16 years of being a Sparky

This month marks my 16 year work anniversary. Sixteen years! My career can officially drive now (well at least in the US) yet somehow I don’t feel like I’m in the drivers seat. It mainly comes down to the imposter syndrome. Ever sit in a room full of experts and wonder how you got in? Ever get invited to a panel discussion, look at your fellow panelists and feel you don’t belong? An insightful HBR article said, “Imposter syndrome is loosely defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud. It disproportionately affects high-achieving people, who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. Many question whether they’re deserving of accolades.”

High-achieving? The imposter-syndrome-voice in my head challenged that adjective. I promptly shush it and decide to reflect.

In sixteen years I’ve worked in two countries across two continents – the US and England. This sums up to four company-sponsored international moves. In England I worked in the West Midlands, which a teeny tiny version of the Midwest. I don’t exaggerate. The English West Midlands is 0.0004 times the size of the American Midwest. If that makes no sense try this for size – the state of Indiana is 104 times the entire West Midlands. We do it big here.

In the US I’ve worked in three such mid-western states Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. I like to claim that I’m an Indian Midwesterner at heart. While my career was budding, I got married twice… to the same man! Let me explain. We had a Hindu wedding in Mumbai and a Buddhist wedding in Sri Lanka. Because why have one destination wedding when you can have two? Many a work colleagues spent their Christmas in 2009 in India and Sri Lanka celebrating our weddings. To add to that, our first holiday as a married couple was taking a bus load of international friends on a 4 day tour of Sri Lanka. You say honeymoon, we say lets load up a bus and tour the island nation. With marriage came the doubling of our household, as two tiny humans joined the Tamaskar Gallege clan. Financial stability was a big part of the decision behind having one, and then two children. Stability thanks to the dual career lifestyle we were leading. With children, I experienced the nuances, challenges and joy of maternity and paternity leave. When I came back to the workforce full time I made a vow to continue breastfeeding. I pumped breastmilk and ran to daycare at lunch to feed my babies and keep my supply up. All this was made possible by a company that allowed flexibility and valued me.

Feature in Columbus Magazine

Then, as some of you know, life threw us a curve ball with my breast cancer diagnosis. But again my career helped. I was able to distract myself with work during chemo infusions. A decision I made, not because my work demanded it but because I demanded that from my work. I said, “Don’t let me go just because I have cancer. Don’t dis-count me, keep me gainfully employed.” And they did. I can’t tell you how much I needed that for my mental health.

With short-term disability and reduced work hours I authored two books over two years. My books are memoirs not entirely related to work but they are also not unrelated. My work and pride in being an engineer, my colleagues and work-family are in both my books.

Nuwan and I have this debate. He wants to retire young and I want to keep working. I tell him 16 down, 32 to go! He does the Math… we always do the Math, and asks, “You want to work when you’re 70?” I proclaim, “Yes. I will be a classy elderly woman; part-neurotic, part-genius, 100% authentic. I will dress in my business-casual-best and regale engineers with a colorful account of Back in my day we were grappling with a global pandemic that affected all areas of operation as I encourage the youth to innovate.” Nuwan smiles as shakes his head in resignation.