Lisa S Downing

Are you living the dream? Statistically speaking the majority of college graduates will not be working in the field they earned their degrees in within ten years. Most workers change employers, if not job skills at least every 5-7 years. As we all know the old business model of going to work for a company as a young person and retiring from that same company 30 to 40 years later is gone. In my experience it is extremely rare to find someone who has stayed within the same set of job skills for an entire career. The even rarer bird is the one who has done that and still loves what he does.

This past weekend I accompanied my husband on his annual trek to South Carolina to reconnect with his ROTC buddies and their families and to attend the ROTC graduation at the University of South Carolina. Go Gamecocks! As I was mingling with his old friends, I discovered that one of them was a construction engineer. This was interesting to me because my son wants to go into architecture or construction engineering. As we talked, my husband’s buddy told me that being an engineer was what he had always wanted to do. He revealed the details of his long career. He spoke enthusiastically about his time working with the Navy Seabees; recalling different projects and challenges. He talked about some of the corporate work that he had done and described how now he was using his engineering skills as an independent contractor. He also generously agreed to answer any questions my son might have about construction engineering.

I asked if he still liked what he did. His answer was a resounding, “Yes, I love it.” He had known from the very beginning what he wanted to do with his life and he had done it and had done it really well. As a result now, he picks and chooses the jobs he wants, he is hired by reputation, he does absolutely no advertising, every job he gets he was referred to and he makes a good living.

I know that this life model exists. Finding your passion, exploring it, learning how to create a career around it and living the rest of your life having fun doing what you love. God blesses those who use the qualities that he has given them to serve other people. Everyone I know who lives like this, knowing what they want to do and doing it, has created not only a work environment that they thrive in, but the financial security to continue.

So why do so many of us spend our lives doing work we don’t like, for people we don’t know, at an income that we can barely survive on? I don’t get it. I have been one of them, but no more. My dream becomes more alive every time I sign into this blog. I hope that in your travels with me, you will awaken the dream within you, bring it to life and make it work for you. Live the dream!