"Discipline is not a nasty word." Pat Riley
There is no pill. There is no quick fix. I think I groaned when I really took in the fact that building a community was another full-time job in my jam-packed agenda.
It’s time and effort. It’s WORK. You have to plan; you have to follow through.
It takes commitment and discipline.
You run the real risk of being called *gasp* a Brazen Careerist - someone who is openly ambitious.
This is where I balked. I'm known as a sociable, let's-all-take-turns kind o'person and ambition these days seems to mean you're willing to run over your best friend to get the trophy.
And - where do you draw the line between personal and professional communities? I mean if you do decide to do the work, make the commitment to yourself and risk being labeled as 'out there' how many darn communities do you have the time to build?
One.
Yes it creates some weird grey lines between the personal and professional but life doesn't fall into neat boxes (though I've dated some guys who tried to live that way).
How do you feel about the grey zone?
2 comments:
I don't think of it as a gray area. When you think about everyone you know as a single community, you keep yourself open to all possible opportunities. You never know when something crazy will happen, like getting introduced to your future husband by the person who used to be your fearless leader at work. Personal networks can equally open doors to professional opportunities.
It would just be horribly stressful to build barriers between a personal and professional community. There are many positive and more productive ways to spend that energy.
I don't make a point of actively mixing my "work friends" and "other friends", but neither do I try to keep them apart at all. In fact, I do take joy in introducing "cool people" to each other.
And really, if I didn't consider my coworkers to be friends, without additional labels, I'd have a really tough time going to work every day. (as an aside, I prefer in general to work more closely with a smaller group of people, than loosely with a larger group of people; go introvertedness!)
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