Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

When I Grow Up

Posted from Culver City, California at 10:40 pm, June 30th, 2016

monster.com ran a Super Bowl ad in 1999 that I still remember vividly. It featured a bunch of kids making statements starting with “When I grow up”. The image of the second kid in particular is one that has replayed a few thousand times in my head. The camera zooms in close on a boy who is maybe eight years old. He has a bowl cut, just like I rocked for the first decade of my life, and he looks like a tiny badass. He stares directly into the camera, and with a mix of disdain and bravado spits out the words “When I grow up, I wanna claw my way up to middle management”.

I came out of college, spent a summer roaming Europe and driving across America, and then went to work for Andersen Consulting (which became Accenture after a split with its sister company Arthur Andersen). I worked insane hours at jobs all around the world, met impossible deadlines, solved problems that someone fresh out of college had no business solving, and learned a TON; I’m still grateful for that experience, which was an incredible opportunity. Unfortunately, after four years of going non-stop I was burned out, bitter, and life had turned into more of a slog than a journey. So I quit, got in my car, and drove to Alaska in an effort to try and figure things out. It was an amazing experience, but three months later when I came back I was faced with the inevitable “what now?” decision.

The last fourteen years of this journal tells the story of the decision I made. While I’ve had the opportunities for many amazing adventures, and gone long stretches where I was free to pursue passions, the majority of those years have been spent doing very similar work to what I was doing prior to the Alaska trip, albeit with more reasonable hours and far more knowledge. Lest anyone misunderstand, I don’t regret that decision. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I love what I do, my work is generally really interesting, I get a ton of flexibility, it provides me the means to do some amazing things, and I still get to take long, epic journeys around the world. That said, like most people who do the same job month after month, that image of the kid staring at the camera, and the words “I wanna claw my way up to middle management”, still hits a nerve, and I sometimes wonder how life might have been different if I hadn’t mailed my resume to Warner Brothers back in 2002, but instead sent it to someone like the National Park Service, or maybe just decided not to send it out at all.

4 responses to “When I Grow Up”

  1. The average life expectancy of a male in California is 78. Although you have consumed excessive amounts of Diet Dr. Pepper let’s assume this holds true to you. Eliminating years 0-2, assuming you have no recollection, that means you are about halfway through life. You started working at age 22 so you have spent 18 years trying to claw your way to middle management. If you want to retire at 65 and play pickle ball, learn to tango, etc. you have 25 years of work remaining. You could join the National Park Service right now or not send your resume to anyone. Options.

    Why did you want to climb Mt. Everest? Because it’s there.

    1. I like all of the math in your comment, as well as the use of “pickle ball”. The odds of me learning to tango, however, are slim to none, and slim is currently exiting the building.

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