A Doggy Daydream

Have you ever noticed a dog mindlessly laying in a corner when suddenly they hear a soft, faint squeak of their favorite toy and instantly turn into a tongue-hanging lunatic with a motorized tail beating from side to side? In one moment, abject boredom and the next absolute jubilance. This chasmic shift to complete happiness is what makes our dogs so likable as envious overthinking cynics. How does a dog have the freedom to shift into such states of euphoria within a moment's notice? Well, my working theory reduces it to a singular simplicity:

Dogs don’t know what the word ‘career’ is.

I mean seriously, could you truly imagine a dog sitting in his doggy bed contemplating questions of, “am I living up to my fullest potential as a ball-fetcher”. Or possibly, “have I hidden away enough chewed up bones for future generations to live on?”. How many bulldogs do you think see a feral herding dog and say “did I choose the right career path?”

An honest curious man would ask, how much free time do you have that this is what you’re thinking of on a Saturday night ? Trust me when I say, enough. Now, mind your damn business. That aside, I'm regrettably aware of how much time I’ve personally lost reflecting on questions of career trajectory and inevitably self-worth. I can imagine you shared just as much time, if not more than me, circling that same drain considering I’m an unemployed self proclaimed gypsy who can explain gaps on his resume as stages of ‘self discovery’ proudly. In the same breath, that resume would feature a collection of diverse industry work experience. Ranging from the strategic conversation in midtown Manhattan boardrooms to the banter between an aged townie and baby-faced tradie laying concrete in New Zealand. Point being, I’ve shared a few experiences of how wide the definition ‘career’ truly can be. So, if you have just a bit more time to waste with me, I believe we can make some progressive strides in where a careers role in our happiness should be.   

Fresh are the memories in the college lecture halls of repeated speeches with some elevated language about the need to commit to a career path. The value of our minds were being funneled into rigid pathways where salaries and stability would be guaranteed. Now that it's been some handful of years since, it's easy to say that these cautionary tales dictated by detached professors were completely true. It's important to know exactly what you want from life. And then commit to it. Your nights won’t be tormented by the unknown. Your future will have a clarity so clear, you’d feel like you could observe it grow from your window all while you sip on your morning coffee. At each cocktail hour you could giggle at the puniest of comments by a coworker with a sense of knowing you’d hear a different variation of it next week.

There are also those that saw through the American dream that was drilled into us in high school. These kids built calluses on their hands and grime on their clothes. Waking up each morning just before the morning rooster to walk amongst the fresh dew prepared to do the work that builds our cities. Their break room is often found on the most palatable sitting spots on the work sites. These men and women don’t seek attention, they just do their service. Everyday.  

This is the good life. A life where emergency payments and well planned out weekend getaways are things handled with ease. This is what a career will earn you. 

I’d hope that you’d see this beauty in finding a career you want. For many, it props up the integrity of their life. Protecting them from the abyss below. The type of foundation where a family can be built off of. This stability secures aspects of the mind to barrel into future plans, goals, and aspirations. All of these are ingredients to bake a warm and gooey cookie cutter life that will satisfy your parents with each bite. While I do have an inevitable contrasting ‘but’ to unravel aspects of this superficial definition of career, i'd like to take some last moments to emphasize the validity to this life approach. If your intention is to stay warm through the night of a safety blanket, you can find it within the immediate selection of any dependable career path. Whether you wake up and put on a blue or white collar shirt, each will provide a purpose that has made many noble men in history. 

But. 

No salary or menial work will fill any space of your soul. This hole emerges when deciding to act in a way that will satisfy the projection of others' expectations. IF a selected path does not feel intrinsically attached to your person, a spiritual erosion will ensue that may go unnoticed. With each fortification of a forced routine, a ‘life's purpose’ will softly sink below the demands of daily tasks and stressors. The manifestation of an atrophying soul will never show itself directly. Its not like the mind or body which have tangible signs of malnutrition, the soul fractures underneath the surface. Anxiety and depression become more contagious states of mind. Thoughts more easily drift away under their persuasion. Whether they get pulled into the past or future, focus will no longer be available for the moment. It becomes more natural to wake up and finish getting dressed by donning a masked character of yourself. Because rather than self express, it’’ll be easier to be the most palatable version of yourself to others. Social skills reduced to simple pleasantries as you become nimble in navigating the surface of conversations.

All this, because you were told selecting a safe career will guarantee happiness. My news flash to you, it will not. I don't imagine you'd believe this either. But I've taken the time bouncing from random career to random jobs off the quirky thought, “ohh, this seems cool”. What I've gathered is that the first few months always move fast as you do your best to align yourself into the flow of the pace of the workplace. This is an exciting time. You learn the industry specific language like ROI (return on investment) or CDL (Commercial Drivers License) and Sparky (Foremans little bitch). The excitement in learning will hold off any need for the concerns of the soul. But these days will be few, and soon enough you will walk into work and instinctively go from one task to another before the soft buzzing hum of your worker bee wings will do their best to distract your mind as you sit in rush hour traffic wondering where the last week went. Am I being a bit dramatic, surely, but how else do you expect me to convey aspects of the withering modern man's soul in our competitively driven capitalistic society. I don't believe I've achieved anything yet, as pointing at the huge gash on your ethereal arm does nothing short of creating more anxiety and who wants that.

The thoughts I am building is no career is a building block to your happiness, it is a byproduct of. 

The necessary steps required to find a career which gives you spiritual fulfillment and happiness is to ask yourself a simple question: what makes me happy? 

Then, do it. 

Problems in life are a guarantee not a possibility. Being in a state of mind which is present and energized is the most preferable state to be in to conquer such a reality. I mentioned earlier briefly that living for others will erode your identity that will make you depressed or anxious, both of which have a subtle effect that is detrimental to your presence. Both anxiety and depression remove you from the moment. They launch you into a thought-space which orbits within the ego shaped reality removing you from this world we've been blessed into.

While we drive, we worry how our boss will react to the reports we submitted the previous week. Or right before going to sleep, we walk by our unwashed week-old work clothes piled in the corner dreading the fact we're going to do it all again at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow. All of which were pure selections from my precious working memories. But I have a feeling my coworkers shared the same experience when they told me about it the next morning before we started work. 

All of this brings me back to our stupid, loveable best friends. Our dogs never think too hard about matters of the past or future. Unattached to concern, they earn a freedom that allows them to be whimsical as we all once were as kids. They light up at the possibility of play time, the next meal, or simply seeing the face of their friend returning home after a long workday. I'm not suggesting that we all go find ourselves an owner to feed us and watch us while we take a shit.

What I'm saying is that being intentional and patient when selecting a career and doing what you love is worth its time in gold. And until you are in the position where you find that thing you love, spending a little time playing fetch with a dog instead of work, wouldn't hurt.