The first albums I remember explicitly asking for for Christmas were Shakira’s Laundry Service and Britney Spears’ Oops… I Did It Again. I was 6. Being the youngest of five children spanning fifteen years has its perks, like hearing Britney when you’re five, thanks to your older sisters, then subsequently asking for (and receiving!) her album. I knew every word to that album two weeks later, and honestly, I think it makes me a well-rounded member of society.
Author’s note: I also knew every word to Shakira’s “Underneath Your Clothes” by age 7, and I want to state on the record that I’ve never been prouder of that.
As a direct result of these gorgeous Christmas gifts from my parents, I decided I wanted to grow up and become a pop star. But like, I actually wanted to be a pop star, and I actually believed, wholeheartedly, that I could do it. I even think I was trying to diligently manifest it or something, seeing as I dressed up as a pop star for Halloween every year from the age of 6 until I stopped trick-or-treating. And even as an adult, I’ve had some choice ‘pop star’ Halloween costumes. I digress. Either way you slice it, from a young age, I was determined to be a star. Call it the Leo in me, call it being the youngest of five kids, or call it feeling deeply misunderstood and invisible for much of my formative years, I knew via Britney and Shakira and Christina that stardom was my ticket out.
And then I grew up. I realized shortly after taking a liking to dancing and baton twirling that—yes—those things would get me out too, but the odds I’d have a career in them were likely slim to none. But something in me never stopped believing I could maybe—just maybe—do what I loved for a living. So, after a few odd jobs and a failed business in my early twenties, I moved to New York City to pursue a career as a Radio City Rockette. I worked with the best dance coach in the biz. I got a job teaching fitness classes. I danced all the time. I worked all the time. I went to dance intensive camps. I bought LaDuca’s. Then, as fate would have it, COVID happened. I moved back to Iowa, went back to NYC to pack up my apartment during summer 2020, and haven’t been back since.
As someone diagnosed late in my twenties with ADHD, it now so clearly makes sense to me why specific careers have struck me as the ones for me. After several people told me I’d likely never be a pop star, I decided medicine was for me. After I took a college-level biology class and thought it was god awful, I decided television and politics were for me. After someone told me I needed to have a science background or I’d never get a job, I got a degree in exercise physiology. After a failed business because I knew nothing about finances, I worked in politics. After that, a barista. After that, a fitness instructor. Lululemon. Wellness coordinator. Bartending. Retail. Business Development. The tech industry. Digital marketing. Content creation. Branding. The list goes on and on. It’s been exhausting, if I’m being frank, this whole career thing. I often find myself wondering about all the kids I went to school with, who tell me they’re just trying to retire as fast as humanly possible, and they don’t care if they love their work or not. I need you to stay with me here when I say this: I desperately wish I were one of them. Every job I have ever even remotely felt lukewarm on, I’ve quit and found something new to pursue. I guess I don’t see the point; we spend roughly 90,000 hours of our lives working… aren’t we supposed to enjoy it? Aren’t we supposed to feel good about the work we do? Shouldn’t we feel like we’re helping people? These are all questions that require deep untangling, since they’re nestled next to privilege, capitalism, White supremacy, and patriarchy. If it were that easy, everyone would do it. Everyone would be a pop star.
Truthfully, I’ve always been pretty confused about the whole “finding our life’s purpose” thing. It’s weird; I feel like I knew what that meant when I was a kid, that people really weren’t lying when they said, “You can be anything you want when you grow up!” Which, in hindsight, is another way we’ve been conditioned to believe our work is all that matters; that our vocation is the thing that makes us whole or worthy of existing. It’s generally why cocktail party conversations begin with, “So, what do you do?” (In which case, if you’re wondering, I sit there and chuckle politely as I say, “A lot of things,” which is code for: by neurotypical work standards, I lack discipline, motivation, and decision-making capabilities, so I’ve had every fucking job you can think of, Bill.)
This is all an insane privilege, by the way. That’s a prominent and essential note. It’s an insane privilege to even think of your work this way when we’ve just seen the highest unemployment rates in recent history. It’s a privilege to view your work through the lens of needing it to be something you’re passionate about, something you enjoy. Most people are just trying to get by. Most people just want to have a job so they can exist. But this is the American Dream, right? We are told we can have everything, yet there’s support for nothing. You can have, be, and do it all… if you’re straight, white, male, and have a trust fund. You can dream your biggest dream… until you’re 9.
