Here’s a question for you:
Do you take care of your job or does your job take care of you?
What about your career? Or, the term I like to use, your “work” — which isn’t necessarily defined by a “job” specifically, but is defined by YOU.
I was just relistening to my interview with Ilise Benun, of Marketing Mentor, from the Summer Camp series I did in July, and I was reminded of why I love her: Because she makes me see things in a whole new way.
We hear a lot about how we should take care of ourselves DESPITE work, but what if could use work and our approach to it to actually take care of us? That’s how Ilise talks about it—as something you use to take care of yourself. She refers to her own business as a personal development laboratory.
Passions are great, but they aren’t always up to that task.
“Often people come to me with a passion that they want to turn into a business,” she says. “Some passions are well suited to be businesses, but most are not.”
She asks, does this passion have a life as a business? And is that the point? There’s only one way to find out. But the novel idea here is seeing work not as the enemy of self care, but a powerful source of it. “A business literally can take care of you,” she says. And so many of us (women specifically) do not take care of themselves well or at all.
I have my own theories about job vs. career: One is a dog; the other is a cat.
A job requires daily care. It pants, begs, is always happy to see you. It expects you to feed it and take it for a walk, throw a ball, over and over. Then, it will pee on the rug right in front of you.
You might be the only one who ever had that job. It could have emerged under your care and neither you nor it can imagine your life without the other. Perhaps you inherited the job from someone else, or you simply asked for it. You might feel lucky to have it, or stuck, the way you feel when something (a house, a child, a deep abiding ache) is yours and yours alone.
Whether you feel inclined out of love or obligation, resist the urge to overfeed it. You may think you’re warding off hunger, but you’re not; you’re expanding its appetite. You love the job but loathe it as it lies snoozing, or barking at other people, perceived threats, the wind. It will be there when you fall asleep, and you will wake to it staring you in the face, benign but urgent, dangling its long, pink tongue.
Then one day, it’s gone. You may discover that on your own, or someone might tell you somberly, give you some papers to sign, and that’s it. Either way, it’s no longer yours. It can happen after two years, ten years, twenty. There’s no telling. Regardless of your feelings, you can and will survive that job, as it will likely survive you. And once you’ve had one, chances are you’ll have another.
A career is a cat
Your career plays the long game. It doesn’t need you every second of the day. It conserves its energy. It can tend to its own wounds, sharpen itself against any surface. Unlike a dog, it doesn’t beg; it tracks. It may hold a grudge, or change its mind. It never forgets a face.
A job tends to look the same regardless of who has it. But no two careers look alike. While a job belongs to you, with your name on the paperwork, a career is different. You know it’s yours simply because it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone else. You may wonder if this is the one you’re meant to have. Did you choose it or did it choose you? It’s not altogether clear.
While jobs are linear and predictable, a career makes death-defying leaps, has the capacity to surprise you. You love it not because it’s well behaved but because it isn’t. It can be both generous and selfish, which is why it may demand that you do what’s in its best interests, even if it’s not what you might have chosen for yourself.
You may risk all you have — money, time, whatever else you keep track of — for its benefit. And as a result, you’ll be admired and applauded, blamed and judged, and it will have less to do with you than what others wanted for you — or more likely, wished for themselves.
Don’t be surprised or alarmed if your career goes dormant for long periods, making you wonder if it ever existed in the first place. Then, suddenly, it’s back, scratching and purring and making its presence known. When you’re finally ready to give it your full attention, it eludes you once again. And just when you think it’s gone for good, there it is, skulking around the backyard or napping in a pool of sunlight.
Career doesn’t care about rules or expectations, yours or anyone else’s; it likes to play, to see what it can catch. It’s not motivated by reward or immediate gratification. It learns tricks you never taught it. It has nine lives. It’s agile and rebounds with ease. A career is patient. It will wait you out. It will last longer than you think.