Trying to get myself fired

Today on my to-do list, among many items, is "Get myself fired from my consulting gig." They don't really need me, the board has told the new executive director that the thing I'm working on isn't as much as a priority as he thought it was - a fact which he didn't tell me for a week, when I heard it through the grapevine from another staff person, after I had sent out a big fat survey to lots of people to fill out in order to keep the project moving. So in short, the work I'm doing no longer seems like a high priority, the communication loops are a little sloppy right now, and there's a high likelihood that I will be a waste of their money AND that I will continue to have to reverse myself and look uncoordinated due to poor communication flow, which is not good for my professional reputation. All in all - I'm hoping to get fired. Layed off, really - let go due to lack of need, not poor performance.

I have found that it's definitely a life milestone when you no longer really care about losing jobs. After you lose or quit a job, and discover that it's not the end of the world, that your friends will still call you, that you don't have to move into a cardboard box and eat the leftovers from dumpsters, because you figure out a Plan B one way or another. After you have a certain amount of weight on your shoulders, or sufficient dysfunction around you, and you think - I should be so LUCKY not to have this job any more. After you rise to a certain level of professional responsibility and you think - this is not a simple job, there is no right answer here, and reasonable people can disagree on what's needed. So if I'm not the right person for the job, the organization should find somebody else, and there will be no hard feelings.

You can recognize people who have passed this psychological milestone in life, because they say things like, "Well, what's the worst that can happen? They can fire me. Oh well." In fact, the sensation is so freeing, after years of feeling penned in by the economic dependence on a job in our society, that once people hit this point - they almost seem to welcome the idea of losing their job. I once worked with a finance director who kept insisting we talk about what would happen if I wanted to fire her. She's completely fabulous at her job, and I would always say in exasperation - "Oh for heaven's sake, I'm never going to fire you." But by then I'd had my revelation too, and I knew that look in her eye: If I'm lucky, maybe some day they'll fire my ass!

It's about perspective, a wise colleague once told me. It's about recognizing the power you have to take action, but also the humility to know that whatever happens - good, bad, indifferent - will never be solely your doing. There's incredible freedom in that paradox of power and powerlessness, significance and insignificance; a freedom that allows you to take action, sometimes even radical or courageous action.

What else is on my to-do list today, you might ask, along with getting myself unemployed? Finishing a fundraising letter for a nonprofit that I volunteer for. Running. Making a hotel reservation for our first night in Rome - five weeks from tomorrow! Doing my Italian homework for tonight's class. Taking a urine sample from my dog to the vet. Much more important things than earning money, surely?