Career Planning

It's a beautiful day. I'm working outdoors. My chair is lodged creatively on a rocky landing, twenty feet above the Shenandoah River, where I can look out at the river's seductive, calming flow. The morning sun sparkles on the tumbling water, creating flashes of crystallized light shining on the water, like glittering fireflies twinkling in an evening sky. I feel the heat of the sun breaking through the leafy canvas of sheltering birches above. A cool breeze wafts across the water, carrying the faintest hint of river oysters, broken open on the rocks by otters during the night. A snapping turtle suns himself on the bank of the river's opposite shore, some 100 feet away. I hear the flapping of a heron's wings, as he skims across the water and lifts into the air. In the distance, the caw-cry of a baby hawk summons its mother. The rabbit by the clover patch scurries out of sight. This is my life now, through the four seasons, in a cabin wedged between the river and the George Washington National Forest. My husband lies on the deck, sunning himself in his swimming trunks, while listening to Mozart. The gray cat yawns, and stretches out in the shade of a wheelbarrow.

I am working today, doing what I love, surrounded by my pleasures: nature, the forest, the river, the wildlife, the gardens, and good food. I am healing, through herbs and simple pleasures, from a lifetime of ambition and stress. I support my healing lifestyle by operating a home-based business, centered on my talents and interests. I use technology, so that I can live simply. I don't need a vacation, because my whole life is a vacation. Confucius tells us when we do what we love, we are not working.

It wasn't always this way. Ten years ago, I was a corporate executive in a high tech business. I had 300,000 Frequent Flyer miles on United Airlines that year, but I had no use for them, because I lost all desire to fly anywhere. Monday mornings, I left my children in the care of their father and a live-in nanny, and boarded a plane to travel for my work. The job was stimulating, exciting, competitive, and aggressive. I loved the rush of the "win." I hated the dull deadness of a dreary routine, so I kept pushing for that next fix of competitive enlightenment. Then one morning, I woke up knowing it was over. I didn't want to do it any more. My drive stalled. My ambition fizzled. I just did not want to breathe one more stale puff of airplane air. I did not want to sleep in one more hotel bed, eat one more restaurant meal, or defeat one more hapless corporate competitor. From a career standpoint, I was finished.

Maybe it was that second baby. Two kids in diapers can really wear out a weekend. But, it could just as easily have been the cough that developed from the airplane air, the MSG in the restaurant food, or the cracked porcelain and leaky faucets in the hotel bathrooms. Maybe it was just burnout. Regardless of the reason, I stopped wanting to do the job for which I was being paid. I couldn't continue. I asked for a transfer, and received it.

My new job was more normal. Come to work, push some papers around, watch the clock, follow the rules, make meaningless small talk, go home at 5. Lots of people do jobs like that every day. While my new job offered the opportunity for a home life, it also included a two-hour round trip commute through bumper-to-bumper city traffic daily. As a result, I still left home before 7 and returned after 6. The job still exhausted my patience and drained my energy. It still kept me from my children during the key moments of their lives. It still aggravated my sensibilities and drove me to think unkind thoughts about certain of my co-workers. In fact, except for the traveling, the biggest difference between my new job and my old job seemed to be that I no longer had the option to spend my after-work hours at Happy Hour in a hotel bar in a faraway city. Now, the aggression that built up during my workday got into my car and drove home with me! It was still inside, when I came into the house where my husband and children lived!

Even worse, I knew inside that my formerly promising career was now diverted to the outlands called "Mommy Track." I knew my resume would never be perceived the same way again. My career had now been re-directed. My serious quest to bust down the bastions of capitalism and shatter the glass ceiling had transformed into an endless torturous lifetime with a plain, old, ordinary "job." As I rushed home from work, dragging my tired body into the house along with my obligatory black pumps and Brooks Brothers custom-tailored blue suit, my first sight was my 2-year old, his blonde curls sticky with sweat, and his lip bleeding from a fall. He had bitten his tongue, and it looked like we should head to the emergency room. At that moment, I realized I could not leave him, not for a "plain old ordinary job."

Two days later, I would learn that our monthly fixed payment obligations had taken on a life of their own. I counted in horror as I understood that we owed enough money every month to cover half the national average annual salary. My income was larger than my husband's, and the credit companies had opened the spigot for whatever we asked. There would be no way for me to quit my job.

Or,