Blog — Wood and Branch

Personally, I think the trick to this and many others is choice. We’ve always been taught that to have choice is to have freedom, and choice is what our parents want us to have when they say “you can do anything”, but it doesn’t necessarily mean freedom. In fact numerous philosophers, past and current, believe that having too many choices actually takes away from our freedom. That, seems to be the dilemma for those millennials out there trying to get more meaning from their career and their life by choosing not to fall into a typical desk job, and as a result, feel stuck. The desk job and choice are the same because they’re both difficult places to be in, so here’s the first choice, are you going to embrace having too many choices, living without a definite path, maybe little to no income, and feeling like your stuck in indecision for an undetermined amount of time? Or fall into the job that makes you feel stuck because you thought that choice had no impasse and that this was your only option.

Another challenging choice we have, is to choose whether or not we directly compare age to career. These are, apart from their obvious societal connections, two very different concepts, and neither should be given substantial power over how we see the other. For instance, I’m 28. When I realized this, I immediately started to stress about where I am in life, no career, no house, no children. Why do I think this way? It definitely isn’t because these were my personal goals coming out of the womb. It's because since being born, I have been expected to have this much career [ ] at [ ] this age.

But if we choose not to get overwhelmed as we watch our age rise and not directly correlate it with a career, we can spend more energy on looking at what we have done by the age of 30, where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, and how many options there are from here, instead of how many raises and promotions we’ve had and how many more we strive to achieve in the linear career based timeline we create for ourselves. I mean, of course you’re not where you saw yourself at 30 when you were 12. That’s because people told you what you were suppose to be when you were 30, and now, instead of people telling you what you should be doing at 30, you’re deciding what incredible things your going to do with your 30’s.

Okay, but we all need money and to generally fit within society so we can live our lives. Sure. But I already know, that a career in any one thing will not satisfy any one passion of mine, great enough, that it will, alone, fulfill my life with joy and happiness. So, that means I need to look at how I can earn a living to ensure that the type of life I live, outside of work, makes me happy. That the work I do, is fulfilling, but more importantly that it allows me to live the KIND of life I want to live. I’m talking about freedom to sail my boat and visit my family without permission. A life where holidays aren’t so segregated from my regular life, that travel and time off, blends into my everyday. I don’t want my entire year to ride on the excitement of two weeks vacation. That is my choice. Now I need to figure out how to make that happen. Finally, this type of life is what I’m passionate about, and with passion, comes hard work and motivation.

A happy, exciting life is my career, and my job is my two week limited holiday.

If you spend your life only looking at one option to fulfill your life, namely, what kind of work you do and what you should be doing by a certain age, you may have to choose to think differently, and with choice, also comes a limitation in freedom. So remember, when your stuck, and people are telling you to quit trying to find your passion and get to work, that it’s just as hard to have choice, but on the other side, is a greater life for yourself. Don’t sell yourself short. A life well lived can be just as difficult and frustrating as a desk job, but has so much more value (just not always monetarily). Embrace the indecision, and the freedom that doesn’t always feel like freedom.