The dream job does not exist

My "dream" job has never been anything I've had, and I'm not even sure whether it truly exists for me. An individual who is capable of alternating between creative and analytical thinking. A lady on the spectrum who barely survived workplace culture and the incessant politicking. Maybe I’d make my mark; maybe I’d earn a little money, but I never felt at home at a firm.

Possibly because a house of business is not a home. You can’t carry the widgets you construct and the trinkets acquired by assembling those trinkets to the hereafter. Jane Goodall reportedly commented, “My next great adventure at 90 is dying.” Because who wouldn’t want to investigate what’s next once the body dies and all the baubles and toys are left behind? Denis Johnson’s last book was a very introspective look at his life, wondering what he’d missed and all the ways in which he could’ve loved more, done more, and explored more.

Your coworkers are not family—they're the other spokes on the wheel that can be easily jettisoned should revenues nosedive.

On my last days in the offices where I toiled, I wept not only for what was lost—the blueberry oatmeal on Fifth Avenue, coworkers that didn’t incite rage, the piles of free books, and my proximity to them—but also for the relief that came from abandoning feelings of crippling self-doubt and abject terror, baggage borne from working with a narcissistic psychopath.

I’ve had jobs where I’ve sobbed and others where I’ve flourished. But no one endeavored to support me or make me feel whole. Rather, I regarded my employment as one facet of my life, and the true effort was finding how they harmonized with the other aspects of me.

Bear with me while I fling you, headfirst, into a gigantic metaphor—

Think of your life as a home filled with rooms that symbolize different facets of that life—job, friendship, love, family, self, society, health, etc., etc.—and each room performs a function and has a purpose. The corridors and staircases represent the breaths between those rooms, how you move around the locations you inhabit over the course of a day, a life. The roof, walls, floors, and doors provide safety and a barrier; it informs people this is me. This is my residence. Now look at the decorations, wallpaper, furniture, fixtures, portraits, and finery that make the box in which you live unique.

Many homes exist, yet no house is similar to yours.

Sometimes, your home is filled with enchantment or craziness. Over the years pieces of it will fall into decay. But here’s one reality – a single room can’t maintain the whole, but it does have the capacity to ruin everything. The leaking ceiling in the bathroom and the mildew and damage it produces. Pipes exploding in the kitchen soaking the flooring and turning off the electricity. And takeout pizza is cute, possibly downright adorable for a few days, but after a few weeks when the contractors are forever late and the estimates keep climbing, and other expenses skyrocket, and all the rage blackouts ensue and midday howling into pillows becomes the norm — all you want to do is to boil pasta on the stove.

A room can’t rescue you, but it may demolish the joint.

For most of my life, I set up shop in one room—profession—while the rest of my home degraded into Grey Gardens. Ivy winding through open windows and plants springing up through the flooring. A family of raccoons sitting in the restroom. A rickety home that could’ve been nicer than what it ended up becoming if only I had cared for it. But I was a myopic fool who wanted to be a writer! an entrepreneur! an industry executive! Even if the obsessive pursuit of each of these jobs was like the kitchen that messed up the rest of the home.

Maybe I’m elderly, exhausted, and more open to oddly shaped root vegetables, but passion never benefited my home; it simply damaged it. I bought into the huge illusion that a dream job generates a dream life. And there it goes, going down the production line until you’re Lucille Ball stuffing chocolates in your mouth and down your shirt.

It took me about forty-five years to discover that it wasn’t my work that had to bolt me out of my bed; it was the totality of my existence. I couldn’t sit in one place when I had a home to care for. During the trash fire that was the decade otherwise known as 2020, I made a conference call with myself and asked what I wanted from this life. What would make me feel fulfilled? When I’m a slab on a gurney, might I have shivered that last air out thinking, You did well, kid? How do I want to spend my days? What persons or things occupy them? Time is spent or wasted; therefore, with whom do I wish to spend the time?

If you’re a marketer, this is the strategy, and the life aspects are the methods that bring that plan to life. But if you’re just a person, it’s just contemplating how each area can operate symbiotically so the home can last for as long as it can. Because one day it will crumble. It was razed, and the ground cleared for new dwellings and new life to occupy them. While you’ve got this home, this property, how do you keep it? Ensuring that no one area is better or more significant than the others.

Every room plays a role, and throughout the course of your life, certain rooms will take up more of you than others, but the homes that stand the highest and longest realize that the room that has its shine will have to step out of the light so the rest of the rooms may experience its sheen. Otherwise, you become blind. Or Icarus with his burned wings because he soared too quickly and fast to the sun.

Forget wasting your life in quest of that one ideal career, the magical balm, the solitary cure—it doesn’t exist, and if it does, it’s transitory. You’re not settling or failing if you choose the good-enough job because maybe it gives room for your home to grow. Maybe you could hang on to your beloved's one minute longer. Or time to trek into the woods. Or maybe you simply need time to be a bit wild, a little free.