There's been a lot of change in my life in the last 2 months. It's mostly in my job but that change has been constant and total. And through it all there are so many people asking me what I want. I am never any more ready for this question than I was the first time someone asked. It's not like I don't want things. I want lots of things. Things that feel both too huge and too fragile to bother putting on the list. 

The last time I had career ambitions, I lost too much of myself. Nearly 9 years later, I still feel that loss in a way that I can't explain to folks. But the last time I wanted something badly, I felt like I made a bad wish and I have spent nearly a decade cleaning up that mess. So I don't want anything. I don't care how much money I make compared to other people or other options, I just want to make enough to take care of my community. I don't care if the job is prestigious or worth talking about at the holiday dinner. I'm neither ambitious nor competitive. I don't need work to keep me entertained or make me feel interesting to others. I am a naturally curious and collaborative person. I want to solve problems, answer questions, and help other people. Give me a career that lets me do those things. There are so many jobs that I can do while doing that. Or there are none. I haven't figured it out totally. 

But everyone keeps asking "what do I want". Can you imagine? My supervisor asks, "where do you see yourself in 5-10 years? What do you want?" And these are all I can think of:

I want to be understood and accepted by my family. 

I want my husband's family to make an effort to understand him and express how much they value him in all of his neurodivergent glory. 

I want to make enough money for T and I to be able to spend more time creating things -- stories, art, woodworking projects, and huge, unimaginable quantities of jam. 

I want to be able to travel to my far away friends every so often. 

I want to be able to be healthy in all of the ways that there are to be healthy. And I want to help my friends and family do the same. 

I want to do work that I'm good at and I want the folks I work with to do what they're good at and all of us to celebrate the strengths we each bring. I want my coworkers not to be threatened by my competency or looking for the times when I will screw up. 

Sure, this list might be able to be used to make a plan to bring me from where I am to some place closer. A career is a tool after all. And these abstract, subjective things can be broken into more bite sized pieces. But I lack the faith in the system. I have seen that you can spend years working hard and find out that you've been had. Your employer can take your labor and run. They don't have to recognize you, promote you, or pay you fairly. I don't even think that my current employer plans to do any of that and they are the least terrible employer that I've had so far. 

So what is the point of wanting such ridiculous, impossible things? What's the point of agonizing over the perfect pieces to break these desires into so that you can fill out the goal sheet a little more decisively? 

Truthfully, I want to work at a place that sees me as a whole person and wants to support my whole person. I do my best to show up as a whole person as an invitation for other people to do the same. Some months, it can really feel like I'm the only one being vulnerable even when I know that's not true. In my earlier church life, I was taught that showing up with authenticity would be rewarded and that's also not true. Reality is somewhere in between. And I'm struggling to want to show up vulnerably and authentically in spaces where it doesn't feel reciprocated. Why should I admit to what I really want? Are you going to help me get there? Or are you going to join the dozens of other voices that immediately start trying to haggle the price of my happiness down to something cheaper and more manageable?