Opting Out of the Cookout

Putting your life first is a choice. It’s one I make every day.

What is it exactly about entering the thirties that triggers a grand desire to be more, achieve more in most people? I’m not knocking it, per se. We each are the stewards of our own lives, and do what thou wilt. But as I looked around at my gathered friends at a recent cookout, the topic on everyone’s plates was career trajectory. Again.

It’s a phase of life, a right of passage. In our twenties, all our conversations were about landing jobs that afforded us the luxury to get out of our parents’ basements and into our own spaces. Instead of sign-on bonuses, bragging about late hours and being called away at a moment’s notice to meet and impress our newest executive, we boasted about concert tickets scored, the free couch we found on the sidewalk, how we lost our keys at the bar but somehow magically found them the next day or how that one friend of ours (you know who you are) just keeps on ending up with her ex. And maybe, just maybe, the random hobby we’re taking up (knitting, at that local anarchist bookstore) or the after work dodgeball team we’re joining this summer. It was a simpler time, then.

A time without the obsession with being…more. Sure, we were a bit too focused on having more, but there was a contentment just to be whatever we could carve out at the time, not worrying about our titles (just to get paid at all). A time before most of us judged our personal worth by our LinkedIn pages.

The honest truth is that I don’t want an ambitious life. I don’t want rushing off to the gate to get on a plane to give a presentation or staying up all hours after I put my kid to bed to finish the proposal that will land my next promotion. I don’t stress over meeting or exceeding the expectations in my yearly review, I don’t belong to any professional organizations or have a five or even a ten year plan for my career. And while I completely support my friends, family and well, anyone whose lives revolve around the work they do, I find my completion elsewhere.

And that makes me strange. When it comes to the cookout, and everyone has gone around the circle, sipping their craft beers and sharing their woes about never having enough time in the day to enjoy some free time, I get a slight knot in my stomach when my friends turn to me and ask me how things are going with my career.

“Eh, you know. Another day, another dollar.”

And then they sit there, waiting for me to launch into the explanation of how I’m fighting my way to the top amidst a wave of challenges. And they keep waiting, because it doesn’t come.

“What DO you do again?”

“Admin work. It pays the bills.”

And the waiting comes again, the silence. The one where I’m supposed to speak up with more, but I’m done. When it comes to my career, I’m just… done.

I’m not done because I have a failed dream. I’m not done because I really went for what I believed was my calling and feel on my face, bruising my heart and ego along the way. I’m done because I never started making my career my entire life.

While my friends agonized in their late twenties and early thirties to chase their wonderful career goals (seriously, good for them!) I was happy to have a job that I could go to, not fret about or get trapped in meaningless gossip, and then come home and get back to my life. Instead of building out a ten year plan, I built out my book collection. I grew a garden and learned about house plants. I spent my time volunteering at the local SPCA and fostering animals in need. I raised my children and supported them after school, making sure their homework was done, their cello played and, above all, that I got to spend a few hours with them every day to get to know them.

I skipped the PTA and worked my way through countless YouTube videos learning how to cook things I’ve never had. I am a repeat offender in aisles various and glorious at the local library. I traded the latest tech thought leadership trade for a garden hoe and a spade. And it’s been lovely. I traded my career for a life.

Looking around the cookout, everyone is so… tired. Behind the casual smiles and chuckles around the latest office scandal, I can see just how weary everyone is. And for some it’s a good kind of weary, the exhaustion that comes from chasing their professional dreams. But for a few it looks like running on empty, going nowhere, and it’s just so sad.

I want to shake them. I want to tell them, “it’s OK to live a life more simple. It’s ok to DO less.” We’re not given a scorecard on this Earth where we’re weighed in the end of how high we climbed the corporate ladder at the expense of our happiness. I want to hug those that need it, help them strip off their forced grins and let go of their burden and just take a moment, one lazy day to see how lovely it can be when you leave work at the door, basking in the freedom of your title not following you home.

I want to show them that it’s not just OK, but really wonderful to work to live, not work to work.

But instead I wait for the moment to pass. The awkward silence ends and the beat is skipped as a close friend of mine since high school jumps in to divert the attention from me to a story about how she’s juggling three upcoming work trips while participating in an accelerated leadership program, advocating for her staff to get the raises they’ve had coming for years and finishing up four different potential models for proposing her marketing strategy for her new boss.

The others join back into the mix and the beat goes on, the comfort of the work obsessed doldrums and the steady thrum of ambition restored.

And I take a breath and swirl my drink and smile a real, actual smile because I am “just” an Admin.

About this post: This was written as a part of my participation in the altMBA program. Thanks again, Seth Godin, for creating a space where brains like me can collaborate, learn and stretch.

Challenge: Write from a viewpoint opposite of yours. Come from a place of empathy, understanding and compassion.

My viewpoint: I don’t understand people who don’t have strong career passion and ambition. I’ve spent so much of my adult life finding great joy and fun in work, and also have a tendency to overwork myself. When I meet people who “work to live” (like my husband, who is the best) it’s perplexing to me , so I wanted to explore their POV.

RS (Reaction Script): I wouldn’t change a thing about this post. This is the first piece of writing I can ever remember where I can say that. And that feels pretty amazing.

From an emotional learning perspective, I’m really thankful for this assignment. Being challenged to truly dive into a different perspective and not only see the world from the other side, but also craft a real piece of writing from that view, has been powerful in its simplicity (and complexity). It opens up new worlds around where my empathy can stretch, where my borders lie, and walls I have yet to tear down.

But it’s always good to stretch and keep at it.

Thanks to @levirizk, @erinberry and @andrew for jumping into the work together last night and helping me map out my approach. Cheers!