Do you have this problem?
You realize your life is not a cookie-cutter path of a single career. You saw the top of the corporate ladder, and realized that roof needed fixing beyond your desire to fix it. You no longer care about the roof or the cubicle or the ceiling, glass or not. You want a condo with sunny windows, lots of stamps on your passport, and a home office instead. (Or whatever floats your boat.)
So you climb down and leave the “safe haven” of HR-directed corporate life. What then?
Then you get yourself some education. You read, you study, you meet people. You talk of “gigs” instead of “jobs”. You poke around in the dark. By talking and learning, you start to figure it out, little by little. You stumble, fall, risk and adjust. Get burned a lot. Win a little. Get feedback. Correct course. Learn who is important and who is bullshitting.
Then you search inside yourself to discover what excites you, and how to marry what you offer with services market will pay for. People don’t pay for passions. People pay for solutions. The road to that sweet intersection of skill supply and market demand is a long and tedious one.
I’m on that road, and it’s both a blessing and a pain in the ass.
I’ve learned more, seen more and done more in the last two years than in the nine years of following up on what a finance major is supposed to be. But none of it matters now. What matters is where I’m going, and how I plan to get there.
It’s funny, though. The more I deviate from a straight path, the more I get called crazy or unreasonable, the more sure I am that I am onto something at least interesting and at most hugely rewarding. The social unacceptance of what I plan to do next is directly proportionate to how insanely cool it’ll be to do it.
I travel to a foreign country to learn winemaking and work my ass off. I return, and some call me frivolous and don’t want me to work with them. I indulge in learning more than one subject (say, CSS, photography and winemaking), and some call me non-committal. I want to get rid of the possessions that no longer serve me, when people my age are having their second child and accumulating stuff. I aim to drive my car to over 100,000 miles, regardless of the high value I can get at trade-in right now. I drink too much wine. I have six different versions of my resume, and have a really hard time putting all the experiences together in a coherent chronological manner. I struggle to establish a freelancing path. I always do more than just one thing. I always strive to make income out of interests. It’s not perfect. It may not seem focused. But it is, to me. And all of this, combined, is what makes me feel alive.
I am an adult, and these are my choices. I knew the path wouldn’t be simple when I left the perceived safety of the cubicle. It’s never going to be, from now on. I’m ok with that. Perhaps this acceptance is what it means to be an adult. Perhaps not. I’m only about six here, going on seven.
It took me a whole year to thaw out my soul from three and a half years of the latest corporate job of being I was “supposed to be”. I’m still great at Excel. I can build you a sophisticated model with macros, and write investment summaries, and trade options like there’s no tomorrow, and talk about subordinated debt any day. I’d love to do this for you as a freelancer. But the days where my lunch wine glass cost me more than lunch itself—because a) it had to be in stealth mode and b) it had to be at a place decent enough to serve wine (i.e. not Mickey D’s)–are over. I’ll take that glass at home, thank you. I have the whole bottle here, bought on sale or given as a sample by industry contacts. And an oven, and protein. Much cheaper. And quicker.
Had I stayed on the “accepted’ path, I wouldn’t have traveled, learned, taken risks, hustled, talked to people, and learned to live with less yet find ways to earn more. I wouldn’t have learned to photograph the long white clouds of that lovely distant country of the South Pacific. I wouldn’t have gazed at the Milky Way while adding yeast food to a tank in open air. I wouldn’t have met the people who altered my life. I wouldn’t have expreienced what it’s like to run a business. I would have stayed at the office and done…who knows, but I venture to guess…just about the same.
Do I feel nostalgia for it? For the higher salary, the daily suit-wearing, the prestige of downtown? Not really. Do I feel the desire to earn more cash? Absolutely! Do I compare myself with my peers who are earning more? Definitely, although not in the same regard. My ability to earn more cash depends directly on my ingenuity to produce, create and sell what the market demands. I like it this way. Because it makes sense.
I do care about a career, but not about how the majority expounds it. I view my life as a series of projects, and I am ok with that, as long as those projects are value-added. I absolutely want to be fully engaged, to be useful, to master the skills I’m learning and apply them, to pursue my passions and develop them, and to use the products of my mind in the creation of my personal value. In short, I want to create and add to the world, whether via writing or winemaking or photography. For the love of money and the love of art.
