Instead of finding your dream job, craft your “dream day”
👋 Welcome back to the Medium Newsletter
Issue #175: honest classical music performances, what to do in Scotland, and finally throwing away all those morning pages
By Carly Rose Gillis
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of how one day I’d finally become… a Content Operations Lead.
Of course, this is a lie. It’s a common type of joke — John Mulaney just did a version of it at a Salesforce conference — based on how the vast majority of us do not attain our childhood dream jobs of becoming astronauts, veterinarians, or marine biologists. We grow up and get jobs with strange titles that our younger selves would find confusing or boring. Jobs that sometimes make us wonder: Is this what I wanted to become?
DEI consultant and author Sarah Cordivano explored this theme in her recent Medium story “What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?” and offers a “blueprint” to reevaluate your career if you’re looking to do so. It offers three main themes to contemplate when thinking about your job satisfaction, but this one in particular stood out to me:
What do you want your day to look like?
Cordivano recommends asking yourself these questions to paint a picture of your perfect work day:
- Where do you go to work (office, home, co-working space, etc)?
- What does your workspace look like?
- What fills your day?
- Who do you meet and interact with?
- How do you like to be contacted by colleagues during your work?
- In what scenario do you feel most productive?
- What scenario do you feel least productive?
The answers can move you toward actionable changes you can make now, and aspirations that are rooted in who you already are in your real life, rather than who you may have wanted to become when you were a kid. And you may find that you’re already achieving parts of your ideal day, which can lead to gratitude. When I think of it that way, being a Content Operations Lead is pretty dreamy after all.
What else we’re reading:
- Continuing today’s theme of childhood nostalgia… When I was a kid, my grandfather would take me to a local museum to see classical music and I remember feeling such tremendous awe at how brave the performers must be. This piece of memoir by Mario López-Goicoechea conjured those feelings in me again. López-Goicoechea elaborates on what makes a live performance really special: “In order for a concert to be memorable, you need honesty from each and every single musician in the orchestra. They have to be unafraid to call to a part of themselves that might expose them to a hungry and unknown audience.”
- I’ll be traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland, soon and have admittedly been procrastinating on planning out specific things to do or see. So I was delighted to find this charming and extremely useful story to help me in my research: “An Unconventional Tour of Edinburgh” by The Artful Historian. It’s packed full of great advice and great animal stories. For instance, did you know that Edinburgh has its own version of the story of Hachiko? Or that it has a Chihuahua Cafe?
Today’s dose of practical wisdom: throw away your morning pages
“Morning pages” refers to a massively popular creative practice by artist Julia Cameron where you write pages of copy, stream of consciousness style, at the beginning of each day. But the point of them isn’t in the content, it’s in the process — just getting stuff out of your brain so you can move on to accomplishing your day. Throw them away to embrace their value.
Zoom In update
It’s a first for the Medium Newsletter: No one correctly guessed last week’s Zoom In quiz, so we’ll reveal it here: Take a look at the diamond in the illustration of Jack Handey’s latest Medium story, “Young Love.”
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Harris Sockel
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
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