You can't always get what you want.
But, if you try sometimes.
You just might find.
You get what you need.
- The Rolling Stones
Smart words from one of the world's greatest rock bands. Sometimes the unplanned may be the thing that you were seeking all along.
The last several months, I've been searching. Searching for something. I didn't know what... and to be honest, I still am not sure. But whatever IT is, it involves change. Working for a large corporation,
carrying a bag as a quota-bearing sales guy, doing work that I am good, or at least decent, at, but not passionate about, has been troubling me for some time. Everyday I would get up and put on the suit that increasingly felt like it belonged to someone else. Like I was putting on a facade, a mask, that wasn't the real me... just the persona that I took on to be successful at my job. And when the day ended, I shed the
skin as quickly as possible. But, as anyone whose ever had a corporate sales job knows, oftentimes the day never really ends. Working in a high-tempo, workholism-promoting, take-your-laptop-on-vacation, do-I-even-take-a-vacation, numbers-driven organization eventually wears on even the toughest, hardest-working folks. "Nice job... great deal that you closed. So... what you forecasting next quarter?"
Triathlon and endurance sports in general provided the pressure release valve, allowing me to maintain some sanity. An hour run or swim and then back to the Blackberry, the email, the sales calls, the proposal writing and the forecast reports. But, eventually even the daily, sometimes twice daily, workouts didn't do the trick. Staying up way too late working and then even when I put my head down, thoughts of things I didn't get done, emails I didn't return swirled in my head. Sure, it's put some nice dollars in the bank account, but what are the dollars worth if I'm constantly preoccupied with earning them? After 13 years of doing this... these questions kept popping into my head, and it became pretty clear to me that something had to give.
Yet, I was resistant to it. "There are worse things I could be doing", I told myself. "People do a lot more for a lot less", I repeated to myself. And let's face it, San Diego isn't a cheap place to live, certainly not with a family of four. But I increasingly have felt like a slave to the things we own and have to pay for.
My wife, bless her soul, has seen this for a long time and encouraged me that we should bail out, take a break. Shakabuku, she called it. (John Cusack fans might remember that line from Grosse Pointe Blanke. "Shakubuku... it's a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever"). But bail out and do what, I countered.
So, she started looking for jobs, some here in San Diego, and some, against my protestations, not. And, as fate would have it, she landed a dream job in her home state of West Virginia, working as a director of sales for a large golf resort and hotel. Her family is close by and the cost of living is about half what it is here in Southern California... allowing me the freedom to take a step back and rediscover some purpose and passion.
The relief I had been seeking has arrived. It is bittersweet, to be sure, to leave such a beautiful place with friends and family close by. But we grow through change and I am excited about the upcoming adventure.