Career Motivations in My Early 20s
The why behind what I do.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the why behind what I do. As graduation continued to approach, I have begun to dig into my psyche in search of what my core motivations and values truly are.
Naturally, this led me to question what I want to do professionally. Do I want to continue down the path that I’m on and become a high school English teacher? Or would I rather take an internship in tech and complete the pivot upon graduation. Chances are you already know what decision I made. Here’s how I came to it.
I want to do something that matters
This is the conclusion that took me the longest to come to. Education has long been something that I’ve valued over virtually everything else. As I’ve progressed through my teacher training program, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that educators do have the potential to make a huge difference on people’s lives, but this largely happens on the micro.
Right now, I’m much more interested in the macro. I want to pursue things that take my skillset, interests, and leverage them to the maximum degree possible. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of change at scale.
Geographic freedom is a top priority
While making a difference and doing things that matter to me personally are what matters to me most, I also care a great deal about location independence. In essence, I want to do exactly what I want to do in the place that I want to do it.
Granted, these are both incredibly spoiled, privileged requests for somebody in their early 20s to make, but I’m a huge proponent of setting goals much higher than what you think is possible. If you aim for a 10/10 life, “failure” could still be an 8 or 9.
Also, with remote work becoming increasingly common and culturally accepted, I wholeheartedly think that these goals are achievable through a career in entrepreneurship and tech. They exist in a world where what you do is valued much greater than where you do it from.
This is simply not the case in education, and rightfully so. You teach at a school and that school is where it’s at. It can’t and won’t move simply because I want to spend a few months working on a beach in Mexico or summer in Osaka.
Building makes me happy
Seeing things begin in my head and manifesting in the world is one of the best feelings in the world. Nothing compared to the rush I felt when I opened my first box of book proofs and held my debut novel in my hand for the very first time. It’s a dragon that I’m willing to forever chase.
I’m not entirely sure how this will look moving forward, but I already have a few ideas floating around in my head. I know for sure that I’m going to keep writing books and try to grow myself as a fully independent writer (I will never sell my book rights to a big house).
Everything else remains up in the air. Maybe I’ll start a monthly newsletter or start taking Twitter more seriously. Or maybe I’ll just double down on this blog and that’ll be enough. The future remains unclear as ever. But I do know one thing, though: I’m only interested in doing things that I find meaningful. This is non-negotiable.
Finding the intersection of my interests
This was perhaps the biggest revelation of my introspective journey. Choosing tech doesn’t necessarily mean not choosing teaching. Education something that is very important to me. Working in tech just means that I’ll have to scratch that itch differently.
Writing in this blog is one way that I plan on doing this, but I’m sure that many others will pop up as I continue to move forward through life and my career. Whenever something major (either a huge win or failure) occurs, I want to write about it and share my experiences with whoever’s willing to listen.
