(And if you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter, I highly recommend it. I know what you’re thinking–everyone recommends Chris Brogan.  There’s a reason for that.)

At any rate, Chris was talking about not fitting in anywhere, and how that’s probably a good thing.  So if you’re an enneagram 4, and the defining characteristic of your personality is feeling like you don’t fit in, it was definitely going to speak to you.  Loudly.

"Rocket-Bye Baby" (R) Warner Brothers 1956

But as I turned the ideas over in my head a bit, I started thinking about fit in a different way.  In a very healthy way, I stopped singing my personal song of lament about being the switched-at-birth Martian baby in my family.

Instead of thinking about how I’ve always had a hard time fitting in, I started thinking about the relationships, priorities, and activities in my life and how they fit together.  Or more importantly, where they don’t fit well.

"quilt squares" courtesy bewinca on sxc

If my life is a quilt, what doesn’t fit the pattern?  And do those pieces need trimming to fit better, or do they just need to return to the scrap bag?

There must be something in the air this week, because Liz Strauss had an excellent post covering similar ground earlier this week.  Liz’ post is about finding proper fit in working relationships, and the process that helps you get to a better fit.

So what about you?  We talked a little last week about the big thing you still need to let go of to move on.

What doesn’t need to be ditched, but could use some massaging?

How do you figure out whether or not someone or something is going to click neatly into place in your life?

How long does it take you to accept and address the stuff that doesn’t fit?

img courtesy sdamsgaard on sxc

Three weeks ago, I started blogging every weekday here, and commenting more often on blogs where I found interesting stories happening.

That change has already brought new connections with people, new readers, and a little recognition (which is always nice).

Two weeks ago, my husband and I started paying more attention to our finances.

That change has already brought increased peace and decreased anxiety, as well as some really amazing conversations between the two of us about what we value.

A week ago, I started paying more attention to what I eat, trying to eat out less often, and restarting my yoga practice.

It’s a little early to see the results of that change, other than it’s helping with the “paying attention to the finances” change that came before it.

Thursday, our family went back to our community group from church for the first time since summer.

Yesterday, I had coffee with a friend from that group before work.

But then again, I haven’t blogged here since last Thursday.  I missed Friday and yesterday.

The big lesson I gained from 2009?  That my life has a capacity.  It has finite volume.

Only so many things will fit.  I know this, because I hit my capacity last year.  I may in fact have exceeded my life’s safe capacity last year.

Last year, I made a conscious decision to let things in that I ordinarily would have kept out.  I let other things shape me, push me, expand the borders of who I thought I could be. I was a smaller me, this time last year (and not in the physical sense–in the personal growth sense).  I know that I’m capable of a lot more than I ever, ever thought I could be.

But by December, I was like a stretched-out sweater that had seen one too many laundry cycles outside its recommended care instructions.

It wasn’t pretty.

By the end of the year, I was clearing out EVERYTHING.  I emptied my office of personal stuff.  I emptied my house of a lot of junk.  I stopped getting together with even my closest group of girlfriends for a bit.  I considered huge, “pick up the family and move to a better climate” life changes.

It was “FIRE SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!” time, baby.

And then, I spent a week just sitting in the empty.  Enjoying the empty.  Revelling in the empty. But empty gets boring–quickly.

So three weeks ago,  I started blogging here again.  Which takes us back to the beginning of this post.

I’m adding things back into the space that is my life.  The only one I believe God is going to give me.

I’m doing this really intentionally.  Things aren’t going back in just because they were in before.

I’m doing it really slowly.  Because I don’t want to be three or four big things past capacity before I realize I’m past capacity this time.

I’m pacing myself, and I never, ever pace myself.

It’s not a pace that is set by anything other than my own natural energy and enthusiasm, but it’s still different than what I’m used to doing.

When you’re burned out completely, you don’t need a recharge.  In fact, you get to a point where you resent any attempts to recharge you just enough to keep doing what you’ve been doing.  Because that’s not going to help matters.

You don’t need to “top off” your energy tank.  You need to empty and refill with high-grade.

