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Joy Is Where You Seek It

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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Refurbishing My Hinges of Destiny

If the phrase “Hinges of Destiny” in the title of this post sounds familiar, that’s because it refers to a quote attributed to Pythagoras: “Choices are the hinges of destiny.” Most of us know the name Pythagoras because we learned the Pythagorean Theorem in geometry class. And Pythagoras is widely considered the “Father of Mathematics” (or the “Father of Numbers”) because he’s credited as the first person to view mathematics as a broader discipline, connecting numbers to philosophy, music, and even the universe. People relate Pythagoras to math, but he was really a philosopher above all, so what better person to quote in a catch-all blog called “On the Brink of Instruction?”

Now, I do not claim to be an authority on Pythagoras or Pythagoreanism, but the multi-disciplinary nature of his views and teachings are fascinating to me, especially as someone who taught economics for two decades. Anyone who’s taken high school economics knows that it is typically A) a requirement for graduation and B) not considered the most interesting class, on its face. Economics is often called “the dismal science” for a reason. So as an instructor, my goal was always to connect the study of economics to the broader “real” world, to make it more relatable for my students. I would always start each semester framing the study of economics as, truly, the study of choices. People take limited resources – the textbook factors of production being land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship, along with others such as time, talent, and energy – and we figure out how to use them in the most productive and efficient possible way to achieve the best possible outcome. My class would obviously layer in the standard terms and concepts of the economics curriculum, since that’s the course, but not before we considered more philosophical ideas about choices affected by given constraints. “What do you want to do with the next minute of your life? The next hour? The next day? Week, Month, Year, Decade?” The fundamental core of the course was that economics is the study of how and why we make choices, and what happens as a result – the consequences of our choices, which ultimately produce our circumstances. That was the underlying framework.

Choices are proverbial building blocks for our lives, determining not just our circumstances but also our personalities and our character. Plus, choices also happen to be excellent fodder for memorable quotes and memes in pop culture. I’m a particular fan of “He chose…poorly. You have chosen wisely,” from Indiana Jones and the the Last Crusade. The importance of choices is a perfect continuation of my thoughts in my last post on the nature of New Year’s resolutions. And given the sentiments I’ve expressed in still another post about how my overall goal at this stage of life is mainly to be the best version of myself that I can be, some thoughts on choices would be a great starting point.

I’m not going to pretend to be an authority on humanity’s choices, behavior, psychology, or any connection among the three. There are a myriad of resources available in libraries and on the internet that provide exhaustive analysis. There are also therapeutic resources for those who need them to address their own personal choices. I can only speak to my own experiences, thoughts, and ideas regarding my efforts at resolutions in service to my personal goals for the year in terms of my voiceover career, my relationships, my health, my well-being, my daily life, and even my place in the world, lofty as that might sound. Those efforts are framed by a variety of things, including my faith, my family and friends, my personal history, my existing knowledge about psychology and behavioral adjustments, my influences, and really, my perspective of who I am now and who I want to be in the future. So this post offers personal musings that I hope might be useful to the reader, as opposed to some kind of help guide rooted in science and research.

With that in mind, I am beginning 2026 by carefully considering each day, perhaps even each hour, and determining how I want to spend it. Even now, as I write this post, I have decided that I’m spending the next X minutes writing, then I will stop and proceed to another task that needs to be done. Unless, of course, I get “on a roll,” and I need to make an adjustment to whatever plan I might have in real time. The process of resolution, and carrying it out – behavior modification, in a sense – is difficult because it’s often fluid. We wake up each day with the notion of “Today I’m going to…,” but perhaps something alters the plan. Maybe we wake up later than we intended. Maybe we devote more time than intended to a particular task, reducing the available time for other tasks. Maybe an emergency arises. Maybe we get sick. Maybe we just feel like doing something else instead of what we planned to do.

The constant process of adjustment in the face of our proverbial plans is really at the core of whether or not we will make the appropriate choice at the time we need to make it. And it truly is a constant process. What time will I wake up? How do I respond if my spouse wakes up in a bad mood? How do I react if I wake up in a bad mood – what do I do to correct it? What’s the first thing I will do today? Should I change lanes here, or there? How do I respond when another driver cuts me off? How do I react if a person at the store is rude? How do I address it if the restaurant gets my order wrong? What do I do if the grocery store is out of the item I intended to buy? Where do I go if I need help for an unexpected problem? Do I make this purchase? Do I really need that item? Do I need to eat more or less of this kind of food? Should I take the time to watch this TV show? What happens if I just take a few minutes to play that game on my phone? What about that book I want to read? In a free society that allows the individual to choose, questions like these can actually become overwhelming. I think it’s the main reason why so many New Year’s resolutions fail – we have good intentions, we’d really like to change, but when that important moment arrives and we need to choose restraint, or kindness, or exercise, or self-care, or remorse, or fruits & vegetables, or a little extra work, we lack impulse control. Or we revert to old habits. Or we embrace comfort and familiarity instead of the change we claim to seek.