As time went on, layers and layers of beliefs got piled on top of me, saying, “Well, be realistic…” or “That’s never going to work” or my personal favorite: “You’re not good enough for that.” I feel like, as a fresh thirty-year-old, my generation’s (and hell, likely most generations’) life purposes are defined not by inspiration or imagination, but by survival… and maybe always have been. That we’ve never really had the choice to choose anything but this… but work that gives us a paycheck that we then disperse to the appropriate companies who keep our lights on. It’s what you’ll find when you arrive at the intersecting roads of capitalism, imagination, and the birth location lottery: you’ll find that there’s a choice. There’s always a choice. And Robert Frost’s old white ass didn’t mention student loans or food deserts or a swift ascent into fascism. The options are as follows: to cling for dear life to the dream you have, or to give in to the Western world’s demands, which, uh, by the way, includes *jazz hands* survival! I’m hesitant to adopt this thinking entirely, too… to believe it’ll be this way forever, that I have absolutely no agency in this equation. My privilege certainly plays an enormous role in this, but my stubborn nature, maybe even more so.
I’ve always had this deeply innate jealousy for people who have stayed in the same careers for a prolonged period, or even just worked for the same company for a long time. Every time I leave a job, leave a company, or start over, I feel a deep sense of failure. I have rinsed & repeated far too many times in the corporate world, telling myself “This will absolutely be the last time I work for anyone else,” only to repeat the process with the same outcome. What’s that thing about the definition of insanity? I want this for myself more than anything — the ability to stay the fuck put in a job or a situation, regardless of circumstance. I wish I didn’t feel this incessant need to find challenge, to find novelty, to find something bigger, better, that will support my “long-term vision,” whatever the fuck that means. I know it’s not necessarily a lack of discipline, since I lean ~chronic overachiever~. But I do know that had I maybe understood my brain a bit better a bit earlier in life, I may not have found myself in existential crises after crises the past five years. If I had known better, maybe I would’ve done better. Having neurodivergence and being diagnosed a bit later is a lot like playing a very berating game of Coulda Shoulda Woulda with yourself, and it’s mostly just you punching yourself in the throat over and over, which rhymes with super fun and productive.
I can feel the chuckles at my naiveté, at my complete inability to “suck it up” and just press on because, goddamn it, that’s what adults do. They buck up and do the hard thing for a long time because that’s what everyone does, and you’re not special and you’re not worthy of a life that you really even like, and why you? And this is where my eyes glaze over. I once told my therapist that I have this insufferably annoying optimist that lives within me. You’d never guess it by talking to me. I say ‘fuck’ a lot, and I get bent out of shape over stupid shit often. I used to talk poorly about myself as a way to cope with this thing that lived in me, this thing that felt like it could explode if it didn’t find a way out. This thing that had a voice so powerful that it felt like if I let out a blood-curdling scream, that wouldn’t be near enough to tame it. I now recognize this thing to be arguably the greatest trait I possess, which is hope.
When I was young, my dad was let go from the radio company where he worked. Shortly after, I remember him working odd jobs, but at night, I distinctly have memories of him coming home late, going into his office, and continuing to work. I never understood what he was working on. And then, one day, he had these fancy postcards delivered to our house. He asked me to help him address them. I had to take pre-labeled address stickers and put them on the notes, then stuff the postcard and a CD into envelopes. I’d later come to find out that these were his demo CDs for his voiceover business, and he was sending them to talent agencies all over the world. By the time I was 15, he was working for himself full-time out of his studio in our house. And what he told me over and over again for several years was, “Well, I didn’t know what I wanted to be until I was 50.” Which is to say, I could always start over. It was never too late. It is never too late. I recognize now what a gift this was, to be so young and have a parent tell me that. That even if I decided and changed and re-vamped and then scrapped and re-decided and re-became over and over again, I just had to be relentless in the vision I had for my life. And so that’s what I try to do. That’s what I’m doing.
Maybe more importantly, my mom worked in the same career for fifty years. That’s not a typo, by the way. My mom was a dental hygienist for fifty years. She retired last year, and when I recently asked her what she thought about her career, she simply told me she was happy to have retired, has no desire to go back, and feels like there is more for her to do in this life. Because even at 73, we can pursue our becoming with intense devotion, which to me, sounds a lot like love.
Several of my close friends will now ask me, “So what do you want to do?” I guess the only constants I could ever tell you are: a writer, a voice actor, and maybe a comedian (although I make myself laugh more than anyone else, so I should probably put this guy on the back burner). But I did just reach out to start singing lessons. So I guess there’s a part of me that maybe does still want to be a pop star.
And I guess that’s my own small way of telling myself: it’s never too late, there is time, you can start over however many times you want.
That hope is stubborn, isn’t it?
There’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. That’s yours.
“What’re you talking about?”
Hope.
I’m so glad to have met you along the long and winding job lines we millenials have. You are not a failure: you are a WRITER.
I love it!