What’s “high grade” for you?  And what needs to get siphoned out first?

In the beginning, presumably, the chemisty is great.  You’re both on the same page.  You’re spending lots of time together, and generally enjoying that time.

Over time, though, things can turn decidedly chilly.  You may find yourself dreading the very same work that once made you excited to get out of bed every morning.

So what went wrong? Did you pick the wrong career? The wrong company? Has your workplace become a toxic environment, or are you just having the vocational equivalent of the seven-year-itch?

According to His Needs, Her Needs, a book on extramarital affairs by psychologist Dr. Willard Harley, we all have what he refers to as a “Love Bank.”  Every person we know has an “account” in our Love Bank.  Whenever we spend time with a person, if the experience is generally enjoyable, that person gets “Love Unit” deposits in their account in our Love Bank.  If the experience is unpleasant, there’s a withdrawal.  Harley defines activities that typically make a deposit as emotional needs, and activities that usually make a withdrawal as love busters.

And certain kinds of emotional needs are worth more to different people–for example, one person might highly value affection, while another might highly value their spouse taking out the trash.

When a person’s balance reaches a certain threshold, it triggers a state of infatuation.  When it drops below that threshold, we “fall out of love” with the person.

Tiger Woods: Probably not the best example for our purposes.

Those are the basic dynamics Harley uses to explain how affairs happen; it’s essentially a math equation.  When your spouse’s account is low, and someone else’s account goes above the threshold, you become infatuated with the other person, stop thinking rationally, and the next thing you know, you’re Tiger Woods.

Well, maybe not.  But it is at least a helpful metaphor when thinking about your work.  Sometimes, a problem with “work-life balance” isn’t so much about the amount of time you’re spending at work, as it’s about how much you’re enjoying that time (or not .)

If you find that you’ve fallen out of love with your work, ask yourself what made the experience of work enjoyable, back when you enjoyed it?

Are you still getting those things now?  What changed?

What are the emotional needs you value most highly when it comes to your work?  Praise and admiration? Financial security? Prestige? A sense of accomplishment when projects reach completion? The camaraderie of a particular team? Is it something else specific and intrinsic to the work?

Were you getting any of those things with much greater frequency before you started to feel dissatisfied?  If so, that might be a clue as to why you’re ready to divorce your job (even if you’re self-employed!)

Conversely, is there a really unpleasant situation (a work love buster) going on now with some frequency that wasn’t going on when your work satisfaction was high?

If you feel like you’ve nailed down what’s missing now, or what’s entered your work life and made it unpleasant, it’s time to do some brainstorming.  Can you fix what’s not working while remaining in your current situation?  Then it’s probably worth at least trying that.

If you’ve tried to Bring Back that Lovin’ Feeling with your current work, and failed, then it may be time to look for a new vocational love connection.

"Construction" by LotusHead on SXC

I started this fall with a plan.

Continue kicking butt in my demanding social media job.  Return to school with an eye towards finishing my degree and eventually going on to my Master’s.  Strengthen my relationships with friends and family.

I returned to college this fall with a fairly light course load of two classes.  I’m already juggling a lot of roles–and I wasn’t sure there was room to add “student” to the mix.  But I viewed it as an experiment.  I would do my best, and see how it went.

So far, I’ve aced every test. On the other hand, I will probably still not pass at least one of the classes based on attendance.  At one point this fall, I realized I was going to be out of town on business for 10 of the next 20 working days.  Regardless of my final grades, I made the tough decision to not enroll in any classes for next semester.

I’m not giving up on completing my education eventually.  But this fall has shown me that now isn’t the time.  The sacrifices I have to make in other areas of my life in order to do well at work and school just aren’t sacrifices I’m willing to continue making.

The last few months have been a good road test for some of my future plans.  It’s caused me to reevaluate a number of things.  I’m working on a new plan, and I hope to write about it soon.

Plans are great.  I lived way too much of my life without any plans whatsoever.  But plans aren’t fixed blueprints of how your life will go. They’re more like hypotheses of what direction your life could go in.

