THE CAREER BEAST
(January/February 2005 Issue)

What can we do with this word "career"? It animates all of our working energies. One is supposed to "have a career", that is, an organic entity that plays itself out as a unified sequence of events, building toward some magnificent crescendo of achievement. Crescendo, schmendo,. A career is more like a wildebeast that we park in the family room upon sleeping. The moment we wake up, the beast wants to be fed. It is merciless. "Feed me. Feed me." The career beast wants accomplishments, awards, money, ribbons of honor, and as much status as possible.

"Unified" indeed. The career beast is often a diverse and unconnected series of events. Furthermore, that is as it should be. The present has nothing to do with the future because the future does not exist. We want a "career" so that we can look back one glorious day upon our "record of achievement". One eye always on one’s resume. Each event leading inexorably to the next. Balderdash. The sooner we get away from this linear thinking, the sooner we can be in the present moment with our day’s work and savor the maximum joy of living in the now. A career as a "cumulative record of achievement" is Ego-driven. It seeks external approval. "Career" is wedded to the idea that we are the applause we receive. Feed me, Feed me, and I will slave away to receive your plaudits. The lure of career achievement is what keeps people in their professions or jobs long past when they stop enjoying them. Gathering up the awards and reveling in the status, never mind the sinking feeling that one wants to be doing something else and time is slipping away.

The work that you wanted to do at 25 is not what you want to do at 40. Hopefully, you made changes to reflect this. If not, you may be walking through the molasses of your resume. Trying to show that you have the experience to advance in your "field". What if you have no "experience" to support what you want to do now? We teach our clients about the transferability of skills, but often they are intimidated by the idea that they might be able to escape (get free of) their past experience rather than build on it.

Of course, everything we do develops skills that we put to use later, in the most disparate fields of work. The idea is to not feel inhibited by the cultural myth that you are obligated to have a single career. The career beast gives out the message that one has lost something in changing one’s work. Not true. In fact, those who leave accountancy for carpentry or forsake restaurant management for quilt-weaving are stronger, more resourceful, and more courageous than the average bears. They are responding to their inner voices and slaying the beast of cumulative achievement. There must be plenty of doctors, lawyers, and business executives who stay in their work and suffer the pain of not wanting to be there, but they stay because of the money, the status, or their own inertia. How many of them have bad health or even die prematurely because their bodies take on the burden of unwanted work days?

We wear our careers on our sleeves. From the time family members ask: "What are you going to be?", people feel pressured to have a single-direction, unified career. Anything less is regarded as un-American. This is a cultural straight-jacket. It bludgeons people into "staying on track" when they want to fly away.
Since the word "career" will not go away, I recommend that you, I, and your clients take our so-called "careers" one day at a time. Wake up in the morning, muzzle and starve the career beast waiting in the family room, and decide: "What shall I do today?" Without any thought of what you did yesterday or the day before. What feels right today? And then go forth and do it. Next day, same question. Not chained to your past. Not burdened with your future. Just being here today.

Howard Figler, Ph.D., is the author of seven books, including The Complete Job-Search Handbook [third edition, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1999], a best seller for many years. He is co-author [with Richard Bolles] of the Career Counselor's Handbook [Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA, 1999]. His most recent book is Keys to Liberal Arts Success [Prentice-Hall, 2002]. He can be reached at: Howard Figler, Ph.D., and Associates, 9542 Shumway Drive, Orangeville, CA 95662 USA.
Tel: 916-988-6464;
e-mail: hefigler@pacbell.net.