Recently I have been asked a lot about my career goals.
The questions came up during a conversation with my academic advisor where I wanted to understand my options if I plan to take a break from school. A similar question was raised during a routine career dev session at work. Even when using Chat as a journaling assistant, Chat thought it was a good idea for me to ponder what I was trying to achieve (as if he would understand).
I found it difficult to answer this question with a straight face ever since I made a conscious decision on living a life without objectives. Back in December, snowstorms, unexpected travel interruptions, and long hours of driving put me hard in the present moment. When I was present it was hard to think about the future.
It has been 8 months since I let go of goal setting and my life appears to stay pretty normal. I took courses, did performances, understood more about SQL style guide, flew across the continents multiple times, and continued training (how are we still working on deadlifts?). In short, I lived.
Although I don’t know how to answer this question, it has surfaced too many times for me to refuse thinking over the reasons why I find it hard to provide an answer (other than bluntly “me no have goals”) to begin with:
1. Goal implies desire. Desire implies separation. Separation means pursuits without an end.
2. Goal speaks to the future. Future contradicts the present. Present is where we live.
3. Goal asks for how. How asks for control. Wuwei (无为) let go of control.
According to the perfect logical deduction above, goal settings doesn’t match with my life values. And but so it starts to get confusing as I perhaps used the words goal/objective way too many times. Does it mean I’m rejecting any goal? One might ask what the goal is of this post, to share ideas or to rant? Either way there must be a goal (or goals) motivating me to spend a good chunk of my Saturday typing onto a non-mechanical keyboard.
For the love of confusions. Perhaps, the confusion comes from human language (and the English language to be specific) and I got myself trapped in the definition of words. Perhaps, the conversations were not meant to be transactional. Perhaps, when my academic advisor asked me about my career goal, what she was really asking was whether my decision to leave fits my life values. Oh, life values, that one I know. I have a good long list of nouns that describe the most important things to me. Working backwards, a subset of those values could be applicable to career. In other words, career is part of life and work life boundary is an illusion.
Aim for knowledge.
The knowledge of library systems, SDK versions, Socrates’ view on writing, design principles.
Aim for fun.
The kind of fun you get when finding a resonating view from a paragraph written hundreds of years ago, when writing a thousand-word essay in the flow, when the query does what’s expected, when driving up north for the snow.
Aim for experience.
The type of experience where I got to fist bump Canada’s first female astronaut, make cookies for 200 privileged kids, produce work that was cited by a top researcher in the field, and sit in the room where it happens.
To summarize, I think I finally came up with a career goal that can be used as a template response in versatile career related conversations - to get those fries on the pier that is. Since work is life, a life’s work.
