Last week, I had the pleasure of listening to insights from the great Giancarlo Esposito, who you might know as Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, or as Stan Edgar from The Boys, or as Moff Gideon from The Mandalorian. Or from a host of character roles he’s portrayed. Basically, if you need a brilliant actor, you call Giancarlo Esposito, especially if you need someone to be quietly menacing. And yet, the man behind the characters is anything but scary — engaging, jovial, energetic, opinionated, spontaneous, and full of love. Texas Hall at UTA was full of mostly college students that night, and they absolutely adored the man. He reciprocated and gave them a really interesting night filled with encouragement, wisdom, and humor. The word that crept into my head throughout the evening was: Joy. Esposito has it, and shared it, referring to the “blessed” life he has had, getting to do something he enjoys for a living. (He also referred to everyone in the room as “blessed” in their own way, but that’s an idea for a different post.) And most successful actors, particularly the more famous ones, will offer similar words of encouragement, about following your dreams and making committed choices and immersing yourself in the work. That is certainly part of the beauty of actors and artists committing to their craft even through difficult times, in pursuit of their definition of success. It’s reminiscent of the old sentiment: “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” 

But while that’s a lovely sentiment, it’s not always practical for everyone seeking to make a living. The truth is that not all of us can really survive doing a “pay the bills job” while we chase our actual “dream job.” Many of us find ourselves migrating into work that is enjoyable, I hope, or at least tolerable, but not necessarily the work we would love. Meanwhile, there are some who end up in jobs that are miserable. I think the spectrum of work satisfaction breaks down like a classic bell curve, with dream jobs on one side of the bell, miserable jobs on the other, and tolerable/satisfactory/enjoyable jobs making up the fat middle. If you’re in that dream job territory, enjoy it. If you’re in the miserable job area, by all means, seek to escape and step up to at least tolerable. But that middle is actually the tough area where you can often fall into a trap and subject yourself to grass-is-greener syndrome, playing could/woulda/shoulda games in your head about what might have been. “Maybe I could’ve had my dream job if only…”

And this is where we torture ourselves, isn’t it? We imagine a life we think we could’ve had based on a job we could’ve had, whether the possibility was realistic or not. We build our identity around our work (another future blog topic), then we essentially crush that identity because it’s not the wildly successful one in our imagination. And then we wonder why we feel unfulfilled, have doubts, and even suffer from poor mental health. I will admit that I stood with my toes at the edge of this trap early in my teaching career. I knew I had a good voice back in my teens, but I stayed away from majors in Radio/TV or broadcast journalism mainly because I didn’t want to deal with the proverbial pay-your-dues pattern of starting out in a tiny market and working your tail off until something better opened up. That nomadic lifestyle wasn’t for me. And yet, I still looked into possibly working for a radio station here or there basically each of the first five summers of my teaching career. I knew of the voiceover world in the mid-1990s and even did a consult in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t in the cards at the time because of my established (by that time) education career and commitments to raising a family. I needed stability more than I needed to follow my dreams at that time, and education was enjoyable enough to sustain me and offered that stability. Were there bad days? Absolutely. Even dream jobs have bad days. But the good days for me outweighed the bad by a lot. Looking back, I’m glad that I came to embrace my teaching career, and pushed myself to excellence in that profession, in spite of the fact that there were other work paths that I had wondered might make me happier.

Did I love teaching? Sometimes, but not all the time. I was never the teacher who said “I just love kids” and wanted to reach everyone on some deeply personal level. That doesn’t mean I was cold or unfeeling. I got into the profession because I enjoy the learning process, so I wanted to connect with students well enough to unlock their willingness and ability to see the value of the subject. I was never going to be a quasi-surrogate parent. The days when the learning clicked were awesome. The days where there was humor were awesome. But there were definitely days that weren’t awesome, and some days downright sucked. And that’s OK. I tried my best to appreciate the days, weeks, months, and years that were great, and I put the rest behind me. And THAT is OK. I knew some teachers who needed out of the profession ASAP, because they were nothing but miserable throughout, and no amount of improvement or growth would ever move them along the bell curve toward tolerable. I knew other teachers for whom teaching absolutely was their dream job. They loved the kids, the atmosphere, the extracurricular events, the whole school thing. They were on that upper end of the bell curve, and more power to them. I had some really good years in education, and I’ve written about how, when you’re in the middle of an awesome stretch, you have to stop and soak it in. But my career was pretty dynamic in that the job itself slid around along that bell curve through highs and lows. And when it felt like it had slid to the bottom end… miserable territory…I was fortunate to be able to retire and get out. And you know what? That’s OK, too.

The point is that, for the most part, life is generally what we make it. Our works, and our careers, are what we make of them, even if we aren’t living out our dreams right now. Joy is where we find it; we just have to seek it out. Happiness is born of our own choices, strung together, and how we choose to look at our circumstances. I have little doubt that Giancarlo Esposito, being the energetic, ebullient person that he is, would probably be the happiest barista at your local Starbucks, if that’s where life took him. That’s just who he is. Fortunately for those of us who appreciate his acting work, he managed to find that career. And many of us may feel called to a career that better suits us than the one we’re currently in. If that’s you, and you’re currently miserable, then seek it, and find it. But along the way, we all have to realize that how we view our work is very much a function of our own approach, our own perspective. I’ve often said, “If you look hard enough for something to be offended at, I guarantee you’ll find it.” And I’ve come across some desperately miserable people who are constantly looking to be offended. (Although I try avoid them as much as possible. Hey! That should be another post.) But along the same lines, you could say that those who seek out joy in their work will find it, too. And that doesn’t require your work to be some kind of dream-come-true. You just have to appreciate the good things and let the bad things slide. No matter what your work is today, seek out the joy.

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