My path has not been clear

Chances are yours won't be either

My path has not been clear. By some objective measures, I guess I’m considered a success now. I have a marvelous family, a strong marriage, healthy children, and colleagues who make me laugh. When you imagine your life for yourself, you tend to think in straight lines, a kind of this then that thinking, as if Google were mapping out the most sensible and time-efficient life route.

But man.

That has not been me.

There was a time when if you told me to get from point A to B, I might have driven backward, one left foot on the brakes, right foot pressing the peddle to the floor until all I could see was smoke, and all I could hear was the screaming engine. 

What does an engine scream?

“You’re doing it wrong, dumbass.”

When I graduated from college, I moved from Madison to Chicago. I was going to be an actor. I did some improv. Some movies. I got just enough work to ensure that I was unemployable as anything other than a bartender (or waiter). And I did just enough bartending to ensure I had a pretty limited skill set beyond making your martini. (If you drank at Rhapsody in 2002, chances are I served you. You better have left a big tip.) 

I had a lot of friends going on to grad school, getting their MBAs, MD’s. Big jobs. Big plans. Nice cars. I rode the bus. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife!) had just moved back from L.A., and since I thought, you know, she might be THE ONE, I wasn’t going to pass her in the airport while I chased my acting dream out to L.A.

But I needed a better job, so I quit acting and bartending and talked my way into my old friend’s job as a law clerk.  I ran papers over to the courthouse. Got people’s lunch. Low stakes, low pressure. Sweet.

Sure, you’re going to tell me that that’s what your twenties are for. Trying this thing. Trying another. Experimenting, basically.

Kinda. But not really.

My easy law clerk job? About halfway through the year, Holland and Knight acquired the law firm, and my job went from fetching coffee to working very closely with a partner who led the bankruptcy group. 

I remember walking around those too-bright offices, listening to the whir of the copying machine and the dissatisfied grunts of partners who had spent too many hours at their desks while the calcium drained from their bones. I mean, these were 60, 70-year-olds working eighty hours a week. Sure, they were making money, but it didn’t seem like the way to live. 

I went out to lunch one day with the other law clerks. We bitched. We moaned. We talked about how little money we were making.

I remember sitting there holding my sandwich as I learned that every single person at that table was making more money than me. 

Not twice as much. 

Two to three times as much! I was earning $27k a year. They were earning $70k+.

I could barely afford my rent.

I finished my food, got up, walked back to the giant tower in which we worked, knocked on the door of HR, and asked for a raise. Another $10k.  Just to get me by until I left for law school.

And no, this isn’t a story of only getting what you want when you learn to ask for it. I remember what the woman in HR said. Almost word for word.  

She said, “You get paid based on how long you’ve worked here.”

Not for skill. Not for creating efficiencies. Not for generating revenue. 

For how many years my butt sat in a seat. 

That was the most valuable raise I never got because it taught me an expensive lesson, one that I’m happy I learned at 24 and not 34. 

People will steal your time. 

But more importantly, you yourself will steal your time. We spend our days in jobs that lead us nowhere closer to the dreams we may or not be hiding from ourselves.  As Meg Jay says, we should, at the very least, do  “something that's an investment in who [we] might want to be next.” 

But “what about exploring my options?” you ask.

That dead-end job I was working? It wasn't exploration; it was procrastination.

And notice the order of events in that anecdote I just told you. I knew that job wasn’t for me. Did I quit? Heck no. I complained about it over a crappy sandwich and then asked for a small increase in my poverty wages. 

What was I thinking?!

Sometimes the universe kicks you in the ass. Sometimes that kick in the ass comes in the form of a middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit and a rage-inducing smirk.

I’d like to tell you that I quit that job on the spot, polished up my resume, and landed a six-figure job three floors up. But, of course, those are Hollywood stories. 

In reality, I moved to the Bay Area, decided I wanted to be paid based on results and skill (HELLO REAL ESTATE!), then sent out resumes for six months, flying on the freeway, driving an hour and a half each way, and working as a receptionist at another office. 

I fetched coffee. I made copies. If it wasn’t a felony, I did it. 

But man, was that the job! Never have I argued so forcefully to work so hard for so little pay. That job put me on the path to where I am today. Where I get paid for the value of the decisions I make, not the time my butt is in a seat. 

More about that job next week.

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