internal dialogue about my identity and specifically my relationship with work.

As a new parent who was lucky enough (because sadly that is not the norm in the US) to have a solid chunk of time on leave I was grappling with my new responsibilities and how it would fit with my sense of self. I had the luxury of time and space to really sit with some big questions. For example, what was important to me and why? Was I going to keep heading in the direction I was on? If yes, what were the costs of doing so? The implications to my son? To my happiness? Was it really what I wanted? Up to that point I had thought about these things, but it never felt so binary as it did in that moment as I looked at the tiny human in the stroller ahead of me.

Why am I in such a hurry as a question specifically came into my mind as I was thinking about career progression and external indicators of success (like title). What I didn’t know at the time, but I believe now is that when I asked myself that question it was the start of me stepping into a multi-year personal wilderness where I would begin to define my purpose and values for myself. Not for my parents, my partner, or my broader cultural context. Just for me. Based on the things that make me unique and happy.

To synthesize a rather long nearly eight year process and glossing over the fact this occurred during a global pandemic:

• I’ve realized that what motivates me most is learning and creating.
• I’ve realized I have a unique skillset of seeing what is unspoken by observing people closely and the ability [and willingness] to articulate those things.
• I’ve realized I do best when I have space to think and then interact with people to evolve my thoughts further, together.
• I’ve realized that I am smart and people see me as such.
• I’ve realized I am extremely sensitive to my environment and if there is something off-kilter it has an outsized impact on my well being.
• I’ve realized I am the only person that can prioritize my health, and that is job #1.
• I’ve realized I definitely want to be in the formal work world, but only in environments where I can learn, create, be authentic and have fun.

okay, so what?

As part of my multi-year wilderness walkabout where I had these realizations one very obvious change that happened was that I ended up leaving my then employer. I wrote about it here. At the time, as you can read, I had a plan to rest and explore things / do things that I had not had the capacity to do.

What ended up happening beyond sleep, reading tons of books I’d had on my nightstand for years, watching TV and movies and spending time with my son (and having another child) was A LOT of hypothesis testing. At some point along the way I read this book which more eloquently explains my process and helped me realize what I was going through was a thing (yeah for normalizing experiences!).

I started to test out long standing ideas I had about things I might want to do, or things that I was curious about but never had the capacity to try on. I reached out to my network with my questions and asked for ideas on how I could test these things. I said yes to projects that could help me test my ideas. Some of them I knew were dead ends instantly and others required a slower process to see the meaning of the moment. What all of these experiments helped me do is to clarify what I am uniquely good at, that I need to focus on that, and that I should really listen to my instincts about what and where I should show up. Everything else is noise.

This all led me to saying yes to an unexpected call in the summer of 2022. A former employer reached out and asked if I would be willing to serve in an interim capacity as they looked for the permanent solution to the gap that had just been created by a recent departure. I had stayed in touch as it was a place I loved working. A place where I could be myself and really contribute. When I left previously it was the right thing for me in that moment, but this moment was different. The gap they were looking to fill was one that aligned to my unique skills AND I could do the work and still honor my own well being.

Within a month of being back in that environment I realized it felt better than expected to be back. It was like a well warn leather pair of shoes. A lot had changed, but the core elements of the environment [creative, kind, human-centered, values driven] were stronger than ever. I listened to myself, took a deep breath and put myself out there. I shared with the leader I was working with that if there were opportunities where my skills and interests could be leveraged I’d be interested in coming back full time. Not to do the work I was acutely doing, but to adjacent work that I have built skills around recently.

What I didn’t know when I said yes over the summer, but I quickly found out, was that the organizations operating model was under review and the timing just might be right as new areas of exploration and skills were likely going to be needed. Over the arc of ~6 months, all while delivering on my original scope of work, and with patience and optimism the unexpected came true and next week I officially Boomerang to Autodesk.

I am excited, humbled and so ready to continue to learn and create back in an environment where I can be myself. It’s something I do not take for granted and am so deeply grateful for.