It’s now t minus one week till I start my new gig. By the time I post this, I’ll have started. I’ve now been off work so long, almost a month (Europeans I hear you laughing) that I’m low-level anxious about going back. How am I going to get life stuff done? (More sloppily.) Will I have enough quality time with my kid? (Yes, she doesn’t want to hang out with me all the time anyway.) Will my living room ever look this good again? (No.) 

But ya know…..I’ve been in the workforce almost 20 years. Which seems metaphysically impossible considering I remember my college graduation like it was last week, but, ummm, it was not. Holy cats, Batman, how did this happen?

I’m getting all philosophical, as I celebrate my return to work and the start of a big new chapter in my career. So I thought this would be a great time to reflect on the big takeaways I’ve learned in those 20 years pulling a 9 to 5 (or, back when I was a TV news producer, an 11 pm to 7 am.) Young folk, mid-career folk, wherever you are in life folk – for what it’s worth, here’s my best working-mom-on-the-cusp-of-becoming-a-boss-lady wisdom.

1. DBAA – more colloquially, Don’t Be An Asshole. In fact, let’s go ahead and flip it to the positive – treat everyone with kindness and respect. Including the people you disagree with. Including the people you might see as below you (psst, they’re not, there’s no such thing). Back a few jobs ago, there was this guy that really irked my manager. I don’t think I was ever a certified a-hole to this dude, but I admit, I participated in a certain amount of eye-rolling along with my then-boss. Within months, there was a managerial shake up and that guy became my new manager. Urrrrrghhhh. I don’t think that guy and I would’ve been besties under any circumstances, but having the vague sense that we were against each other didn’t do either of us any good. 
2. Stick to your values. Much easier if you’re with an employer that values what you do! At another job, our leadership was all jazzed up about a potential project using artificial intelligence to predict which people in the criminal justice system were most likely to commit another crime. Leadership seemed to think it was no big deal for this project to be tested out on real people – that people’s freedom could be effectively decided using an unproven technology. I freaked out and spoke out against it at a team meeting. I have no idea if my freak out helped stop the project. But I do know it did not go forward. Of course, the resolution isn’t always as neat as that – but it’s soul-crushing to work someplace and hate yourself for perpetuating what your organization is doing. 
3. Culture eats everything else for lunch. What sounds amazing on paper can suck the air out of the room, and your working life, if the culture of the place is a bad fit for you. I once moved from one sister organization to another, doing the exact same role. In the first organization, I was so happy at work that I felt like a fish released into water. In the second organization, I felt like I was drowning. The culture was completely different. And culture is  the air you breathe. If that air is sour, it’s hard to appreciate anything else. 
4. The back of an organization is as important as the head – aka, teamwork making the dream work, hokey but true. In my most recent job, I didn’t come in as the boss. I didn’t come in as anyone’s supervisor. I did come in as the third member of a team of smart, competent, caring women. We got a lot of good stuff done, collaborating and taking advantage of each of our strengths. And we became known throughout our organization not as a trio of solo acts, but as a great team. 
5. Ask for what you’re worth and what you need. I was less than a year out of college when a small business owner taught me that one. He was interested in having me take on a one-time project and I told him that to do it, I needed “Maybe two hundred dollars?” He looked me in the eye and told me never to second-guess myself when telling people what my work was worth. I took his words to heart, and years later, I negotiated a starting salary $10,000 higher than the initial offer. Now, every time I’ve negotiated, it hasn’t worked out that way – but the answer is always no if you can’t bring yourself to ask. The same thing goes for the non-monetary condition of work – like when my daughter was struggling with anxiety and I told my boss I needed to use sick time to take her to therapy more frequently, and when I told the leadership at the job I am coming into that I needed some time off before I could start. A big part of your job, in order to do your job and live your life, is to keep your own oxygen mask on. 
6. Your work identity is like a rented outfit – it’s never fully yours. Randy Lewis, who did some great work making Walgreen’s an inclusive employer, says that his fancy corporate job was “a rented tuxedo”. I think the rental-outfit metaphor is useful for all work, because no matter how much of yourself you pour into a gig, all it takes is one decision from you or your employer or a rumble in the economy for your time in that particular tux to end. Don’t think that your rental defines who you are. 
7. Be a good human. Learn. Grow. Work hard, take care of yourself & those you love. Ask questions, be humble, kind & truthful. Coming back to takeaway #1, a lot of it really does come down to this.

Annnnd cause I’m a super nerd about workplace fit and career development – here are some of my favorite resources, if you feel like taking a deep dive into career building land. 

What Color is Your Parachute – https://www.parachutebook.com Career- and life-building book, in the form of a job-hunter’s manual.

Johnson O’Connor – https://www.jocrf.org Aptitude testing on alllll kinds of things, to help you design a career that works for your mind & gifts. 

Discovery, with Marc Gold & Associates http://www.marcgold.com  or Griffin-Hamis https://www.griffinhammis.com Innovative, holistic process to career building created to include all people, particularly those with significant impact of their disabilities.

Now go get ‘em, tigers.