Career

While wandering around Evernote today, I came across this note from my mother.  It was one of the multitude of little sayings that she kept stuck around in her life, and out of all of those that I disposed of when we cleaned out her house, I actually kept this one.  I guess that when I ran across it when cleaning, it meant something to me and today once again, it truly spoke to me in its own simple way.  It aligned with the thing that my father had always told me about work and career.  He said that he would rather have me be a good ditch digger than a rotten attorney.  At this point, I see how my parents came together and worked together to build a life, all summed up on this little piece of paper and a few words.

Over all of the years that I have worked in various industries and jobs, I know that I have been challenged, not only by my friends, but also at times by myself to answer the question:  "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  I'm sure many of us in this generation have been challenged with these words and I'm equally sure that there have been times that we aren't able to answer this question. 

And this note from the past comes to me today and it all seems to be so much clearer.  It isn't about saying that you will be the best neurosurgeon in the world, although it might be.  It is more about saying that I will be the best that I can be at whatever I am doing ... period. Maybe it is about being the best pastry chef, or artist, or curler.  It need not be something that the world can identify, it is only important that you can identify it. 

I think of Jack.  Jack came to work for me in a lumberyard in Des Moines in 1985-1986.  He'd never worked anywhere before and was challenged intellectually.  I remember that I struggled with teaching him that there was always something to do and that standing around watching others work was not what I needed from him.  After a couple of months, we had figured out that he was the best "sweeper" in the place.  He would start at the beginning of a shift and would clean and sweep continuously until it was time to go home.  He became a great employee.

Then came the day he came in to tell me that he had a chance for a different job.  There had been a position with the West Des Moines schools for a sanitary engineer.  He found out about the job and told them he would be interested and they offered the position to him.  But he needed to tell me that he was going to go somewhere else.  I thought that he was going to have a heart attack.  For me of course, there was only one thing to do, offer him my best wishes and good luck.  That was the right thing to do.  And now, as I think about it, Jack was headed off into his career.  Not a career that a lot of people would think about that way, but one that Jack absolutely would.  I even remember, as he tried to tell me about the job saying, "Oh Jack, you are going to be a Sanitary Engineer", and him explaining to me that I was wrong ... he was going to be a janitor.

The number of years that have passed and the fact that he was a little older than I, tell me that he has probably retired at this point. Unless I miss my bet, he probably retired from the West Des Moines School district as a janitor.  Good for him. 

Sometimes we all get caught up in the terms that the world uses to describe who we are or what we do.  Maybe it is important for all of us to ask ourselves if we are happy, challenged, and comfortable in our job.  Does that make it a career rather than a job?  I'm not sure.  You will each have to think about that.

I have a bunch of examples in my life of people that were very important to me, employed in ways the world would have considered a job, but they considered a career.  My grandfather worked for Keokuk County for close to twenty years - hauling rock and pushing snow in the winter.  I know he considered that a career, not just a job.

Well, I am going to close for the week, just a little more satisfied in the way that I look at what I have done.  There are others that do what I do better, but I am pretty good at it.  It is my career, and it has certainly been a lifeboat for me over the years.  I will bet that there are some of you that feel the same way.

Have a nice weekend.