The Pursuit of Life

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Tag: work

THE PURSUIT OF ADVENTURE | A SABBATICAL

Swig Family Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me  – Walt Whitman

We are going on a road trip.  For six months.  We’ve taken leave from work, given our landlord notice and done our best to purge all of our extra belongings.  And so begins an expedition of sorts, an odyssey to explore the West, see where an unstructured life will take us, and give ourselves time to exhale and relax and just be.  Here’s why.

Why Not?!  It seems like a no brainer – if you find yourself with the opportunity to take a sabbatical and put some wanderlusting into action, why on Earth wouldn’t you?  Well, yes.  But it’s so much easier dreamt than done. We, like most of you, have for years heard about those people who have cast aside their responsibilities, sold their belongings and quit their jobs and traveled the world.  And we always thought wow, I wish we could do that.  How lucky those people must be.  And then it hit me about a year ago.  Why not?  For better or worse, I have always been someone who thought: if he can do it, I can do it.  And so we started to really think about it and to think about what we would want to do with some time off.

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The Pursuit of Life | A New Year

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APPROACH THE NEW YEAR WITH RESOLVE TO FIND THE OPPORTUNITIES HIDDEN IN EACH NEW DAY.  – Michael Josephson

I love this quote.  It embodies the fresh start that comes with each new year.  Many people hate New Year’s resolutions, and the typical half-hearted resolutions probably are something to loathe.  But with the start of the new year comes the opportunity to reassess.  To stop and think about the past year, the lessons learned, opportunities taken, opportunities missed, happiness, successes, regrets.  And to evaluate how we’ll take these into the new year.  Rather than making resolutions, I like to take some time to simply be more mindful.  Think about the person that I want to be, where I am currently, and what I can do to continue to grow, learn and thrive.  It’s a good practice to periodically take the time to reevaluate our trajectory, and why not start with the beginning of the year?

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The Pursuit of Happy: Work

Let’s talk about work.  It’s something we all have to do (well, almost all of us, aside from those lucky few).  It is often the activity that we do more than any other activity in our day.  More than spending time with our families, children, friends, more than eating, more than any hobby that we have.  And even more than sleeping.  Yes, partner at my firm who shall not be named but who looked at me like I was insane when I said this:  I spend far more time each day in my office than I do getting the much needed sleep that will keep my brain functioning through that next turn of the merger agreement.  I often spend more hours in any given 24-hour period in my office than I do at all other places in the world outside of that building combined.

Our work/job/career (the name that you give it probably depends how you feel about it) is not only the activity that takes up the biggest part of our day, but it also often takes up the biggest part of our self identity. Our job sometimes [most times?] defines who we are and a huge portion of our self satisfaction, happiness and confidence comes from “what we do for a living.”  Within 10 minutes of meeting someone new, no matter who it is that you are meeting or in what context you have met them, they will almost always ask: so, what do you do?  We’ve all been there.  We all do it.  I am guilty of this just as much as anyone else.  And so with such a big chunk of ourselves wrapped up in our careers, why is it that so many people are not happy or satisfied with their work?  Is it that they like their job function, but don’t like the particular company or organization that they work for?  Or perhaps it is their co-workers, managers or bosses that they don’t like?  Or is it that so many people are simply working for the weekend?  Picking up that paycheck so that they can really live the lives that they love in the book ends of each work week?

The answer to that question, of course, will differ for everyone.  And certainly not everyone is unhappy with his or her job.  But in my circle of friends and in my professional circle, most people would and do report not being fully happy with or fulfilled by their work.

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