I spent my whole career working at a job I didn't enjoy, in a place I didn't really want to be. Many people in my generation (I'm 62) had parents who were deeply scarred by the depression. The mantra I received growing up is you want to find a job with a steady paycheck that's secure. It's not a bad message, practical and completely understandable given that my dad had seen his parents lose their house and farm because they couldn't afford to pay the property taxes. My father who could have gone to school at Princeton on a sports scholarship had to go to work at 17 to help support the family, and ended up working blue collar jobs his whole life. I earned a good living in a rewarding career in engineering, but I was recently reflecting that if I'd made a list of what I wanted to work at, it wouldn't have been in the top 50. I also wanted to be close to the outdoors, and never really did that to date either. I wonder now a lot of "what ifs" about my choices...I'll never know, Cheryl Strayed calls the roads you didn't take in your life "ghost ships"
visions that aren't real. Thoreau advised, find your bone, and gnaw at it with the determination of a dog...pursue your dreams with a passion. I'll always regret not really knowing how it would have gone if I had done that, and what my life would have looked like. I feel like I lived someone else's life...and that's a ship you don't want to be on.
I’m with you. Just this week I decided it was time to figure out my next move. But I don’t want to enter into the riggeurs of job searching only to wind up in a job with a “fast paced environment” and a demanding boss. It’s too much of a gamble.
Instead, I’m trying to network within my own community and see if there isn’t a perfect fit somewhere that I know the people involved and feel good about what they are doing. Something freelance or part-time.
But I don’t yet know what the job is. I know that it isn’t “writing for the New York Times” anymore. But I wonder if it’s something that doesn’t exist yet, and so I won’t be able to manifest it or “job search” for it until I see it out in the wild.
Good luck with your search, and thanks for the reminder to intentionally think about what I want next!
I spent my whole career working at a job I didn't enjoy, in a place I didn't really want to be. Many people in my generation (I'm 62) had parents who were deeply scarred by the depression. The mantra I received growing up is you want to find a job with a steady paycheck that's secure. It's not a bad message, practical and completely understandable given that my dad had seen his parents lose their house and farm because they couldn't afford to pay the property taxes. My father who could have gone to school at Princeton on a sports scholarship had to go to work at 17 to help support the family, and ended up working blue collar jobs his whole life. I earned a good living in a rewarding career in engineering, but I was recently reflecting that if I'd made a list of what I wanted to work at, it wouldn't have been in the top 50. I also wanted to be close to the outdoors, and never really did that to date either. I wonder now a lot of "what ifs" about my choices...I'll never know, Cheryl Strayed calls the roads you didn't take in your life "ghost ships"
visions that aren't real. Thoreau advised, find your bone, and gnaw at it with the determination of a dog...pursue your dreams with a passion. I'll always regret not really knowing how it would have gone if I had done that, and what my life would have looked like. I feel like I lived someone else's life...and that's a ship you don't want to be on.
I’m with you. Just this week I decided it was time to figure out my next move. But I don’t want to enter into the riggeurs of job searching only to wind up in a job with a “fast paced environment” and a demanding boss. It’s too much of a gamble.
Instead, I’m trying to network within my own community and see if there isn’t a perfect fit somewhere that I know the people involved and feel good about what they are doing. Something freelance or part-time.
But I don’t yet know what the job is. I know that it isn’t “writing for the New York Times” anymore. But I wonder if it’s something that doesn’t exist yet, and so I won’t be able to manifest it or “job search” for it until I see it out in the wild.
Good luck with your search, and thanks for the reminder to intentionally think about what I want next!