Okay, so I'm obviously still missing a point here. But I'm a bit befuddled as to what it is. So I pulled out a few Tarot books I have handy (The Heart of the Tarot by Thomson, Mueller& Echols and Tarot Awareness by Sterling) and a few interesting concepts jumped out. In The Heart of the Tarot, it is suggested that as a challenge (which I'm interpreting this reversal as) the 3 of Pentacles can indicate adding our own creative touches to whatever we do and concentrating on the task at hand and giving it our best. Tarot Awareness suggests it can indicate a situation that needs to be remedied because the consciousness can wander into aimlessness and lack of ambition; a mediocre result causes the seeker to lose her usefulness to a critical, demanding supervisor or disinterest in your work leads you to not bother finishing what you've begun, leaving assignments to others to finish.

So I had to look at my current job and determine if any of this applies. Right now I am not unhappy with my job, although I'm probably not as fulfilled as I'd like. And part of the problem is the lack of clarity about what I'm expected to do. There is so much overlap that I'm not sure where I should focus my energies. But I guess the reality is that most of us don't get that kind of clarity in life. And if I do not want to become another statistic of my agency's new produce or perish mentality I'd better get busy. I need to accept that I'm not going to get the direction I would like so I just have to take the bull by the horns and create product and show it to my supervisor and ask "is this good?" I may not be on the right track but at least I'll be showing that I've put some effort into it. I have to be more comfortable with self-starting because no one else is going to do it for me.

I realize that in the past I've been much more effective when responding to specific directives - whether in school or at work. And now I'm in an uncomfortable situation - I know that I am going to be held accountable for completing tasks but I'm entirely clear what those tasks are. So the only thing I can do is show that I am working on things. If they turn out to be the wrong things I can always state that I was going with my limited understanding of what is expected of me. But that's better than having nothing to show for 3 months of "work".