Vocational assistance request

[Stef]

I am requesting some vocational direction as I look forward to the next step in my life and career.

Here is some background:

My teens and early twenties were spent mostly alternating between depression and panic attacks. As a result, I transferred colleges twice, changed my major three times, and eventually graduated with a degree in literature (with honors) from a local college close to home, because reading and writing (and exercise) were the only things that brought me joy at that time. I started therapy at 19 and began to feel mentally healthy by my mid-twenties. I've had periods of low points since then, but have generally stabilized. There was a time I thought I'd never be able to grow in my life because of social anxiety. I often picked jobs based on how much I'd be left alone to do my own work. But then I've also found that doing customer-facing jobs improved my social skills. Looking back, I now see that I did not have the capacity to make the best decisions for my long-term career growth at that time (but who really does at that age anyway?). When I was in high school, I wanted to be a writer of fantasy and science fiction, and a visual artist. These ideas were squashed out of me by the reality of needing a job to make money to move out of my parents' house, which became my main priority once I graduated college. I did this successfully, with a few hiccups along the way. I feel like, as a Sagittarius, my passions are all over the place and I don't know what to focus on sometimes.

After college, I worked as a barista, then as a fashion warehouse assistant, then in the call center for the fashion warehouse. I was not good at sales, but I was good at operations so I eventually moved to the operations team. I liked solving people's problems - communicating with customers about their order issues and liaising with various teams all over the world. But the company got bought out, the culture started going downhill, and I decided to leave. I got a job as a community manager at a start-up and I hated it. I liked working in the city, but I hated the casual office environment, unprofessionalism, and lack of structure. I eventually quit, after which I worked various gigs as a freelance photo retoucher, barista, and front desk attendant at an art gallery to make ends meet. Then, I randomly got recruited for a CRM job at a law firm and my career grew from there. I progressed through three different law firms and am now a manager getting my MBA. I make enough money to live comfortably and have good work-life balance. My plan after my MBA is to start developing my own coaching program, focused on helping people learn somatic practices for trauma recovery in the workplace. I've also been told by multiple people that I'd make a good professional domme, but I haven't pursued this seriously. I also love DJing.

I second-guess myself every step of the way. I don't feel satisfied and am starting to wonder if I ever will. I often want to give everything up and go live out of a suitcase exploring the world alone, and sometimes I do that in small doses. According to a test I had to take in my MBA program, my top three values (in no particular order) are: Aesthetics, Honesty and Integrity, Knowledge. When I took the MBTI test in college, I got INFJ.

So basically my question is: should I continue to climb the corporate ladder in my current industry, which is fine, or should I break out on my own and risk developing this coaching program, which is scary?

1. What sorts of vocation interest you?
○ I don't even know anymore. I think I can be happy doing a variety of things, but I know the lifestyle I want: I want to travel, I want to help people grow, I think I want to be my own boss, I want to have beautiful things, I want to be mentally and physically healthy, I want to make a lot of friends.

2. What kind of work have you done before that you liked? That you did not like?
○ Work I liked: barista, packaging luxury items in a fashion warehouse, rave photographer (I could never figure out how to get paid for this but I got a lot of perks), music blogger (same situation as rave photographer), yoga teacher (this was much harder than I thought and I ended up not liking it, although I did a full 200-hour certification), data steward for CRM at a law firm, mentoring, traveling for work
○ Work I didn't like: hostess in a restaurant (worst job I've ever had), goods receivable in fashion warehouse (boring as hell, although I got to handle some cool designer clothes), community manager at a start-up (boring as hell, literally never knew what I was supposed to be doing), sales

3. Are you already studying, certified, or licensed in a field? How do you feel about those areas?
a. I'm graduating with my MBA from a top university this month. This seemed like a smart long-term choice. If I could study anything in graduate school, it would not have been business, but something more like etymology or archeology or something along those lines. What I like most about my degree is learning about decision-making science, innovation, and the psychology behind how people work together to get things done. I also like mentoring people, especially if they are from underrepresented backgrounds or have struggled similarly to me.

4. Please name three or four or five fields (or kinds of work) you want to seriously consider. For each, please give a sentence (just one or two sentences) about what each job means to you (why you feel positively or negatively about it).
a. Performance coach
b. Chief Marketing Officer
c. Professional domme
d. Something else that I'm obviously missing???

[Jim Eshelman]

I'm travelling if nobody answers by Monday or Tuesday, please bump this. (Once ive seen a post, it never again shows as unread.)

[Veronica]

Not looking at you charts but hearing your words, my own biasis believes facing what scares us is always the best choice. I'm not sure what type of coaching you mean, and I had to look up the word domme honestly, but they both are very much a kin to being a cheerleader for others which I feel the world needs more of, so if you can honestly cheer for others and be encouraging I say go for it. Coaches and Dominatrix walk a fine ego line IMO which some excell at and others not so much, so if your able to let others succeed without any "glory" for yourself then you have nothing to worry about and would be a big help to the worlds needs.

[Stef]

Bumping this up per Jim's request

[Jim Eshelman]

Thanks, Stef. I started working on this last night (and we're on the road again today). Response soon.

A BIT LATER: Belay that. Plans changed, I'm home today. I'll get to this soon.