What's Life About, Anyway?

My guy often bemoans the fact that when he gets together with his family (every holiday - his mom likes holidays) they seldom talk about things that, in his words, mean something. Big questions, things like what life means, what they honestly think, what ticks them off or delights them in a cosmic sense.

We all get trapped in that mundane conversation sometimes; it's safe. It's unlikely to lead to choppy waters if you stay in the shallows talking about traffic on the highway this morning. And it's deadening.

My daughter was visiting this week and I am happy to say we seldom get stuck in the shallows. She's 21, that age where all the questions are big and the answers are murky. This time her dilemma was one that got me thinking, too. It mirrors my own questions. I bet you've thought about it, too, if you're at all out of step with mainstream culture.

"Should I be planning for a career," she wondered, "or should I be planning for a future that interests me?"

Now don't bother objecting that those don't have to be mutually exclusive; we know. The problem is that for a person who apparently should have been born in the sixties, the professions of today hold little appeal. Lawyer? Economist? Doctor? Teacher? Politician? She sees their value but also sees them as intrinsic parts of a system that she thinks is inherently wrong; a system that holds profitability as its highest value.

She is considering the growing field of sustainability, a place where she sees a possibility of doing work she finds interesting as well as making a positive impact.

But here's the basic problem as she explained it: Do you pursue a career to make money, have a nice place to live and a nice car and spend your life working to hang on to them, or do you create a life that needs little and allows you to breathe, to enjoy the hours of your day and pursue your interests? Do you work in an office and make the big bucks, or do you live on an organic farm commune and dig in the dirt for your keep?

She tells me the organic farm idea is catching on with some kids- it even has an acronym: WOOF. Work On an Organic Farm.

Can you blame them? The job market is atrocious - I listened to an NPR interview with Georgetown law graduates who took on massive student loans anticipating six figure jobs when they graduated. They can't find any. And they think they probably won't; when the economy recovers, the big firms will hire students in that year's graduating class, students who intern with them and who they can train from the start.

So here's my daughter, midway through college, intelligent, idealistic and considering a completely alternative lifestyle. Part of it is the influence of friends, of course, but part of it is something that resonates with her. How do I know? It strikes me, too.

And here's where it gets a bit rattling. I spent my life managing to stay on the fringe of the system; I was a journalist, a teacher, a mom. I was connected, but I never worked in places where I felt immersed in the corporate world. I do now.

I get up early every day, slip into my torturous but very attractive high heels, grab my jacket, slip on my security pass, throw my blackberry into my briefcase and commute to a very nice high rise office where I have a lovely office. I sometimes have to go to New York City and go to our sister office on an upper floor of a very tall building. I am up to my neck in the corporate world.

It's not bad. It's different. The people are great, there's a work ethic and a commitment to doing a good job that I admire. But there are very clear, unwritten laws. Thou shalt not submit anything that has not been edited by at least two other people. Thou shalt maintain a paper trail. Thou shalt always consider any new idea from a dozen angles and vet it through at least that many people. Once part of the system, there is a heavy pressure to not rock the boat, to do a good job without making big waves.

I can understand why. Yet it also stifles creativity. I've heard management almost beg employees for ideas, yet no one wants to stick their neck out and offer one.

And is this where I belong? I rationalize, telling myself that I have spent a lifetime skating across systems that swallow other people, and this is just an interesting and very useful experience that suits my purposes for the moment. I'm still working on radio as well, I'm still writing a book. Who knows what happens once the kids are out of college?

Yet it makes me think about my daughter's question. What's life about? Jobs like mine are about security, making enough money to cover whatever bills exist. Security is a good thing, but it doesn't seem compatible with a life that's full, that's challenging, that's interesting.

And damn it, I demand that of my life. Apparently that's a gene you can pass on to your kids.

So This Is How The Big Kids Do It

Working for a large organization is different. For me, anyway. My experience has been in newsrooms, which resemble nothing so much as classes for gifted kids; everybody's smart, everyone wants to excel, everyone gets excited about the assignments.
Nerds, really. I fit right in.

There are over five hundred people working for my new employer in just my building. There are more in other locations. And the reality of what it means to join them is beginning to sink in. It's an adjustment.

Here's what's the same: the people are smart. They want to do a good job. They buckle down and work on a project with a clear sense of personal investment. That's my experience since I'm here.

What's different is that individual sense of achievement. Everything is done together, projects are divided among several people. There is limited opportunity to just plow into a project and see it through with the knowledge that its failure or success is due to my own efforts. And there is little opportunity to have any personal victories. That's my experience so far, though I see that my job does offer a places to shine.

And what surprises me is that's important to me. I'm not an egotist, or at least I never thought I was. But I love the highwire balancing act that puts me out all alone on the wire, with a chance to crash to earth or step, victorious, to the other side. I won awards for my work in journalism and much as I pooh poohed it, that was really satisfying. My award in this job will be my continued employment. Maybe once in a while someone will say "good job".

I think I'll be okay with that once I'm confident enough of what I'm doing to know when I've done a good job. I at least have to be able to pat myself on the back. Right now, I'm still not even sure of that.

I'm trying. I'll say that. I'm working, I'm learning, I'm proposing ideas and I'm jumping into projects whenever asked. But what a strange feeling to spend an hour racing against the clock to pull together material and not be sure that what you're doing is exactly what's required. And then to get no feedback except that some of it is included in the final product which five people all contributed to.

Am I looking for someone to pat my head and tell me I did well? Yipes. I hope not. But it's possible.