What do you want to be when you grow up?
April 22nd, 2009
I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about food, so I think it’s time to talk about another aspect of health and wellness. After all, you can eat spinach and sprouts all day but if your job is sucking the life out of you, how healthy can you be?
My working life started at age 14, bagging groceries at the local supermarket. They were the only place around who would hire kids under 16 and I begged my parents to let me take the job. Bagging groceries was mindless and I remember that in the back room of the supermarket there were bags of chips and cookies that had been bust open, free for employee snacking. And snack I did! Quite a job. I would dream at night of filling bags with grocery items like a game of Tetris.
What was your first job? Or most memorable?
Since the days of grocery bagging I’ve held so many jobs I can’t even remember. Here’s the greatest hits list, just for fun:
Salesgirl at the Hallmark store
I’d come home smelling of Yankee candles.
Cashier at chinese restaurant
They gave me 2 eggrolls at the end of the night.
Waitress at Friendly’s
A restaurant run by 17 yr. olds. Imagine!
Office temp
The office was closing. I read books and answered the phone twice all summer.
Intern at physical therapy clinic
I changed majors after that semester.
Desk help at small inn
They got mad when I refused to plunge a guest’s clogged toilet.
Waitress at Cuban cafe
I would fake a cuban accent.
Designer at The Boston Globe
And now they’re about to go under. Man.
Sometime after that my career took a turn into advertising. That’s what I was doing until changing gears entirely to work in the holistic health field. It took about 3 years from the time I realized “this job isn’t for me” until the day I officially left the ad industry. In those three years I made lots of changes in my life and prepared for the career I finally realized I wanted. And here I am!
It’s funny to me how many people are unhappy in their job and just wait…and wait…to figure out what they want to do about it. We spend more time at work than we spend doing anything else. Yesterday I led a lunch and learn for a group at Boston Scientific. The women there informed me that their work days are usually 10, maybe 14 hours long. Surely the place you invest the most time has a huge impact on your life and health.
What would you like to be doing with your time on this earth, really, if you could choose anything?
A friend once told me his favorite job was in college, delivering flowers. He drove around all day listening to music and when he made a delivery he was always met with smiles. His dream job! Most of us are raised with the ever-present question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And for most, flower delivery guy is not the answer your teacher or parent wants to hear.
Why not?
Right now is an excellent time to consider why delivering flowers might be a very reasonable job compared to say, oh, investment banking. This isn’t to say that no one should be working in 9-5 jobs…there are plenty of people who enjoy their corporate jobs and take great pride in what they do. But there’s a difference between staying in a job because it fulfills you and staying in a job because you’ve never been told it’s ok to do something else. There’s a huge amount of freedom in realizing you don’t have to “be” anything. You don’t have to “be” a doctor or “be” a banker. You have an identity outside of your job title. Awesome.
Here is an excellent quiz I came across recently. Had I answered these questions while still working in advertising, I’d have chosen mostly C’s. But now, I am happy and proud to choose all A’s! I love my work, I love my clients, and I feel like this is the highest compensation I could hope for.
How do you feel about your current job/work situation?
