An Explorer's Tale

The following article was first published in the winter 1999/2000 issue of the Career Planning and Adult Development Journal. It is reprinted with permission.

From Career Angst to Bliss: An Explorer's Tale

“Enjoy?! What’re you talking about, enjoy?! Life is not to be enjoyed, it’s to be gotten on with! Do you think I enjoy my job? No, I don’t - I hate it, I despise it! And one day you’ll hate your job, too! Accept it! That’s normal, dammit!”

So said Doonesbury’s dad. Like him, I used to believe that “career happiness” was an oxymoron. I was a successful commercial lawyer, but I was miserable - and didn’t expect to be otherwise. I knew that work wasn’t to be enjoyed.

It would be wrong to say that law was my chosen career. I simply stood mindlessly on a conveyor belt that took me from college to law school to legal practice. To the world I presented the veneer of an achiever. I had a New Zealand honors degree and a United States masters degree. I had practiced law in