As much as I believe in the power of a calling, in the idea that for each of us there is work that makes us sing, sometimes the idea of a calling can paralyze us.

How do I know this is really my calling? Maybe it’s just a passing whim. Can it possibly be important enough or meaningful enough or whatever to be a calling? I have no idea what my calling is and so I must stay here in misery until I do.

We humans, we’re so good at using our big, powerful brains to confuse the hell out of ourselves.

Sometimes we have to jump.

You probably don’t know this, but my own process of leaving academia looked something like this.

• Spend two years in a tenure-track job confused and miserable.
• Realize I want out.
• Spend two years miserable and convinced I can’t do anything else.
• Have a series of Big Ideas that go nowhere after teensy-tiny setbacks. (Oh, copyediting, I think I’m glad you and I never got together.)
• Take a deep breath and send out a couple of applications.
• Six weeks later, start a new job in a new city.

Sometimes I talk about that last bullet to make the point that you never know what will happen when you start applying, no matter what the averages or the medians or other people’s experiences are. Serendipity happens. I got crazy lucky.

But today I want to talk about a different aspect of those six weeks.

Six weeks took four years

It’s easy to look at the six weeks between when I sent in my applications and when I started a new job and think, holy hell, that was really short!

And in terms of packing up a household of two adults, two dogs, and two cats, finding new lodgings, putting a house on the market, resigning one job (and career!) and starting another, yes. Yes it was. It was so short as to be just this side of insane. (I really don’t recommend it.)

But that six weeks was a product of years of thinking. And dithering. And doubting. And wandering. And wondering. And hoping.

I brought all of that with me when I took the plunge to send in applications, and I brought all of that with me when I actually accepted that job and walked into my chair’s office to resign.

But if I hadn’t, finally, jumped, those four years would simply have been misery. They were something else because I held my breath and did something terrifying.

It worked

I learned a lot in that first job out of academia. One of the things I learned was that I don’t actually like being a fundraiser, but it was a reasonable hypothesis to start with. I jumped out of academia, and I spent three years learning all kinds of things before needing to jump again.

Only this time it was easier. I already knew I could switch fields and not die. I already knew I brought a whole host of skills and talents to the workplace. I already knew I could make it outside of the ivory tower.

But I didn’t know any of that until I jumped. And I wouldn’t have learned any of it if I hadn’t jumped.

In which I quote Finding Nemo

There’s a scene near the end of the movie Finding Nemo wherein Dory the amnesiac and Martin the panicking parent are in the mouth of a whale. They’re hanging on to some part of its tongue, and it’s telling them to let go. Martin yells to Dory, “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?”

She says, simply, “I don’t.” He lets go, and the whale shoots them out of its blowhole into Sydney Harbor – exactly where they wanted to go.

Sometimes, we need to have faith that our lives will unfold in beautiful and interesting and compelling ways, and that we can’t actually control this. Sometimes we need to actually jump into the unfamiliar possibility in order to get the next layer of understanding that gets us closer to our calling.

Sometimes the best way to find our calling is to try things.

So go ahead. Jump.

Take a leap into the unknown and trust that whatever happens next, you will be enough to deal with it and learn from and it and be that much closer to knowing what you actually do want.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find out that this new thing you doubted, it really is what you should be doing.

(And I’m really sorry if I put the Pointer Sisters in your head….)

Not sure how to jump? I’m teaching a free class on August 1 that covers common misunderstandings about academics we have to deal with, strategies for translating your skills into non-academic settings, and a 6-part system for finding a job you love. You can learn more and sign up here.

When we’re faced with the necessity of figuring out something else to do with our lives than the academic career we planned for, well, it’s easy to have a complete brain shut-down. Nothing freezes us up more than the idea that we’ve got to come up with something that will determine the rest of our lives.

I liken it to the panic a lot of PhD students feel when they have to finally sit down and choose a dissertation topic. I mean, this topic is going to help determine everything from what kinds of jobs you can apply for to what kinds of institutions you’re going to land in to what you’ll be researching for the rest of your natural born life.

Now, the I’m-choosing-for-the-rest-of-my-life fear isn’t quite accurate in the case of the dissertation, and it’s certainly not accurate in the case of figuring out the next right step.

In fact, the most important thing you can bring to the table to get to the other side of that fear is curiosity.

Start with the assumption that you’re only choosing the Next Right Thing

In order to let curiosity kick in, we have to get rid of the assumption that you’re determining the rest of your life.

I don’t mean to traumatize you when I say this, but the very fact that you’re having to contemplate figuring out what to do next suggests that the last time you thought you were choosing forever, you were wrong.

That’s not to say anything you did on the basis of that assumption was wrong – I pretty much think every step of the path is necessary, and you learned a lot of fabulous things and did a lot of cool stuff on your way to right now.

It’s just to say that, once upon a time, you probably thought you were going to be in academia forever, and you aren’t going to be. All of which suggests that anything you choose right now probably isn’t going to carry you into retirement.

And that’s okay. In fact, if you can let go of the idea that you should choose something that will carry you into retirement, you can open yourself to the possibility that there are a lot of delicious choices out there – and you don’t necessarily have to choose between them.

Where curiosity comes in

Once you can think about possibilities as the Next Right Thing, it’s time to bring your curiosity to bear.

Be curious about yourself. What have you learned about yourself through your experiences in academia? What parts of yourself have you left behind? What dreams are so precious that they’re layered under piles of denial? What are you really, truly passionate about? What do you only think you should be passionate about?

