Dear Coach,

Well, Coach, something must be happening because every single day this week I have a work related something or other  to do which is a big change from a month ago. It’s not that there is a lot – some things might only take half an hour – and I still find ample time to arse about on the internet looking at amusing photographs of people’s dogs or perusing sweet little houses that I can’t afford to buy and worrying that even if I could, the imminent floating of FaceBook and subsequent flood of twelve year old millionaires will wipe out the available inventory and fill my neighbourhood with smug, grammar-insensitive hipsters who will turn me into an even more curmudgeonly old lady than I already am. But at least I have some things to do which make feel slightly more important than folding laundry.

A project for my nearly-dead business with Husband has wandered by the inbox, and by sheer good fortune a different kind of scientist is needed. To this end I have subcontracted someone else and avoided making my children fatherless whilst still earning a crust.

I am meeting a woman about creating sound for an educational game on Thursday. Music! Tiny music!

More on apps. (this is The Bay Area, after all!) An opportunity has arisen to create an app for farmers with a very clever and accomplished lady. Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about farming and not much more about apps. apart from being outrageously good at Words With Friends. However, this person believes, somewhat erroneously, that I have brilliant marketing skillz, can write a cracking business plan and have what it takes to persuade Venture Capitalists to fund this idea (did she mean my push-up bra?). I’m supposed to be brushing up on the 4-slide VC pitch (eh?)  and getting us ready to change the world of agriculture through a smartphone revolution!

Lock up your combine harvesters! Here we come!  

I’m very flattered by her confidence in me. She is a hard hitter in her world and she has read my C.V. (the honest one where I didn’t fib too much though I might have left out a few slightly embarrassing episodes) so she must think I bring something of value to this venture  -pretty sure she has a push-up bra herself, you know.

I’ve also done the homework you set me, Coach.  You told me to talk to a professional writer or two about their life and career. I didn’t want to do this. It felt squirmy and internish.  I heard the distant double chime of pride and insecurity like some clipboard-holding bailiff at the door of my consciousness and naturally I wanted to pretend I wasn’t at home.

But. I also didn’t want to return to you having failed to do my assignment. I got enough F’s in school.

So I sucked it up and emailed the least threatening writer I know to ask her about her life and career.

When I say least threatening, I mean that she was:

a) The easiest to approach because I have done writing work for her and she likes what I do

b) Not posh, famous, self-important, incredibly wealthy, the author of a bestselling novel/play/poetry series so I wouldn’t have to lie down and feel inadequate afterwards.

What she was, though – and this I didn’t anticipate at all – was completely and totally inspiring!

Jane is in her sixties. She lives in Michigan. A smiling, warm-faced woman whose demeanour radiates wholesome good-will and cheer. she is chatty and personable,  generous with her time and story. She is Head of Communications for an industry association that is very, well, industrial and makes you think of factories, mining, working men’s clubs etc. . I was interested in hearing how she had leveraged her writing skills into a well paid management-level job that she can do from home in roughly in the hours that she chooses. She told me this story, but she also gave me so much more.

Jane’s father died when she was less than one year old leaving the family destitute. Her childhood was marked by poverty but her mother always impressed upon her the importance of education as a means of escape.  Jane studied hard, hoping to go to college. However one month after she graduated from high school her mother also died, so the pressing need to feed and house herself took precedence over university. She trained as a secretary and married young, not quite knowing where she was going but feeling like she had more to offer for many years. At forty she had an epiphany and changed her life. She divorced, remarried, went back to university and subsequently started a new career in public relations. She had a couple of full time PR jobs but decided corporate life wasn’t for her and by chance she ran across the people she works for now in a freelance capacity. She said, laughingly, that she had a friend who designs those kind of tests which tell you what kind of job you should do and hers always come out ‘writer’ or ‘engineer’ and that this job is perfect because it’s pretty technical in nature but creative in execution.

“I was the kind of kid who was always taking toasters apart” she said.

OMG. I LOVE HER!   I was ALSO the kind of kid who took toasters apart! I’m still the kind of person who takes things apart and fixes them myself (yes, our landlords love me in turn for all the repair fees I’ve saved them).

She went on to say that she loves the fact that she can travel for this job to some interesting places but it’s not too much travel – every few months, not every month, and she can combine it with her personal passions. For instance she was recently in Calcutta for work and was able to go and help at an orphanage there run by a friend of hers and bring over funds that she had raised specifically for this cause.

Wow. Impressed.

She mentioned that she has to be very careful with her time management because she has a health problem that is an auto-immune disease which means she is liable to illness a lot of the time so she must make sure that she gets all her work done and that she also makes time for the things that are really important to her. These things are: Exercise, which is critical to maintaining her health, and Bible study, which is critical to her spiritual well-being.  To achieve this she gets up at 5.30 every morning even though she is not, she says, a morning person.

She has a high level full-time job, a husband, six grandchildren, a health issue to manage, she gets up at the crack of dawn to exercise and nurture her spirituality and she fundraises for orphans and kids in need.

Yet she seemed to think that she was the most incredibly ordinary person. It wasn’t exactly that she was discounting anything that she had done. It was that she was naturally, beautifully and genuinely humble.

Talking to her made me realise that I didn’t really want her job, or her career trajectory. I wanted her humility. Her generosity. Her warmth of spirit. Her authenticity.

I’m beginning to wonder if the career is really the cargo. Maybe it’s the vessel. Maybe the cargo is comprised of values that we share with others in some sort of tangible form. Humility, grace, beauty, kindness, love, healing etc.

This is a very interesting thought but unless I develop it further is unlikely to assist me with filling in job applications unless God is specifically looking to recruit slightly decrepit and confused mortals as 2nd class angels who will identify as having some good qualities as listed above yet feel no compunction about the sins of omission.

I look forward to your take on this one, Coach.