I have a change management training coming up. It is based on the ADKAR ProSci model. I actually like this model- I had a similar training many years ago when I first started at the Division. I even read the book. There’s a small amount of “pre-work” for the training: think of a personal change I’d like to make, and think of a change impacting my work. Work change is easy- I’m driving more of it than everyone I know, likely to the chagrin of my peers. I’ll happily drag them all into a better future, though I think I’m cursed with some kind of foresight that others lack. It makes me good at what I do, but gives me no small amount of pain.
Personal change is harder. Not that it is harder to think of something- I’m well aware of my multitude of flaws, but that it is harder to just “be” different. I’ve been driven by goals and advancement for… ever. I find a lack of focus and discipline from simply doing my job. I’ve always wanted to be this, or to be that, but now I am this and that and I find myself lacking a direction of what to be next. I guess that’s why I’m always looking for new projects. I lack stillness. I find guilt in stillness- a perennial restlessness due to a lifetime of training for “tomorrow.” Brave New World’s soma isn’t a threat or a fear, it seems like a gift to release from this incessant need to look forward. My curse.
Today, for example, I’ve wasted near an entire morning, loathing my simple duties. I have no interest because they are simply the status quo- they do not drive toward anything that I do not already foresee. Some find comfort in the routine- my mother is like this. I think some enlightened student of the mind might find some connection between us, and my unavoidable rejection of routine. But the reason for the outcome is irrelevant. So I lack focus and a direction for my ambition for ambition.
So I’m asked to think of a personal change, and I wonder whether I really want to change any of this about myself. My curse is my edge, as it were, and I shouldn’t really like to lose it. But then, it seems, I’m destined for days like this where I lament and wax obnoxiously instead of just doing my simple tasks.
This is all far too long to fit into the little box where they’d like my little thoughts on what little things I’d like to change about myself. So I’ll just tell them I’d like to write more. They may ask what I write about, “this and that,” maybe I’ll say. The truth is maybe too personal, not that I actually write about anything in particular. I probably whine more than I should, but my unguided curse beckons. What else is there to write about?
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