Attempt at a column... take two...

I actually longed for my own business card today. I daydreamed about donning a fancy suit. It is safe to say that I have entered the era of life where I desire a career, and I am not even sure what it means.

My first exposure to the idea of a career was watching my father sign receipts in his office at a major brokerage firm when I was only a few years old. I didn’t understand the meaning of his signature nor the numbers running across the ticker tape on the bottom of his office stock-tracking television. Somehow, though, I was able to grasp the concept of what it meant to go to an office everyday, wear a suit and shake hands with a firm and steady grip. It was about identity.

As my father’s daughter, I traveled from city to city, grasping the hand of a financial powerhouse. Through airports, meetings and luncheons, I had a front row seat watching the leading man in my life, my dearest Dad, wrap the brokerage business around his little finger.

Described to me years later as a constant game of Russian Roulette where there was always at least one bullet, he went to work everyday in one of the most stressful and intense careers an individual can choose. He walked the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, ran numbers in his head faster than I could type them on my calculator, and kept the offices he managed in glistening condition. This was his career.

But what happens when that career disappears, when the show is over? What happens when your health fails, when the business you invested so much time in slips out of your firm and steady hand? Do you lose your identity, and what about a second chance?

Are careers dream-jobs or desks we are chained to? I would hope that I am entering a work force where I am not bound to just one. I’d rather dip my feet into many pools of choice and creativity, until one suits my fancy and I can take a swim until my fingers get all pruney.

Whether it’s trading stocks or typing words into a column, this young dreamer hopes that careers are more than just suits and paychecks. An identity should not rest on a resume or a diploma, but rather on the understanding that life is about rolling with the punches and the quality of it concerns picking yourself up when the bells rings.

If careers are like plays and the identity found in it like playing a part in a show, I’d have to say that when the curtains close on one career, shedding tears during the final bow is perfectly understandable. But for goodness sake, a career as a human being isn’t over. Gather your roses, sign a few autographs, and move on to the next stage in life.

Your fans are waiting.