What’s A Dream Job?

I remember making a “vision board” after reading about them in whatever self-help book I was reading at the time.  My vision board had newspaper clippings and words put together with cutout letters, reminding me of who I wanted to be.   

On this board was a saying that stuck with me.  “Your dream job doesn’t exist, you must create it.”  At the time, I took this as meaning I should chase my entrepreneurial spirit because every job I’d ever have wouldn’t be enough.  Sooner or later, I would have to start a business or make my own life for myself in some way.  

Fast forward to June 2020.  I hopped on a conference call in the morning with the rest of the Athletics Player Development staff.  We had received an email the night before and most of us knew what was coming.  We were about to be furloughed. 

The years that I’d spent in baseball had brought me experiences that I never could have imagined prior.  Eating McDonalds at 1am after sleeping on a bus for three hours isn’t exactly the “dream job” I was referring to in my vision board years earlier but it was one aspect of an experience that had shaped me into who I was that day in June.  Working in baseball had helped me to adapt to new situations, to work through language barriers, to show up on time and stay late if needed.  It had taught me what being consistent looked like. All I had to do was watch Edwin Jackson warm up for a few minutes to realize that there were people out there who took my idea of “hard work” and made it look like a Sunday afternoon stroll.   

The lessons, the camaraderie, the memories of sleepless nights and sunny days all came to a head on that phone call back in June, 2020.  We were being furloughed and there was no guarantee that we would be back in 2021. We were going to have to go figure it out on our own. There was plenty of notice given and the writing was on the wall but it still felt like the floor was falling out from beneath me.   

Later that same day, I had a meeting with Lucas Zelazny, the owner of Concept Move, the gym that I’ve worked for over the past 8 months.  In that meeting, Lucas gave me a new job, new responsibilities and new direction.  It was the ultimate gift in a time of struggle and one that I will always remember.  While baseball was going away, I had a new purpose.  

Over the next 8 months, I trained some of the best human beings that I’ve ever met.  Business owners who taught me what being a leader demands, parents who showed me what putting others first really looks like, high school kids who proved to me that the next generation has plenty to give and that the cynical folks sneering “young people don’t know how to work” should take a seat and not talk for awhile.  Every new person that I’ve met and trained with has brought me happiness and new lessons in how to be a better coach and an altogether better person.   

Contrary to baseball, I’ve never had a language barrier issue while training at Concept, I’ve been asleep before midnight more often than not and the people that I train couldn’t care less how hard they throw a baseball. The two jobs could not be more different.  

Looking back at that day of getting furloughed, that day of feeling utterly helpless and lost being given the news that my dream job was no longer my job, only to find a job that was new and different but somehow a “dream job” in its own right brought me to a whole new perspective of that writing on my vision board years back.  It doesn’t take a career change to find a dream job, it takes a mentality switch.  We can all create our dream job by being impactful in our own way wherever we may be.  It doesn’t take a sexy title or a huge pay increase to make a job dreamy. It takes commitment, optimism, a growth mindset and hopefully some good-hearted people willing to offer us an opportunity.  That can happen anywhere. It starts with us.