Originally posted March 27, 2005

I don’t know many people who can say that that have found their dream job. You all know the saying: If you enjoy your work, you’ll never work another day in your life. I feel like that. It makes me wonder how I got here.

When I was in high school, my dream was to be a writer. In fact, in my high school yearbook, I wrote that my goal was to be “a Pulitzer prize winning author.” So I went off to college and studied English.

However, after I gradutated college, I started spending time at a radio station in Pittsburgh while going to graduate school to further my writing aspirations. When my time in radio started to outweigh my time writing, I decided I had to make a decision. I chose radio.

I wish I could give you a brilliant explanation as to how this critical decision was made, but the bottom line is that I really just enjoyed radio more. Radio is challenging, but it is also a lot of fun. Challenging and fun? I’m there.

Of course I chucked radio two years later when a record company quadrupled my salary (yes, quadrupled) to do record company promotion in Dallas. This was an interesting decision for me. I just basically chased the cash and put everything else aside. Hell, my expense account alone was more than anyone I knew was making in a year. Luckily, my girlfriend decided to follow me to Dallas in the new role as my wife.

So I was having fun doing record promotion, but it was a total drag on my life: I was traveling a lot, and my job really was my life. It wasn’t fair to my wife, and it wasn’t really fair to me. Luckily enough, my company crashed and burned, and I was laid off from my job, a job that was most certainly not a dream job. Talk about good luck. Well, I consider it good luck now. Back then it was something between despair and terror. I mean, you kinda get used to weekly dinners at the Palm.

Typically for my wife and I, when confronted with a challenge, we just throw caution to the wind and follow our hearts. In this instance, I started my own business, publishing a fax publication for Alternative radio. My timing was good, and it went pretty well. In the spectrum of job satisfaction, this was a great job: I worked from home, I had my own hours, and I had a ton of flexibility. The financial end was rather dicey, but we roughly made it work.

I also faced a new job at this time: Dad. My first daughter was born right in the middle of this new self-employment kick. I did a lot of diaper changing, feeding, playing, and coaxing, soothing, and patting a little girl to sleep.

So I had two cool jobs, self-employment where I was a writer (wasn’t that my high school dream job?) and a new baby. Life was good.

Then a company called Radio & Records called. They wanted me to move to LA for double my old record company salary. You remember that job, right–the cash grab that was quadruple my radio salary? Well, this job was triple the pay of the record company job and I’d be a writer for a big-time trade publication. Talk about a short conversation: “Honey, would you like to make a six figure salary and live on the beach in Los Angeles?” I don’t even think my wife answered me. She was already packing her suitcase.

So we moved to Santa Monica. It was nice, but expensive. The job was good, but the company wasn’t. So we moved back to Dallas, somehow with me keeping the cushy salary and the job. Life was good again. Nice big house. Nice big salary. I worked from home again, and–surprise–we were blessed with another little girl.

So now I was kind of back to my previous Dallas spot: Cool writing job working from home and a new baby. There were two differences: Baby #1 was older and a bit more high maintenance, and the job wasn’t as fun. Actually, the job was fine, not great but fine, but the politics and everything really sucked. That said, it was nice to receive a big fat bi-weekly paycheck. So life was good. I also really liked spending time with two girls. Honestly, what’s better than one daughter? Two.

But then I got laid off again, and this time things weren’t as good. I started my publication over again but the business had changed and I was faced with a dramatic reduction in salary. I didn’t go all the way back to my radio salary from 1991…but it was close. The funny thing is, though, that I really had fun on this job. Daughter #3 was born at this time, and I got to have a blast with my wife and three girls, and–oh yeah–I worked a bit. If our financial situation wasn’t quickly slipping into oblivion, life would have been great.

Luckly, I got a new job and it was kind of like the culmination of all my other jobs: I am a radio consultant. I write a lot of reports, but they aren’t theoretical. They are hands on things that directly affect what people hear on the radio. In a sense, that job I abandoned my writing career for back in 1989 is the job I have now…only it has all of the positives and none of the negatives: I get to work from home, my bosses love me, they appreciate my creativity, and they pay me pretty well, to boot. This is the best of all possible worlds.

At the same time, I get to spend all my time with my three daughters, too. And this is where it all comes together. Talk about a dream job. What could be better than that?

So it’s funny. When I gradutated from high school I thought my dream job was to be a writer, sitting alone in the act of creation, and here it is almost twenty years later, and I’ve discovered what my real dream job is, and without realizing it, I’ve shoehorned all my career choices down a path that leads to this job choice, a choice that has nothing to do with being alone and everything to do with being a critical part of a developing group, a choice, by-the-way, which in the end wasn’t a choice at all.

So, here I am. Living my dream job, and it is awesome.

I wouldn’t trade the job of being the dad to three girls for anything in the world.