I was out for a morning walk and saw a car with a license plate frame that read, “I’d rather be riding horses”. I thought about the work I had waiting for me at home and it made me think about what I’d rather be doing.
I like my work, but I don’t want to do it 12 hours a day. I don’t live to work. Never have. I’ve always had other things that were important to me and I always made time to do them.
How about you? What would your license plate frame say? What would you rather be doing right now? Not just at this moment but in your work this year and for the rest of your life?
You may be one of the lucky ones who love what you do and can’t imagine doing anything else. Or you might be like many people, reasonably content with your work because you’re good at it and it provides you with a good living but in your heart of hearts, you’d rather be doing something else.
Imagine that you had money out of the way and that you never had to work again. Would you suit up every day and head down to the office or would you put on your sandals and head to the beach?
If you’d rather be doing something else, it’s okay to admit that to yourself. That doesn’t mean you’ll drop everything and start over. But you might start thinking about the next phase in your life and take some steps to prepare for it.
The other day I thought about someone I went to law school with but hadn’t spoken to in over 30 years. I wondered what he was up to these days and searched for him online. Was he still practicing? Was he still doing family law? Was he retired? In another line of work?
I couldn’t find his website, nor any links on social media. I couldn’t find anything about him, which I thought was weird. But I knew him before “the Internet” and shrugged it off, thinking he was just another dinosaur who had refused to evolve.
“Surely he has an email address,” I thought and went to the California bar website to find it. That’s when I learned that my old friend was deceased.
He was my age and now he’s gone. Had he had a successful career, I wondered. A happy life? Did he always love his work? Or would he rather have been riding horses?
