Who'da Thunk It?

I think back to the jobs I've had and wonder where I'd be if I knew where I would go. Mowing one lawn after another while working for myself. Scraping varnish off upright pianos in the heat of summer for a piano tuner/refinisher. Squeezing the juice out of ground beef at Taco Bell. Punching holes in tubs of rising pizza dough as a kitchen cook at Chicago Dough Company. Typing up military contract proposals at GE. Wading in sewage up to my hips in large sewer pipes for ADS Environmental Services. Setting up computer networks for Microsoft WHQL tests at Conexant Systems. Managing a test lab and traveling to Europe as a program manager for Avocent. Teaching classes at ITT Technical Institute.

Where will I be in 15 years? What work will I have performed? I have no idea.

Motivational speakers encourage their listeners to break the mold and seek out new horizons, quitting your job, if you have to, so you can become the real you you're meant to be. They sell their success stories as part of the marketing/branding of themselves, sometimes seen as motivation for motivation's sake, like selling a book on how to sell books that promote selling your own book.

What is success? I ask myself that question every morning after I wake up. What do I want to do today that will make me happy to wake up the next morning and look back at my previous day's accomplishments as motivation for that day's accomplishments? Sometimes I'm happy to say I did nothing more significant than watched the Sun trace a path across the sky. Sometimes I'm not happy enough, having expected more of myself than I gave the previous day, motivating me to move a little faster/smarter during my waking hours.

Success is felt in the moment. I am living my life only in the moment and can find success nowhere else. My previous accomplishments may demonstrate success or lack thereof, but what I do in the current moment determines what success means to me, not the past or expectations of the future.

Like I said, job titles and the activities involved with work have little meaning to me. They indicate my social/economic interactions, not who I am. I am me, here and now, not who I was or what I did with others.

Sitting here now, I contemplate what I will think when I wake up tomorrow. Will I feel happy? Yes. What will I feel motivated to do? I don't know. I plan to meet a friend/business associate for lunch but other than that I have no concrete plans. I will talk about and think about my next set of social/economic interactions but I will not know with certainty who I will be. What kind of success is that? Wonderful.

If a boy on a fully-funded Navy ROTC academic scholarship at Georgia Tech as a chemical engineering student who left after three quarters because of poor academic performance to find himself making pizzas a year or so later can end up where I'm sitting today, then anything is possible. Happiness is seeing the lessons learned (e.g., learn to study before you take "weeding out" courses like chemistry, physics and calculus while being in the ROTC jazz band and football marching band at a place like Georgia Tech) and moving on (put aside distractions and complete classes to get an associate's and a bachelor's degree years later).

I have collected a set of experiences in life that have made my 47 trips around the Sun successfully entertaining and happy. I discovered along the way that when I seek my definition of happiness and not the definitions others want to impose on me I am much more successful.

How did I get here, retired at 45? I learned to laugh. I taught others the value of making fun of yourself. I found a life partner at age 12 whom I married 12 years later. I valued my mistakes, no matter how painful they felt at the time, and found ways to apply corrective action for success.

For some, success is having their faces and bodies snipped and tucked. For others, success is traveling to Central America to heal the sick. For many, success is having children who have children.

I didn't plan and follow a perfect path of success to get here today. Long ago, I thought that I'd like to be a millionaire by age 45 and retire but I did not create a spreadsheet and manage my funds every day to accomplish the task. Instead, I meandered. I wandered and wondered. I listened to the advice of others (especially my wife's advice to avoid the trap of "buyer's remorse") and followed advice when it made sense to me, sometimes working out and sometimes not. I emotionally leaned on my friends and family when times got too tough for one person to handle. Always, I laughed and joked around.

I have taught classes for three quarters in the local classrooms of a technical institute. I have learned a better way to teach, one that is as old as our species: motivate others to enjoy life and nurture their natural curiosity and capacity to adapt. Teaching is not rote memorization. Teaching is encouraging others to desire to learn and count success as the grasp of a school subject, including concepts and jargon/vocabulary. I've learned more than I expected on the night I showed up at the technical institute as a guest speaker last winter. Time to take that learning and move on to the next social/economic interaction called a job or occupation, my definition of continual success as a wandering wonderer.