Tag: career

Crimping the Crust

This metaphor may be a stretch. However, I have lately started to compare my life to an apple pie. Not my absolute favorite pie but apple pie is among the top ten pies I love and easiest for most to identify with.

So let’s say our lives start out with your standard issue pie pan. Round and made out of glass or metal and in the case of one pan I have – cast iron. That one is a doozy.

The bottom crust is the environment you are poured into at birth: your family, your environment, the house you live in, whether you have or don’t have grandparents and extended family, and whether you have or don’t have money. All of these extraneous factors contribute to how you mature and grow.

Some elements are positive and support your growth. Like attentive grandparents or a kid-safe and friendly neighborhood with good schools and lots of activities to take part in. Your parents’ ability to pick and choose what you can experience is based on a lot of these things.

Other bottom crusts are not so nurturing. There not be enough money. The parents may have to work multiple jobs just to keep body and soul together. The kids’ needs get scanted or are simply not there. And add to that any afflictions: addiction, mental health issues, or a neighborhood awash in crime and violence.

Kids learn in this environment, too. But the lessons learned in this environment are usually more focused on survival and managing the negatives in their environment than striving for personal growth and maturity.

The filling is your life. As you get to adulthood, you begin to pick and choose what to put in your pie. Apples is an obvious choice. But you pick a career. A spouse. A home. A community. Your choices are more or less based on what the bottom crust of your life was.

People tend to stay in the same socio-economic group they were born into. Though the choices being made are shifting dramatically, people usually picked spouses from the same race or culture they came from and the opposite gender. That is all up for grabs and discussion these days. I am talking about a certain demographic.

As we mature and grow in our jobs, our marriages, and our communities, our choices may be challenged to conform more closely to who we are. Switching careers in mid-life. Choosing to end an unsatisfactory marriage. Maybe marriage to the wrong person and gender in line with who you really are.

As the filling is being made, there may be all kinds of additions and subtractions over the years like that which goes into any kind of baking or building. As we sift through life and get more certain about what stays and what goes, what works and what doesn’t – exclusively for us – our apple pie may be very different from someone else’s apple pie. Even though the basic ingredients are the same.

Eventually – if we’re lucky – we get to a point where we are comfortable putting on the upper crust and closing the pie to ready it for baking. We know who we are. The important choices have all been made. We allow into our lives who and what works for us. We kindly but firmly resist the intrusion of people, things, and experiences that we know will not serve us.

We get better at discriminating between what works and reinforces what is important to us and what doesn’t. Eventually, we learn we are satisfied enough and comfortable enough to stop striving and start fully enjoying our lives.

We crimp the crust of the pie – our lives – and contain what is important and reject what isn’t. Of course, this is not a perfect science. It is a crazy metaphor. The pie can fall and shatter. The crust might burn in spite of putting aluminum around the edges to protect it.

But lately, I have been thinking of it more and more about my life this way. I have put apples and raisins and walnuts and butter and brown sugar in the filling of my life. I am at the stage where I am ready to crimp the edges of the crust and enjoy the final product.

Crazy as the metaphor may be, I love apple pie. My mouth is watering at the thought. That suggests a life tolerably well-lived to me.

Playing The Long Game

Many people are searching for “the meaning of life.” It is the biggest of all mysteries. The big question seeks an answer: “Why are we here?” Ultimately solving that mystery comes down to finding an answer that makes sense to us. We learn what matters to us by how we spend our days and find meaning in doing what we love. Spending time in a way that generates consistent rewards and satisfaction is our challenge and life’s work.

Each day, most of us get up, make coffee, pull out our daily “to-do” lists, and saddle up. I used to moan about going to jobs I didn’t like until I came across this reframing: “We don’t have to do this. We GET to do it.”

I learned that every menial, boring, petty job I had prepared me for something else. I was a demonstrator at Walmart as a teenager. I showed the public the great merits of Duralex glasses, spray-on shoeshine, and mandoline food slicers.

I learned the fine art of “salespersonship/manipulation.” I was taught to make a small pyramid out of 8-ounce Duralex drinking glasses. I’d put them in a stiff cardboard box with four sides: three glasses at the bottom, then two, with one on top. Sort of like a teeny-tiny cheerleading squad formation.

I would hand customers a soft rubber ball inviting them to “knock the pyramid down” “to prove their durability. “See?” I would chortle. “They are unbreakable,” Except when they weren’t. One or more of the glasses might shatter and occasionally they did break into little pieces. I would quickly dive in with my backup pitch.

“See? They do not break into shards like ordinary glass. They shatter into small pieces. Like a car windshield. They are so much safer than other glasses. Imagine how they would protect your family? Especially the little ones?” Duralex glasses flew off the shelf. No one wants their precious babies getting nasty and preventable cuts.

It took years to accept what humility has taught me. There were many jobs I took but I felt were “beneath me.” Some were. And others underutilized my capabilities. I eventually learned “How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Human resources types generally like to see a seamless work history with few gaps in a resume, for example. Employers are wary of workforce-age adults taking any more than two weeks a year out from employment to pursue something “frivolous” like travel. Any gap during my working years was judged as suspicious.

I worked for a manager in the federal government who had joined its ranks at 17 years old. He signed up right out of high school and had no post-secondary education. He never traveled farther away than his nearby cottage.

He took no courses except those that were necessary to keep up his job skills. He retired in his mid-50s with a full government pension and then got himself rehired as a consultant at an exorbitant daily rate. Double dipping it is called. Good planning I call it.

I know me and doubt I could have taken that route even if the opportunity had been presented. The term soul-crushing exists for a reason. I look back with gratitude at the many breaks and deviations from my work path. I wrote stories and sometimes they paid for my trip. My writing credentials got me into high-ticket conferences for free. I was exposed to great learning and then got paid for it. That was sweet.

I have landed in a place of security and stability and age-appropriate adventure. Travel was always worth it. Wise people advise you to focus on cultivating relationships with your friends and family as you live your life. At the end, they are what really matters.

The career, the fancy job titles, and the status and prestige may all dry up and blow away. Then you are left with only yourself and with your loved ones. If you are lucky.

So if your workstyle is Type A, overachieving, or workaholic, sit down and have a little chat with yourself and maybe ask why. Those sales stats and successful cases aren’t going to bring you a cup of tea when it most matters. Somewhere along the way, I feel I was lucky enough to have learned that.

Relying on “work” to stick with you for the duration isn’t realistic to count on. I think I started to learn that right around the time I learned the duplicitous claims of Duralex glasses “unbreakability.” The other claim I have refuted is that a secure if soul-deadening, nine-to-five job is the best path for everyone. If I hadn’t taken that dumb job at Walmart, I wouldn’t have had this story to tell.