The Dream Job Doesn’t Exist
So focus on a house of fulfillment when your single-engine passion flares out.
I’ve never had a “dream” job, and I’m not even sure it exists for me. A woman who oscillates between the creative and analytical. A woman on the spectrum who barely survived office culture and the relentless politicking. Maybe I’d make my mark, maybe I’d make a little money but I never felt at home in a company.
Possibly because a house of commerce is not a home. You can’t take the widgets you build and the trinkets bought by assembling those trinkets to the afterlife. Jane Goodall recently said, “My next great adventure at 90 is dying.” Because who wouldn’t want to explore what’s next after the body dies and all the trinkets and toys are left behind. Denis Johnson’s final book was a deeply meditative look at his life, wondering what he’d missed and all the ways in which he could’ve loved more, done more, explored more.
Your colleagues are not family — they’re the other spokes on the wheel that can be easily discarded should earnings nose-dive.
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 the my proximity to them — but also the relief that came from…
