At a certain age, you can look back on your childhood and identify a few key ideas that brought you to where you are today. Whether they were shaped by your parents, teachers, siblings or peers, these ideas are deep rooted and drive your decision making every single day. One of the biggest ideas I clung to over the years was about the way a career works. “You go to college, get a job in your field, put your head down and work hard, get promoted, then enjoy your retirement.” This idea in itself is pretty standard, but for me it was presented alongside two others: “choose a practical career- you have to be one in a million to make money in a creative pursuit,”  and “you can make yourself like anything if you try hard enough.”

 

Fueled by these ideas, I entered college thinking I had my whole life planned out. I would work hard in school to become a dentist, work for someone else for a few years, then go on to run my own practice and enjoy a nice early retirement. After sailing through my first year of college, I went home to start putting in shadowing hours. Plot twist: I passed out within the first fifteen minutes of seeing a hand in a mouth. How did I manage to plan my life around something that I physically can’t watch, let alone do?! I’ve already spent 4 weeks crying over O. Chem- I can’t back out now!

 

Like any responsible “adult” (nineteen year-old kid), I entered a full state of panic and blindly committed to the pursuit of another career I deemed practical (so what if creating projects and presentations, and speaking to an audience gets me hype? Creative pursuits won’t pay the bills! Stay focused, Al!). When I say blindly, I mean may as well have chosen a career out of a hat, blindly. My entire thought process when selecting a new major was: “I’m good at math, I’ll try finance.” I mean, I was already directionless for TWO WEEKS, I had to commit to something (that’s right, I planned my new life out in less than fourteen days)! And I fell right back into my habit of putting my head down and working hard. I got A’s in all my classes, joined business-oriented organizations, bought a kick-ass business wardrobe and landed an internship with a bank. I was on fire and FINALLY (I repeat, it was only fourteen days) back on track! Plus business isn’t gross so I probably won’t pass out… right???

 

My internship turned into a job offer, and upon graduation I started working full time as a financial analyst at a large bank. That was when the finality of my plan set in: I had to sit at a desk and do this work every day for the rest of my life. Ho-ly. Shit. I was bored, uninspired, and incapable of spacing work out to take up a full eight-hour day. My “work as hard as you can at all times” mindset that propelled me forward my whole life was actually a detriment in this new role. I would finish all my work for the day within three hours, then have to pretend to work for the remaining five hours before I could go home… I AM DONE, JUST LET ME LEAVE, DAMNIT!

 

I put in the work to get the job; I had no problem getting all my work done accurately and efficiently, so why wasn’t I enjoying it? That’s when I remembered the old adage: “You can make yourself like anything if you try hard enough.” So I tried. I tried HARD. I dedicated those endless extra hours every day to making friends at work (how do you even make friends as an adult?! Seriously, if you know the secret please let me know), asking to take on additional work (which nobody wanted to take the time to explain), coming up with little games to pass the time, and finally hitting my daily recommended water intake so I had an excuse to leave my desk and walk to the bathroom every hour (someone please be in the mood to chat!). You can only play “F*ck, Marry, Kill” with your three most recent Linkedin add requests so many times before realizing that you’re still impossibly bored and unfulfilled.

 

Millions of people go to the same boring job every day for forty years without complaint. There I was, only three weeks into my new job and I already ran out of ways to make myself enjoy it. To say I felt like a failure is an understatement. Was I not trying hard enough? Is this what older generations call entitlement? Does anyone else feel this way? That was when I took a look around. Everyone was going through the motions. Nobody was acting out of inspiration or passion, but instead out of habit. Even if you catch the office “hype man” at a time where he thinks nobody’s looking, he isn’t fist bumping someone for submitting a report they’ve completed for the 500th time, he’s blank staring off into the distance, undoubtedly picturing himself anywhere but in the office. They were all doing their job because it was a means to make money to afford their lives, because that’s what people do. It’s all they know.

 

That was the moment I realized the difference between my generation and that of my parents. My parents had to get a job and stick to it right away because they had to afford themselves immediately. They didn’t consider taking the risk to switch careers because if they didn’t make a paycheck, they weren’t eating. My parents knew they had to stick it out and made the most of where they were, but deep down knew their career was not a passion; it was just their money maker (this was also the moment I understood why all the ladies in the office were racing to pop out kids- three paid months away from this place? Sign me up!). Once they became financially stable, the promise of more money kept them at that same uncomfortable chair in that same dingy office building they swore was only temporary when they first started fifteen, then twenty, then thirty years earlier. They were simply born into tougher times, where settling and making the most of an un-ideal situation was the norm.

 

That was when I realized my life doesn’t need to be like that of my parents and I DO NOT need to feel guilty that it isn’t. I always have and always will be prepared to do whatever it takes to pay the bills, but I refuse to settle for mediocrity. I refuse to put my head down at a job that makes me feel ordinary, only to pick it up twenty years down the road to realize I not only never tried to chase my dreams, but never even took the time to create a dream in the first place. I am done sitting at a desk longing for a chance to problem solve, where my only creative freedom is in choosing between Times New Roman and Cambria fonts for a slide deck. There is no shame in taking the time to discover your passion, and I plan to do anything and everything it takes to do so.

 

So I took the leap and said: “It’s not you, it’s me- I just don’t have enough interest.“ (banking pun 100% intended) to my stable, corporate job. I don’t have a plan, I’m terrified to say the least, but I have the fire to figure it out. Time to get out there and see what I can do!