{"id":31195,"date":"2020-02-01T23:35:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T05:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=31195"},"modified":"2020-02-02T02:40:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T08:40:26","slug":"ive-jumped-off-a-career-cliff-and-now-i-have-six-months-to-find-net","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=31195","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve jumped off a career cliff and now I have six months to find net"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What happens when everything in you says you need to jump off a metaphorical cliff and believe with all your heart that a net will be there to catch you? My inner child is about to find out.<\/p>\n

After I left political consulting about 10 years ago, I never really got my life back on track. I knew what I needed<\/em> to do. I knew what I wanted<\/em> to do. But I found plenty of reasons not to pursue the work I was called to. I was afraid \u2014 and it was easy to explain to others why I wasn\u2019t doing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d really like to be making films and creating other media,\u201d<\/em> I would tell people, \u201cbut that\u2019s expensive and hard to get into, so I can\u2019t really do it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And almost everybody would nod his or her head in understanding, especially if I explained the huge amounts of investment required to make feature films.<\/p>\n

Other people were often eager to tell me what I ought to do with my life. It was always something practical and reasonable, often closely related to something that person had done. I was slowly sucked into being practical \u2014 which has made me miserable with my life today.<\/em><\/p>\n

I dread Mondays at this point. I count the hours until Friday afternoon. I live for the feeling that I’ve been paroled for the weekend.<\/p>\n

I used to love work and I saw little difference between a work day and an off day. In most of the things I’ve done in the past, work was enjoyable — at least in the relative sense. For the last seven or eight years, I’ve done the simplest work of my life, but it’s been the most miserable.<\/p>\n

For the first time in my life, I’ve felt as though I had little or no control of my time. I had to be at a desk — doing work ordered by someone else — at certain times. I chaffed under this lack of control and I fumed about doing work which meant nothing to me.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, I tried to buckle down and force myself to be fully dedicated to selling real estate, but I’ve been trying to live what someone else thought was a good idea.<\/p>\n

The owner and broker of the real estate company where I work has been extremely encouraging and helpful in pushing me in this direction. He wanted me to sell a lot of property and then buy rental properties of my own. Since I successfully manage all of our company’s rentals, he knew I could do it and make a lot of money.<\/p>\n

But I might as well be digging ditches. I don’t want to sell houses. I don’t want to own or manage rental properties — for myself or for him. I don’t want to manage contracts for our company or become the broker and manage agents.<\/p>\n

Doing that sort of work has made him successful. He started with nothing and has made himself well off. But it’s not the right path for me.<\/p>\n

I sat down with him Friday and explained that I need to do something else. I told him I don’t know exactly what that will be, but I need to make plans to leave the company.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t want me to leave. Part of it is that he’s come to depend on what I do for the company, but he can eventually replace the management functions I’m handling. He mostly doesn’t want me to give up on selling real estate. Those are two different functions — and he wants me to become wealthy through selling real estate and building a collection of property of my own to manage.<\/p>\n

He makes a persuasive pragmatic case. He and I can both look at the numbers on paper and know it makes sense. Selling real estate is very profitable if you’re good at helping people. (And I am good at it.) If you represent either the buyer or the seller, for instance, on a transaction for a $400,000 house, you’re going to make around $8,000. If you can do two of those a month, you can make around $200,000 a year.<\/p>\n

It’s not hard. And it’s not rocket science. But I’m miserable doing it. I’m so miserable, in fact, that I’ve become terrible at doing something I’m actually really good at — which makes me even more unhappy.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I’ve realized.<\/p>\n

If I had a choice between making $1 million a year on projects for which I had no creative control or making $50,000 a year on projects for which I had complete creative control, I would forego the money and take the creative control.<\/p>\n

Money is nice, but it\u2019s not worth selling my soul for — and I’m going to be so unhappy doing something I can’t control that I’m eventually going to fail anyway. So I need to listen to my instincts and stop trying to do what makes sense to other people.<\/p>\n

Is that crazy? Maybe. But I need control of my work.<\/p>\n

I told the owner of my real estate company that I’m taking my sales license inactive immediately. And I also told him I’m leaving the rest of my job there by sometime this summer. I went to the website of the state real estate commission Friday night and de-activated my license. I can no longer sell real estate unless I re-activate it — and I don’t plan to do that.<\/p>\n

I convinced myself that I could force myself to become successful and wealthy with real estate. I had a really nice business plan, in fact. It just turned out that I hated the life that required so much that I can’t do it — mostly because there is another calling for me.<\/p>\n

I read a short book today by Steven Pressfield called “Turning Pro<\/a>.” Pressfield is well-known for his books and other writing about how artists and entrepreneurs can get past the resistance that’s stopping them from doing what they need to do. I had previously read his famous book, “The War of Art<\/a>,” and “Turning Pro” follows up on the same subject.<\/p>\n

Pressfield said that when people are called to do something — whether it’s art or launching a business or almost anything else — they often pursue a “shadow career” instead. It’s something that’s vaguely related in some way to what they ought to be doing, but it’s safe and practical in the eyes of others.<\/p>\n

As I thought about it, I realized that’s what I did in the past when I worked in newspapers and in politics. I wanted to write and sell ideas to the world, but I did it in a safe way that used some of the same skills — but didn’t give me control over the message. The things I’ve done have been safe cop-outs.<\/p>\n

(If you have even the slightest interest in making a change in your life, I strongly recommend “Turning Pro.” At the very least, listen to the audiobook<\/a>, which is only a couple of hours long and costs less than $5. I’ve recognized myself — for both good and bad — all over this book.)<\/p>\n

Who was I before I started worrying about what other people wanted me to be? What did I need to do before I started worrying about being practical enough to satisfy the people who I wanted to love me?<\/p>\n

Something deep in me felt the need to connect with other people — to touch them with words and images and ideas. I needed to reach out to people and say, “I’m trying to figure this out. Won’t you come along with me while we try to figure out life together?”<\/em><\/p>\n

But it was easier to get paid if I did things the way other people wanted me to do. And it seemed as though someone else was more likely to love me if I would become wealthy and successful, so I tried to be acceptable to someone else. That made me miserable \u2014 and I did it in a way that left me unhappy and<\/em> unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

I jumped off the cliff Friday. It’s a long way down and I’ve given myself about six months to get a net in place. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do by then.<\/p>\n

But I know I will be happier doing the work I need to do. And I also know that someone worthy of my love will want me whether I get wealthy or not.<\/p>\n

I’m scared, but I’m excited. There’s a lot to figure out quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happens when everything in you says you need to jump off a metaphorical cliff and believe with all your heart that a net will be there to catch you? My inner child is about to find out. After I left political consulting about 10 years ago, I never really got my life back on Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-879","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31195"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31214,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195\/revisions\/31214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}