Assuming we truly want to change and truly seek new goals for ourselves, then it is in those moments that making new choices, different choices, is the most critical. And as you might expect, it really takes thought, conscious consideration, and yes, work to make it happen. I used to teach drum major camps – every summer for 16 years. Every camp included leadership as part of the curriculum, which usually meant extensive discussion about how the students could influence and inspire their band members. And at every camp, without fail, we heard the question, “How can I help my band be more disciplined?” My answer typically followed the same theme: Discipline Is Habit. You can walk out of this camp saying you want your band to be more disciplined, but doing so will not magically give you a more disciplined band on Day 1 of band camp. And Day 1 of band camp won’t be nearly enough. You will have to plan on how to approach every rehearsal, every football game, and every performance, and you will have to follow through on that plan every time. The less disciplined your band has been in the past, the harder it will be – the harder you will have to work, the more effort you’ll have to expend, the longer it will take. The efforts will have to continue well past the heat of August. It will likely be hardest in mid-September, when it’s still kind of hot outside, you haven’t fully learned your show yet, and there hasn’t yet been a meaningful performance. That’s when you’re most likely to see a backslide into old, undisciplined, unproductive habits. And that’s when it is most critical to maintain your efforts toward your new choices, your new habits, your new goals. You may not realize that you’ve actually become “more disciplined” until months after deciding on it as a goal. And you will only achieve it through day-to-day effort over time.

So it goes with New Year’s resolutions. The old mantra of “21-day to create a habit” is a myth. Psychology researchers at University College of London did a study in 2009 that found, on average, it takes 66 days to establish new habits – although it can vary, depending on how simple or complex the habit is. You could theoretically establish a simple habit within the old 21-day timeframe, but something more involved might take over 250 days, so you’d better be ready to spend the better part of the next year putting in the work. That work will involve choices – intentional choices – over and over, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Those choices will eventually turn into habits. Those habits might eventually become rituals, in a sense. And so long as those rituals lead us toward who we seek to be, then we know our efforts have been productive. But we won’t know it until the weather is much warmer. The conventional wisdom Is that most resolutions are abandoned by the second Friday of the year. Two Fridays! I can’t decide whether to call that pathetic or disheartening.

But that’s really what it comes down to, and I would like to think Pythagoras himself would appreciate it: Change Takes Work. Additionally, change takes time; it takes persistence. It’s the combination of persistent work over time that really leads to success, or the lack of it produces failure. It really leaves no room for excuses. No attempts to justify falling into old habits. No telling ourselves “I’ll get back to it again” when it’s convenient. Convenience, too often, is the mortal enemy of change. Persistence, meanwhile, is change’s best friend. I’m reminded of Jerry Seinfeld’s story about his own habits as an aspiring comedian. It took a simple wall calendar and a marker. His goal every day was just to write a joke; one joke per day. Once he wrote a joke, he marked a big X over that day on the calendar. Eventually, he had developed a chain of Xs on the calendar. The goal over time was, Don’t Break the Chain. That’s it. Nothing about outcomes. Nothing about the type or nature of the joke. Not even anything about how funny the jokes were. Just one joke per day, mark the X, do it every day. Does the rest “take care of itself?” Yes and No – there are obviously other aspects of comedy that Seinfeld worked on – delivery, timing, wording, etc. But the fundamental building block of his comedy career rested on making the conscious choice of committing to the work – writing one joke per day, until it became a chain, a habit, a ritual that fed his ultimate goal as a performer.

Personally, I will admit that I have established some lofty goals for myself in 2026, both in my voiceover career and as a person. I just might be more driven than ever about my 2026 resolutions, primarily because I’m no longer beholden to the K-12 public education career that had begun to weigh me down for several years. I have too often, in years past, used constraint, not convenience, as my excuse for abandoning my goals – my work in education got in the way then, but no more. I now get to pursue a career that offers me more control. I’m lucky that the constraints are now released, so I really believe the only things likely to hold me back are my own faults – laziness, apathy, excuses, comfort, bad habits. My limitations would be primarily self-imposed, so I intend to get out of my own way, get off the proverbial bench, and get after what I seek. Clean up and open my own proverbial “hinges of destiny,” as it were. I sincerely hope the people I can positively impact along the way will benefit from it. For you, friends, my wish is minimal constraints on your own goals, as well as maximum effort and energy toward your own pursuits. Choose wisely.

Speaking of new choices in 2026, I’m choosing to alter how I approach my blog, On the Brink of Instruction. I began back in August 2025 with weekly posts on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Going forward in 2026 and beyond, I will only offer new posts every other week. During the intervening weeks, I will post an audio version of the previous week’s post. After all, as a professional voiceover talent, it makes sense for me to take time to showcase my thoughts in my own voice. I will also be working on adding audio versions of my 2025 posts the best I can. Perhaps this new approach may offer new insight into just how warped and tortured my psyche became after 3 decades in education, and even new hopes for my attempts to claw my way back to actual humanity. OK, maybe that’s dramatic. But you get the idea.