One day in 1998, I decided to officially throw in the towel on my dwindling aspirations to pursue a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. I quit my job as a Large Animal Handler at the Ohio State Veterinary Teaching Hospital (which I loved, but it paid very very badly). I cashed out my OSU employee retirement fund, packed up my cat and what wordly possessions I could fit in a 2 door sedan rental car, and moved to Atlanta Georgia.
Based on a few conversations over the phone, I put all of my potential job eggs in the basket of an entry-level customer service job at an Atlanta-based ISP. I never intended to make a career out of that decision, I just needed a job. I was quite fascinated by the swelling internet wave, and the company seemed (and proved to be) very cool to work for…at least for a while.
That was close to 7 years ago. Now, I find myself hyper-saturated by cut-throat corporate bullshit. I look back on the the better part of the last decade and feel like a tourist in my own life.
How did my small town, babydyke, biology geek, environmentalist, conservationist, internet junkie, fun-loving, liberal, anti-establishment self end up in a cluttered cubicle surrounded by two 21" monitors, two desktops, two laptops, a desk phone with 400 buttons, and a Treo? How did I wake up one day and realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept soundly through the night without waking up at 4:30 am sweating anxiety as to the looming deadline or endless to-do list that haunts my dreams? How the hell was I comfortable with pissing away the prime years of my life on a job that comes nowhere near satisfying my soul?
<Enter long-lost, Primatologist family friend and mentor, stage left>
Joe is my late father’s age. He grew up in the same rural area in Northern California where I did, and where my mother, brother, and sister-in-law still live. Joe has done amazing things with his life, and has traveled the world. He’s taught at colleges and universities. He was friends with Dian Fossey and he and his wife spent time with her in the Congo. He’s worked for National Geographic. He’s been a curator of Primates at the Brookfield Zoo. He’s designed animal habitat for zoos and research facilities, as well as acting as a consultant for similar endeavors. He’s retired now, but is still very active in his various fields, with the study of the aging of apes in captivity as his pet project.
It had been over 20 years since I last saw Joe, when we both suddenly realized that every two weeks, as part of consulting gigs for the Atlanta Zoo and the CDC, he would stay at a hotel in Midtown Atlanta that was 3 blocks away from my office. So we started meeting and having dinner, and Joe began re-planting the seed of “Follow your bliss” into my bitter and burnt-out ear. He encouraged me, as he had in the past, to get involved with the Atlanta Zoo. The Director Emertus is a personal friend of his, as are many prominent Zoo administrators and staff across the country. If I wanted to get back in touch with my inner fascinated conservationist biology geek, there were plenty of opportunities that could be made available.
So I currently stand upon the edge of a precipice. On one side is the financially stable yet stressful and unsatisfying (read sell-out) status-quo. On the other side is at least a year’s worth of unpaid zookeeper internships that will require a minimum commitment of 20 hours a week, on top of whatever job I have to pay the bills. Best-case scenario would be being able to get a full-time zookeeper position within a few years, once I’ve done the internship. I already meet all of the other requirements for a full-time keeper.
I’m taking the first steps toward making that leap, including arranging to move back to my previous (less stressful) department within the company. I’ve spent a year in the dog-eat-dog world of product management, and there’s no way I can hold down an internship with my current job, but I should be able to manage the 20 hours a week at the zoo with the demands of Internet Fraud & Abuse investigations, where I spent 5 of my past 7 years.
It is going to take a couple of months for the internal transfer to be possible, but I’ve already approached Joe and a few of my undergrad professors to write me letters of recommendation for my internship application. I just have to decide when to apply.
My girlfriend has also graciously suggested that we can rely primarily on her income for a while, so that I’d be able to quit and get some part-time job that would allow me to concentrate more fully on the internship and the zoo. I’m somewhat hesitant about this idea, as Atlanta isn’t a cheap place to live and I currently make a larger salary than she does. Not to mention the fact that she doesn’t even live here yet. She’s moving here from North Dakota in November, and will hopefully be able to transfer as Manager from her current Starbucks to one down here.
Long story short…I’m very interested in hearing any stories or advice that my fellow Dopers might have on the subject of leaps of faith on the path of life. I’m not interested in only the stories that have happy endings. Cautionary tales are certainly fair game.
I have my moments of being very charged and excited about the possibilities I am trying to create for myself, but they are often swallowed by the rigors of the day and the amount of time between now and when I’ll truly be able to try act out my plan. I know things will improve once I can move back into a relatively sane work environment though.