The next step

Reaching your carefully chosen career destination will often involve taking 10,000 or so small, make that very small, steps. The distance is just too great for most mere mortals to make in a single bound.

Oh, it would be nice to wake up one morning and discover that aside from winning the lottery, loosing 50 pounds, and becoming fluent in French, etc. you had also magically acquired your desired career. But down here on Earth…things don’t usually work out that way. So in order to take the next step it is necessary to identify the steps you have already taken, and hence the next appropriate step to take.

If you are feeling lost in life it is that much more important to slow down and try to determine where you are at in relationship to where you want to be. A mall style mental map with nice bright letters indicating “You are Here” could come in handy while trying to escape from your career wilderness. Similarly, picturing a GPS system tracking some poor soul spinning in circles year after year could provide the much-needed inspiration to stop. Which reminds me that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the same predictable and unsuccessful result.

Being busy, even if this just means aimlessly running here and there, can suggest a sense of direction and accomplishment – from a distance. Some people may lack in direction what they make up for in speed and still live out their days being constantly affirmed by casual acquaintances. And yet what good is all the activity if it just means going nowhere in particular really fast?

It may be tempting for some reading this to mistakenly assume, employing religious language, that neglecting their own responsibility is somehow synonymous with trusting in God. But this isn’t an either/or situation it is rather both/and. Confidence in God, in Christ, is critical along life’s way and so is a Christian-based emphasis on personal initiative. Those who make a point of not planning will, in all likelihood, just find that they are eventually forced to plug themselves into somebody else’s plan.

So where are you at right now? Lacking a clear vision of your destination? Unclear exactly where you are along the way? Why not take an hour or even a whole day in the not-to-distant future to sit down and carefully consider your next step.

Planning ahead

Feels good until it freezes

Just checked the weather here in Saskatchewan and it is a balmy minus 41 degrees celsius – with the wind chill. Oh, it’s not so bad, I try to tell myself. Without the wind chill…now that would be a problem. Might as well be living on the dark side of the Moon then.

The weather guy will no doubt report the temperature in Jamaica or Hawaii or Morocco tonight. Not sure why they do that, but that is what the weather people like to do in cold countries, like Canada. Gives people a sense of hope, I suppose. Or, more likely, it just makes everybody feel bad. Nasty weather people.

“How are you enjoying global warming so far?” my former boss used to say, on days like this. I would be enjoying it a whole lot more if I was a penguin, I think to myself. Believe it or not, you can get used to extremely cold weather. Why else would the penguins live where they do? After a while minus 20 starts to feel like good sun-tanning weather. All the crazy college and university students, here on the prairies, break out the shorts and T-shirts right about then. Do they do that in northern Europe? In Russia? Down in South America? Or, do I just happen to live with all the crazy people?

Needless to say, you have to plan ahead and take some precautions when the mercury takes such a drastic dip. Especially when travelling. Charge your cell phone, pack some blankets, bring some food, grow a beard (if you are the beard growing type), update your will, notify your next of kin; and if you plan on going beyond the corner store, you need to really be prepared. “How bad can it be,” I said to my wife, as we ventured out one winter morning. How bad? We soon found out.

On another occasion, I remember running out of gas on the Trans-Canada highway just east of Calgary, Alberta, when the arctic air had once again settled in. Believe me, you don’t want to be stranded on the side of the road wearing nothing but your Hawaii holiday clothes when it gets that cold. Turning “California Dreaming” up a little louder on your Mp3 player isn’t going to do much good, while you shuffle down the highway in your sandals and swimsuit, through the snow. You might even find yourself featured in the evening news, and for all the wrong reasons: “Crazy Canuck goes for walk on winter day and freezes fanny; claims the Beach Boys are to blame.”

Planning ahead is the obvious prudent thing to do when travelling on an extremely cold winter day. It is a matter of survival, really. And planning ahead is also extremely important when considering which career path to take.

Where are you going to end up in five years, in ten years, in twenty years if you make the career decision you are considering today? Something to think about. Think hard. What seems like a great idea when you are 20 years old, may turn into a story your grandchildren hear – about what not to do – when you turn 60. Career decisions often have profound consequences. Ten concussions, two brain transplants, and five broken bones later, a professional football career – for example – might not feel like such a great and glorious choice after all.

Try to get a picture in your mind of what your life will be like in the years ahead. If you don’t like what you see down the road, as it were, you may be able to make some critical adjustments and arrive safely at a much more appealing destination.