The more you can be curious about your own experience, your own passions, and your own dreams, the more you can learn what it is that really rings your bell.

Be curious about what’s out there. Just as people who aren’t in academia think we get summers off and don’t understand what a provost is, we have lots of misconceptions and holes in our knowledge about other careers out there.

One way to be curious about what’s out there is to browse job boards, not to find one to apply for but just to see the range of what’s out there. Another way to be curious about what’s out there is to ask everyone you meet what they do and what they like and dislike about it. You’ll have some surprising conversations that may lead you in directions you wouldn’t have expected.

Be curious about how the world is linked together. Do you remember that old game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? The goal was to choose any other entertainer and figure out a way to get from them to Kevin Bacon in six moves or less.

Well, that came out of a play and movie called “Six Degrees of Separation” that mused on the idea that we’re connected to every other person on the planet by six moves or less. Now, I’m not entirely sure about the six or less part, but I can get to both Pope John Paul II and Ted Bundy (the latter two different ways) in less than six moves, both of which freak me right out.

What that means for your curiosity is that, within six degrees of separation from you right now is the person who can answer any question you have about any career path you can think of. Becoming a motorcycle technician. Running programs for the Department of the Interior. Being the executive director of a non-profit that serves transgendered youth. Raising money for the whales. Guiding climbers in state parks.

If you’re honestly curious about a particular field, the people you know will say things like, “You know, I have no idea, but my cousin runs a legal non-profit in DC and I bet he’d know the answer.” And boom – you have the person who can give you answers.

Curiosity gets you past what you know

The reason curiosity is so important is that it is what takes you beyond the boundaries of what you’re currently familiar with. Curiosity is what helps you ask the questions to learn new things, about yourself and the world. Curiosity is what takes you from “I have no idea” through “huh, I’d love to know X” to “hey, X is really awesome!”

So if you’re stuck in fear, inertia, or doubt when what you need is to think about what the Next Right Thing is and how to get there, ask yourself one simple question. “What am I curious about right now?” The answer will get you moving, and the answer will give you a path.

A few months ago, I was sitting in a breakout group of all the managers at my dayjob. We were talking about how to motivate people and how to keep people challenged, when one of my colleagues said something so wrong-headed I almost couldn’t contain myself.

“By definition, work isn’t fun,” he said. “That’s why we have to pay people to do it. If it were fun, people would do it for free.”

This is a common assumption or belief about work, but I don’t believe it for a second.

Where that goes wrong

If that sentiment were true, jobs that were more fun would be paid less, and jobs that were less fun would be paid more.

Last time I checked, jobs like cleaning bathrooms, digging rocks, or picking fruit in the hot sun are paid pretty miserably. Subsistence wages, if that.

While we’ve all got our list of jobs that would be incredibly fun, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that everything on your list probably gets paid more than janitorial wages.

And while there are exceptions to this very general rule (lots of creative jobs, like dance, pay extraordinarily poorly in the traditional venues), it’s instructive nonetheless.

What really happens

When we do work for a person or for an organization, we get paid because we are creating value. We are accomplishing something, making something possible that wouldn’t be possible without our labor.

A teacher gets paid (okay, usually not well) for designing a class and supporting students in learning the material. Without that teacher, those people do not learn.

An accountant gets paid to make sure all the money that goes into or out of any unit (an organization, a family) is accounted for so that the people in that unit can make informed choices about how they earn and spend money.

A choreographer gets paid to design new and illuminating dance routines to please the senses and the intellect. Without that work, our world would be poorer.

All of the work we do adds value to the world, either by enabling someone to do something they couldn’t have done otherwise, or by actually bringing new things into the world. This is a good thing.

And we dedicate a significant chunk of our time to creating that value because that enables us to do things like eat and pay rent and pursue the things we want – which creates value in our lives.

These are not opposed

Our whole culture is organized around this idea that we’ll spend 30-40 years working our tails off, often miserably, in order to retire early and enjoy our golden years. It’s like retirement is the carrot held out instead of the stick of debtor’s prison, and we wouldn’t work if we didn’t have one or the other pushing us forward.

And let’s be honest: There are plenty of people who are miserable in their jobs, because they’re doing work they don’t like, for people who aren’t very nice. But that’s not “the way things should be.” That’s a tragedy.

In fact, retirement, far from being the golden experience you see in the brochures, is often hugely stressful to people, because they got meaning and joy from their work and aren’t sure what to do with themselves now.

When we’re doing work we love and we’re good at, we’re creating value for ourselves, and we’re creating value for the world. At the same time. Right now.

Yes, there are tradeoffs

It’s true that we will sometimes be willing to take a lower salary in return for a job we really love. But that lower salary will likely still be above the line of what you need to support yourself and your family.

And it’s true that we could all use more time off than we usually get, which leads us to dreaming of job-free lives. But for most of us, lolling around the beach in a hammock would get old soon enough.

In other words, we don’t get paid because work is odious. We get paid because we are providing something of value to someone else.

So why does this matter?

It matters because, so long as work is defined as “no fun,” it’s hard to take seriously what we really, passionately want to do – because we assume it can’t make any money.

It matters because such an assumption makes us hesitate to charge money for our skills and talents, because they’re too fun to be worth much.

It matters because it makes thinking about work and careers depressing, instead of exciting.

It matters because it helps us settle for less than we’re worth, doing work that is less than we’re capable of.