After a particularly worry-rampant night (hah. I almost typed knight), I woke to find a post from The Simple Dollar entitled The Best Career Advice: Do Stuff. It had some excellent advice and pointed to this wonderfully freeing post from the blog Hoehn's Musings. Here's a snippet:
My favorite part of The Dark Knight is when the Joker is talking to Harvey Dent in the hospital, and he says: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just DO things… I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”Heck yes.
And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.
Unfortunately, as much as I resonate with both posts linked above, what I tell myself about the job search and my future and how I actually feel about it aren't always on the same page.
I was interviewed by the Ventura County Star last semester for a story about graduating seniors and the job market. The article quotes me on why I applied for Teach for America. (Why I withdrew from the application process is another story.) But what I remember most distinctly from the interview is not that tiny idealistic snippet that ended up in the article. What I remember is telling the interviewer that it didn't matter to me if I ended up in a random entry-level (or below) job somewhere because I'd learn from it no matter what.
I fully believed in that valiant outlook at the time. But theoretical optimism is so much easier than optimism in the real world.
Then there are the times where I've said that one of my strengths is dealing with ambiguity because my family moved around a lot when I was younger (and is still moving around quite a bit).
But guess what? I hate ambiguity with a passion! I hate having a million different possible futures running rampant in my imagination that pull me every which way. I like being able to expect, to prepare... but there are only so many futures one person can hold onto, prepare for, contain.
So even though I love wandering around places when I'm traveling, I'm not so good at wandering around life.
But I've realized that the healthiest way for me to approach this stage of life is just that. I need to put myself back in the mindset of traveling where I'm constantly soaking in life and looking for new experiences and wandering in non direct routes just because there's something about that hidden-out-of-the-way path that beckons. Granted, while traveling, I usually walk around with vague ideas of where I'm intending to go... eventually... maybe... But it's held so loosely that it shifts, breathes, morphs as I wander.
I'm just used to feeling like I'm supposed to set goals and know what I want to do so I can have a plan to get there so I can get cracking on those goals and that path and that life.
Well guess what? I don't know what job I want and I don't know what I want to do with my life so I don't have a goal and I don't have a plan to get there. And damn it, that's okay!
Life is a journey. I'm a traveler.
Now, on with the wandering.
4 comments:
I've been thinking this for the past month now - I think this is how we would act if we really believed we were immortal. And that whole time I've been wishing our immortality was more obvious. Thanks for the links, I found some good advice.
You really like this immortality thing eh? But yes, I suppose we would be far more willing to experiment and whatnot if we didn't feel like we only have one chance to "get it right." So perhaps we can live like that as a way to a sort of immortality.
Anyway, I forgot to add this link to another helpful article which I read earlier in the year.
Bag the goals. Start wandering. Whoo!
Hmmm wow very nice. So I see you've set your mind on not setting your mind. Interesting point of view, and one that I shall consider. Let me know how it goes. May your travels and endevours lead to a life in which you are at the very least content.
Not quite.
It's not that I've set my mind on not setting my mind. It's more that I'm embracing the fact that there are more ways to doing this life thing than straight goals and planning.
I'm not against straight goals and planning, nor am I against setting my mind. I'm against the idea that plans and goals and straight lines are the only way to do it.
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