T-Minus 3 Days: How NOT To Find Your True Calling

One of the books I read while I was pondering my plan was What Should I Do With My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered The Ultimate Question.

The author, Po Bronson, interviewed fifty people searching for their true callings: everyone from a truck driver to a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The book bears some resemblance to the work of Studs Terkel, but Bronson eschews the tone of impartial observation found in many documentary works. He asks questions, he offers a shoulder to cry on, he meddles. At one point, he even offers one of his subjects a job. The book has a New Agey, San Franciscan feel (Bronson was a famous chronicler of the dot-com boom): non-judgmental, gentle, contemplative.

There's only one thing I really learned from this book. Unfortunately, I can't find the passage so I can properly cite it, but I'll share my paraphrase with you.

In all of Bronson's interviews with his subjects, he found only one commonality among them. The one and only law of finding your true calling:

If you keep doing what you don't like, in order to earn the money to do what you do like, you will never do what you like.

The idea that you'll keep socking away the cash, and then one magical day, you'll unroll that wad of bills, and begin your life in earnest? That NEVER happens.

It's not about the money. It's about fear.

I've learned this principle for myself. I'm leaving my job in three days. The timing of this event is due to a confluence of factors: a brief lull in my projects at work, the completion of my savings goal, my writing schedule. It's a wonderful moment to begin this endeavor.

But the plan almost didn't happen. Because I nearly fell into the trap of waiting for just one more check. With one more check, I'd buy that widescreen iBook. Or that vacation to South Africa. Or two more months of living expenses. And then you get the check. And then it begins all over again. My mathematician friends, well-acquainted with induction as a way of proving theorems, were the first to point out the infinite nature of this cycle.

I was afraid of leaving. I was telling myself that I was merely thinking about delaying, but I don't know if I was being truthful with myself. At one point, a friend of mine accused me of giving up entirely on the plan. And it wasn't until I had a really bad day (both at work and in my personal life), that I was jolted into action. If it hadn't been for that bad day, I don't believe you would be reading this. Sometimes a bad day is exactly what you need.

I still have at least one more royalty check coming my way, and it's a big one. But I'm walking away just before I get it. Because if there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's that people who wait for that one last score, always get screwed.