The problem of careers

There’s this myth we have about the importance of careers. We have this idea that our working life is supposed to be coherent and progressive, that it should continually rise towards a pinnacle (full professorship, an X- or C-level corporate job, directorship of a non-profit) that indicates that We Have Made It, that We Are Good And Worthy People. A career indicates expertise and gravitas, “settling down” and “growing up,” all at the same time.

In short, we should have one. But only one.

Now, I’ve got nothing but respect for people who’ve known since they were small what they want to do and who have experienced fulfillment and joy and all of that from that very same career. Power to them! But that’s not what happened in my life. And it’s not what happened in the lives of many people I know.

Many of us fell into careers instead of choosing them. I, for example, went to graduate school because I loved learning, not because I had the faintest idea what being a professor actually entailed. A dear friend of mine got an entry-level job after college in a mailroom to pay the rent and later became VP of that same organization, without necessarily ever having an ambition for international development. An acquaintance got a part-time job telemarketing in college and now runs a division of that company.

But once you have a career, however it came about, it’s not just a job — it’s part of who you are. After all, “what do you do?” is one of the first things we ask new adult aquaintances, and we often conflate the answer with the person. We say, “She’s a lawyer,” or “He runs a non-profit,” instead of “She’s a rock-climber” or “He’s an amazing wildlife photographer.”

In my experience it’s even worse in places like academia, where there’s the combination of a long training period and an explicit working identity at the end of it. When everyone around you is an academic — when your friends, picked up through the slog of graduate school, are academics; when your social life in College Town is all other academics — and when you have put in years of explaining to family just what it means to be an academic (no, we don’t get summers off!), well, it can be really, really hard to realize that this career you have, this identity you’ve taken on, does not make you happy.

And because it’s not just a job, but a career, an identity, it’s easy to move from “I’m unhappy” to “WTF is wrong with me?”

The answer is: nothing. If the career you’re in right now is making you unhappy, nothing is wrong with you. This just isn’t the career for you.

But the myth of The One Career helps keep us stuck exactly where we are, because the very idea of “becoming an accountant” or “becoming a professional photographer” or “becoming a radio talk-show host” all seem so very daunting, so very large. “It’s years of training!” “Do you know how long it would take to get to this level in that career?” And so we suck it up and continue being miserable in this career we have, because examining and changing our identity around work is hard, scary, and frankly, not modeled very many places.

If you’re in that position, if you’re miserable in the career you’re in, instead of thinking in terms of a career, try thinking in terms of the kind of tasks and work environment that make you deeply happy — “doing” instead of “becoming.” Do you love working with people? Do you like involving your whole body in your work? Do you need to be outside? Do you enjoy regular hours, or do you want to work at 11pm? Do you want a mission-based job, or do you like to go home and put work away?

The bottom line is this: You don’t need a career. Think about that. You don’t need a career, which is, after all, an external story about success that has nothing to do with you and your experience. You need a job you enjoy and that pays the bills so you can be your whole self. That’s all.

And then, when people ask you “what do you do?” you can tell them you’re a rock-climbing, book-reading, trivia-loving movie buff — and mean it.