Staring at the beige wall of my office over the mind-numbing pile of pointless papers, I thought, “Where did I go wrong?”   

 After fleeing the nightmare that is suburban adolescence, I declared I would live an extraordinary life, something beyond the college-job-husband-kids path that was expected of me.  I dreamt of wide open deserts of Africa, of seeing elephants strolling calmly through a yellow haze of dried grass, of drifting through the narrow lanes of the Mekong, of smelling food sizzling street-side, of feeling the sun intense and hot on my face.  I dreamt of hard-partying nights and days engaged in a career that was as eye-opening as it was envy-inducing.  I wanted memories to chuckle over when I am too old and feeble to do much but gum my Jell-O.   Instead, one day I woke up to find myself at yet another dead-end job, sitting behind a rusty metal desk, breathing in the odor of old Thai food, McDonald’s fries, and sweaty feet. 

This is not exactly a new story to the working masses, the millions of people eking out a living, one dreary day at a time, doing what they can to make sure they survive, never mind pursuing the ideal life.  Sometimes a few wake up, wonder how they got there, and try to reclaim some of their lost youth (see: mid-life crisis).   No one aspires to monotony and banality.  Or perhaps, as poignantly put by the 1999 Monster.com ad, no one wants to grow up to filing all day:

Living in the city of false ideals and ideal fakes, where even the crazy homeless guy has a reality TV show, I was bombarded with success story after success story of people just “happening” upon their dreams.  I envied them.  I hated them.  I wanted to emulate them.  Like any ardent fan, I analyzed their lives, seeking to find the magic answer to their success.   What I noticed was that they all did something to put themselves in the path of providence.   Sitting on my ever-widening butt in an office clearly was not going to move me any closer to what I sought. 

Finally, after realizing that should my life come to a sudden end in front of a speeding Buick and that there would be little to put in the obituary (“she was a hard worker and didn’t take too many vacations”), I knew I had to do something to pull myself out of this decade-long rut.  I quit my stable, paying job with the goal of righting this ship before it got moored on the giant iceberg of mediocrity. 

 Giddily, I took off.  I spent the next few months wandering through southern Africa.  There were eight of us in the group tour; I was the second oldest.  It was a motley crew of students, recent graduates, and a single retiree.  All parties were just on vacation; I was also the only one from the U.S., as most U.S. companies rarely offer more than two weeks of vacation.  I splashed in a pool of water in the desert, I sandboarded, I ate grubs, I woke up at ungodly early hours to watch the sun rise from the top of a sand dune, I slept under the stars.  It was a liberating experience, being far away from the enclosure of four walls, doing something that other people dreamed of, but did not attempt. 

Returning to my life after traveling was like coming down from an intense high, with no idea where I was or what I was going to do next, or if what I had experienced was just an elaborate hallucination.  Determined to not to return to the corporate world until I gotten my bearings back and had a clearer sense of what my next step was, I embraced my joblessness. 

At first, the freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted was fantastic.  Going to bed at 6 am, and getting up at 2 pm.   Catching up on TV series, ranging in quality from the gripping to the prosaic to the if-the-writers-of-this-show-can-get-jobs-so-can-I.   Walking to the farmer’s market that I had previously only seen on my way to work.  Actually seeing daylight instead of just dawn and dusk.    Surfing the web with impunity, I caught up on gossip, news, reading. 

But, as any kid who finally got to eat as much ice cream as he/she wanted, I quickly got sick of gorging on this newfound “freedom.”  Most of my friends still worked, and without office mates to gossip the hours away, the long periods of isolation was driving me a little batty (see: Eastern State Penitentiary in early 1800s).  Even when my friends were out and about, my ever-shrinking bank account made it difficult to join them.  Impending financial dependency gnawed at me, making it difficult to sleep the eleveteen hours I had been sleeping at the start of my “break.”  Obsessive Netflix watching, surprisingly, did not enhance my already bleak social calendar.  I became cranky and needy, startling my already worried partner when I started begrudging his nights out.  What started off as freeing quickly became a cage.

Even worse than feeling lonely and broke was the loss of sense of who I was.  Before, I was a “Marketing professional, financially independent, lover of shoes and good food, socially adept and active, sense of humor.”  Each individual descriptor did not define me, but like lots of little dots on a page, when seen together, they painted the image of a whole.  Having a job made all of that possible; without a job, those markers of my life were either gone or much more difficult to achieve.   In quitting my job I had accidentally quit an identity. 

While I took the first step away from a dead-end path, I quickly learned that moving away from the wrong direction is not the same as going in the right direction.  Quitting my job was necessary and liberating, but it did not magically change my path in the way that fluffy novels (and even fluffier movies) insisted that it would.  Granted, I was not expecting to find myself, or an epiphany (or even good gelato) on this trip, but I had expected to gain a greater clarity of mind.  Instead, four months after returning from my magic mystery tour, I found myself set adrift a sea of doubts and questions. 

So, now I endeavor to re-insert myself into the working world.  Ideally, I will find a job that I don’t loathe.  I don’t expect a new sense of self to spring, fully formed like Athena from Zeus’s head, from this new job.  More evident than ever, my definition of myself comprises a lot of little points—and a job enhances those points.   Perhaps in the meantime, I will find the success that has thus far proven elusive, and have the opportunity to travel, unfettered once again.  See the elephants strolling through the savannah.   Feel that sun, intense and hot, on my face.  And this time, my mind will be blank, because I will be content.