One of the things I studied in my psychology class this semester was the importance of holding a hypothesis loosely.  Some stand up to testing and some don’t.

If you find that in being tested, a hypothesis doesn’t hold water, you need to be willing to let it go.  Move on.  Develop a new hypothesis based on what you learned from the one that failed.

Eventually, even failed experiments will lead you closer to the truth.

Apparently, a lot of folks on the web are pondering work/life balance, the cost vs. benefit analysis of commuting, and how the nature of employment itself is changing. This is a topic that is only going to continue to spur discussion and debate.

The personal, economic, and environmental cost of commuting is skyrocketing.  The influence of social media, greater access to increasingly better connectivity tools, and some fundamental, generational changes in the way we think about work means that it’s time to strap in, bunkies.  The ride is going to get interesting.

The work world is changing, fast, and we’re all trying to figure out the new world order before it’s even here yet.

After writing my last post about losing touch with what keeps my work life vibrant and healthy, I caught several posts by other bloggers along similar themes.

• Nataly at Work It, Mom mentions that despite the increase in people working two jobs, Gen Y (and I personally think you have to include Gen X here as well) claim to value work/life balance more than previous generations.
• One of my favorite PR/Social Media bloggers Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent uses Daniel Lanois as an example of letting passion infuse your work life, and the rich rewards that come from that.
• Over on Sparkplugging, Dawud Miracle talks about how constantly asking yourself why you’re doing what you do is important to maintaining motivation in your work.

“…‘why’ is the question that gives meaning, that gives life, to your work. Why is the motivating factor that makes us consider our impact in the world.”

• Monika Mundell at The Writer’s Manifesto, in a post about finding streamlined, distraction-free writing tools, even added a little bit of work/life balance pondering.

“Since my workload is pretty much full all the time I don’t have much room for lost time. Of course this is between me working and trying to keep a balance with a social live, time spent with my husband and my beloved pets.”

• Power blogger Chris Brogan had a recent post where he, too, was threading some trends together that related to work/life balance, telecommuting, and the slightly more slippery idea of sharing your personal brand with your employer.

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This is something of a sidebar, but I’ll admit that last idea is really intriguing to me.  Over the last year or so, I’ve slowly (and probably sloppily) been trying to create my own personal brand, because I think I’ve instinctively understood that having a recognizable, respected personal brand in my field makes me a better asset for an employer.

(Awkward pause as I acknowledge that it makes me a better asset for an employer, until I leave their employment…  okay, moving on.)

On second thought, that’s not entirely true.  I think that if you achieve recognition and respect as an individual, I don’t think the value of that exits as soon as you exit a company’s payroll.  Particularly if you’ve represented them well on the social web, and leave on good terms.

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But back to the main thread in all this. Many people are clearly wrestling with the desire to create a vibrant, passionate work life that doesn’t detract from your other most treasured values–whether it’s the value they place on spending adequate time with their families, the value they place on their environmental impact, or the value they place on determining an equitable relationship with their employer.

I just think it’s interesting how this soulful, work-related wrestling has popped up in posts about mostly seemingly unrelated things.  Which reminds me of another interesting, thought-provoking post from Chris Garrett.

Like it or not, your inner “stuff” tends to leak out. It does that in real world conversations, and it most certainly does in blogging, which is an intrinsically personal form of writing.

Half the time, when I’m reading the posts in my feed, I’m not so much reading what the post is ostensibly about (there are, after all, only so many posts a woman can digest on blogging tips.)  Chris’ post helped me realize that much of the time, I’m actually reading these posts for the “between the lines,” ulterior conversation.  Taken in aggregate, those “off topic” musings are the song of the zeitgeist, and tell you much about what’s going on in the anima mundi (“soul of the world”).

On a more personal note, I’m planning a little “work life balance” adjustment this weekend, going on an overnight with my sisters to a remote undisclosed location.  My understanding is that there will be massages, cocktails, chick flicks, and a lot of conversation–not necessarily in that order.

See you all when I get back.

img courtesy of MeHere on SXC