everything

I have been relatively successful in life, for a number of reasons, including getting lucky quite a few times.

But I was not born to it, and I certainly didn't emerge from any step with a golden spoon in my mouth. I went to a “university” that doesn't appear on any rankings (it is now called PennWest but when I went it was Edinboro University of Pennsylvania). My majors, computer science and mathematics, had a combined 5 graduates the year I graduated. Only 1 was from computer science, and he was in his 6th year of attendance, to give you a sense of the place.

When I was in college, I wanted an internship. My sophomore year, I decided to apply to a cool looking National Science Foundation (NSF) internship at a university in Alaska. I also decided to tell a friend of mine about it, who went to a better school. He also applied. You can guess what happened next: he got the internship and went to Alaska, and I stayed in Edinboro working as a dishwasher at the local café.

The next year, I was determined. I applied to 17 NSF internships all across the country, including that same one. I was accepted into 2 of them, but not the one in Alaska. No big deal. I attended one in Alabama and it was awesome. I was hooked. I also realized later, what if I had applied to only 15 internships, and neither of the 2 I had gotten? Was I lucky, or did I make my own luck there?

Success after that became easier. I've found that once you have a big name like NSF on your resumé, future applications tend to go in your favor at a much higher rate. From that point forward, I basically traded up in my career until I reached a pinnacle of sorts, which is a mostly uninteresting story to be quite honest.

Today, the person that shows up to work is not that person that was constantly trading up, climbing, reaching for more and more. Today, I work to live, to be with my family, to have the money to travel with them, and spend time with them. I work to be able to provide a nice place to live for all of us, and to have time to maintain my health and fitness so I can age gracefully.

When I mentor people at work now, I have to caution them not to use me as an example for themselves at a younger age and earlier career stage, at least if they intend to move up in their career. If they had met the me that was climbing, they wouldn't recognize that person as the same person they are talking to today. Now, I'm not applying to 17 of anything. I have what I need, and I'm no longer striving for career success.

It has been tricky, downshifting in my career. I have gone through a period of wondering what to do with myself. I took a full year off to try to detox from the career madness. After a couple years in this new state, I feel a lot more comfortable with myself again, and I have evolved a new identity that doesn't center around work. It is possible. But I will say that career striving for 10+ years does change you, and you will not be able to turn it off like a light switch. It takes time and effort.

There are probably a number of years of striving, and an age at which you are still striving, past which you may not be able to turn it off. I had a lot of fear about this when I was younger, what if I work so hard I am not me any more? What if I work so hard for freedom, that I lose the desire for it? I don't think this is an idle concern, having observed so many people who are still striving at 50, 60 years old, clearly unhappy, clearly unhealthy, and seemingly never having enough.

I'm in a new season of life, and I'm okay with it. What season of life are you in, and are you intentional about it?

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.

Heller responds,“Yes, but I have something he will never have — ENOUGH.”