At home, she started her fiber arts business, which she enjoyed for the creativity and autonomy, but which caused her strain due to the financial difficulties and judgment inherent in art, “I don’t like being judged for the work that I do. Whatever it is, you’re judged. The judgment in art is ‘I’m not buying that’. I’m so bad with criticism. I take it in and feel worse and worse and worse. I’m doing better with it.”
When I asked whether the Baby Boomer from the text reflected her own, she scoffed. Instead, she listed professionalism, responsibility, security, autonomy, problem solving, challenge as work values. Asked about career success, she said that if she had stayed in computer science, she anticipates that objective metrics would have mattered more. But her definition was “A job well done. In whatever job.” In the end, she says, she thinks her father was proud of her career. Her varied skills and experiences make her more like him than her siblings. She concluded, “I like to make stuff. Picture it, and have it come out like I imagined.”
