The glass stood on the kitchen counter, filled with Ovaltine chocolate milk. I watched with wide eyes as my father stood next to it, dressed to in his suit and tie.
I looked up at him, with a hopeful expression on my face.
“Could I have some too, daddy?”
Moments later, we were downing our glasses of Ovaltine together, the master and his three-year old apprentice.
***
The milk ritual was special to me. Maybe even sacred. It was the only time I could spend each day with the man I idolized so much, before he headed off to his advertising job in the big city. So I busted tail to the kitchen every morning, hoping to catch him before the glass was empty and my hopes were shattered.
But this day was different. Our time together would not be limited to a glass of milk, because I was going my father to that mystical job, the one that kept him from me so much.
I felt like a kid at Disney World. We got to take the train into the big city, then we walked down a street full of tall buildings until we got to one that looked like it touched the sky. We rode an elevator to the 32nd floor, and my father opened a glass door in a glass wall, entering an office suite that overlooked much of the city.
My father got me M&Ms and a Diet Coke from the vending machine, opened up Microsoft Word on his computer and left for a meeting. I stared mesmerizingly at the blank page before me on the computer screen, then hit hit the “g” key repeatedly, until the entire page was filled with it. When my father returned, I proudly showed him the “work” I’d done, and he laughed. Then, we went down the street to McDonalds for lunch.
***
By the time we got home that evening, I was convinced that my father had the coolest job ever — an occupation that made up for all the time we had to spend apart. But even though he tried to hide it, I had a feeling that he didn’t feel the way about his job that I did.
Truth is, my father was miserable — so miserable, in fact, that my mother felt compelled to utter the seven-word ultimatum that would come to define our family’s future: “Change your life or change your wife.”
My father made the wise decision, and soon that job in the fancy high-rise office was no more. He went to grad school and our lives changed. Even at a young age, this wasn’t lost on me; I remarked, “Now we can finally eat out again,” on the day he graduated.
Soon enough, my father was back on his feet as a teacher — a career he continues today, more than 20 years later. It was all strange to me, as I was in the early years of school myself at the time. But it was certainly nice to see him more each day, and to have summers off together.
***
Draw what you don’t want to be.
It’s an odd request, particularly when you’re 12 years old and those words are coming from a psychologist. But it didn’t take me more than a second to put pen to paper.
A few artistically-challenged moments later, I showed off my completed “masterpiece.” It was a photo of a sad-looking man, wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, waiting on a train platform.
The moment was jarring; I’d drawn my father from my early years.
It was clear that the normal 9 to 5 was a trap to me at that time. I’d felt the prison bars up close, and I was determined to avoid them. In the decade that followed, I charted a course far away from the traditional business field, ending up as a TV news producer in West Texas after I graduated college.
At the age of 25, I pivoted.
I moved back to a big city — Dallas in this case — and transitioned into a 9 to 5 career in the same marketing and advertising sector my father had left so many years before.
It had all come full circle.
***
In the early days of my second career, I spoke often about finishing what my father started. It didn’t matter that I was cutting my teeth in Internet marketing — a beast that didn’t exist 20 years earlier, when he was in the industry; to me, the symbiotic nature of our career journeys was too compelling to ignore, and it was a powerful motivator.
But then, I remembered the picture I’d drawn years before. I wasn’t becoming the man on the train platform, was I?
Thankfully, the answer was a resounding no.
I realized in that moment that despite the shared career field, my father and I were worlds apart. While my father started in the industry fresh out of college, I had already experienced burnout in another career by the time I joined the marketing world — and I had taken the lessons from both my father’s prior experience and my own to heart while building a necessary sense of perspective.
Forget legacy or overarching purpose. At the end of the day, my job was simply an occupation, and it needed to stay that way.
***
I’ve since grown more comfortable with the routines of the business world — even dressing somewhat formally despite my employer’s lack of a strict dress code — but I still refuse to let my job take over my life. While I continue to work at becoming a better marketer, if I ever feel that my career is trapping me in a cycle of misery — as my father did — I will follow his lead (and my precedent) and start anew.
For there’s one lesson my father taught me that rings truer than the rest.
Building a career is a worthy investment. But the moments that matter the most are the ones shared while downing that glass of Ovaltine.