I’ve been on my internship for about 2 months now, and I’ve had some space to think. I knew this summer would be pivotal for planning where I wanna take my career for the next decade or so. I’ve trying to decide between industries, Biotechnology, Renewable energy or maybe even consumer electronics, since I started thinking about specific industries, I began to wonder what I valued. I want to make sure the decision I take about the career is one that I can validate later, and I want to make sure it’s solely my own decision.
What values do I hold in my career? What do I want to tell the world I do? Throwback to highschool when I think I had meaning. Grade 12 rolled around, it was my last year to do everything I wanted to do, and we just got out of covid so everything was back in full swing. Ever since I was a child I wanted to the fastest guy ever, and I just knew I could I be City Champion for track for 100m. I trained pretty hard, but I only ended up making it to city finals. I ran everyday, no matter if it was snowing or if I just had a soccer game and it felt great, it felt like I was moving towards something. Even right before the city finals, I had a pre-qualifying time that would have been 3rd place on race day, but I trained even before race day. I just wanted to make sure that I felt everything on the field, I ended up running the finals got the slowest time I’ve ever ran in my life, and then proceeded to break my foot in the following soccer final. Classic case of overtraining. I’ve never been sadder in my life, I cried so much after the race, and then for the next two weeks I’d suddenly erupt into tears every time I saw my foot. It didn’t matter where it was whether I was sitting with my family in the living room or chilling in the basement. I could never tell when it was gonna come but when it came, I cried hard. This wasn’t meant to be a sob story, looking back there was some real meaning there it meant so much to me.
Forward another year and I’m selling cars, I’ve talked about this before on the blog so I’ll save you the details. I cried uncontrollably again, this wasn’t I could just postpone to the bed, or until you made it to some cover, this was full-blown in the middle of the dealership. Then again there was so much meaning, even in both cases it seems trivial looking back, I sold 6 cars that month, when I wanted to sell 10 and the month after I sold 11. Not a big deal, but there was meaning. Car sales was in 2023, two years ago, it’s been two years since I’ve done something where I put my whole heart in it and failed, and failing might be a crucial metric, because in both those cases I was trying to attain something difficult, and I truly believed in it, and then I failed. I want to have that feeling again.
