What Color Is Your Parachute?
A long time ago, a heavy-hitting television producer asked me, “What do you really want to do?” I was at a loss. I knew this was a legitimate career opportunity. Our conversation had moved beyond chitchat when he learned we shared the same last name, and lasted long enough for him to develop an interest in elevating the position of someone who might be a fifth cousin. He certainly didn’t think that stocking the editing suites with bagels and taking a client’s not-yet-housebroken puppy outside, or at least as far as the stairwell, was what I really wanted to do.
My official job title at the postproduction facility in Santa Monica where this producer was a client was “concierge”. If an employee of any level, a client, a client’s guest, or a client’s pet, needed something, it was usually my job to take care of it. That meant any number of menial tasks, like making copies, delivering videotapes, disinfecting phones, or answering them while the receptionist was at lunch, had a hand modeling gig or was giving a traffic report from a helicopter. But the duties I associated with the job more than any other were stocking the editing suites with muffins and bagels every morning and interrupting editing sessions every afternoon to offer fresh-baked cookies. I lived a double life. In the morning I was Bagel Boy. In the afternoon I grew up and became Cookie Man.
So, finally, here was someone who could make the bagels disappear with a snap of his fingers, and all I had to do was answer one simple question: What do you really want to do?
My answer? “I don’t know.”
He probably assumed I would tell him I wanted to direct features or sell a sitcom pilot, but if my answer had been, “It’s been my lifelong dream to be a human cannonball,” I’m certain he would have told me he knew someone at Ringling Brothers. Even if I had said I wanted to be a halal butcher, rodeo clown or eyebrow threader, I’m sure he could have made a call. I’m telling you, the guy was connected.
My answer to his question, while devoid of substance, was honest. I really didn’t know. I was twenty-seven and had no clue what I wanted to do. What I did know is that whatever that might be, I wasn’t doing it. The only part of my Waspy upbringing that I hadn’t rejected or been able to outgrow was a skewed sense of what professional life was supposed to look like. I didn’t know what I wanted in a job, but I did know what I didn’t want. There were to be no jobs that required me to wear a uniform or name tag. Attaching something to my belt, like a collection of keys, a pager or bear spray, was a non-starter, as was a button that said “Lose weight. Ask me how”. Help wanted ads containing words or phrases such as science, math, skill, working knowledge, desire or highly motivated got an immediate pass. I didn’t know what HVAC meant, but I didn’t need to. If I ever did come up with a workable plan to find a job, any job, the part of my brain that controlled my social confidence shut down like the power grid in Cuba. I lost the ability to perform simple tasks necessary for successful job hunting, like dialing a phone, knocking on doors, making eye contact, forming coherent sentences and breathing.
When I was much, much younger I had a serious career goal. It was a trifecta I had never seen before, but I vowed to be the first person I knew to be a fireman, a cowboy and an astronaut. Unfortunately, my ambition died in kindergarten. My work life since then has been punctuated by long periods of unemployment and a lifetime of underemployment. I worked for a screen printer in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco for eight weeks without ever getting paid. My very next job was for the American arm of an Italian bicycle manufacturer at half of the advertised salary. When, after two weeks of working there, I finally asked my boss how much I was being paid. He cited my lack of experience and showed me a number he had typed into his calculator that was a little more than half the advertised salary. He just couldn’t bring himself to say the words “Twelve thousand dollars per year”.
I got my first full-time teaching job in Seattle because the teacher I was subbing for was experiencing a slower and more difficult recovery from breast cancer than anyone had anticipated. The only reason I was able to keep the job for the next school year was because another teacher had a heart attack and died in her classroom. Twice, I was fired after I had already quit. I was un-hired from a teaching job in New Mexico before I had worked a single day. My longest tenure at any job, four years, was supposed to last only seven weeks. My shortest, also one of my first, was sorting catalogs at a bulk mailing facility in Milwaukee where I endured one soporific, soul-sucking shift. I would have left at lunch, but I feared Manpower wouldn’t approve the four hours on my timesheet and I’d be out thirteen bucks. That was the same year I was hired at a ski shop in Aspen late one afternoon, then packed up and left town a couple hours later.
Thirty years on, I’m no further along than I was back then. That’s a hard pill to swallow. If that producer were to ask me today what I really want to do, the answer I would give him is the one I should’ve given him back then: “Go surfing whenever I want.” He would have said, “Anything for a cousin,” and made a phone call.