When a career goes full circle

My very first job was a live-in position as a cleaner and night veterinary assistant at Four Winds Animal Hospital in a small city back in 1980, 45 years ago.

I found it in the local newspaper a few days after I turned 18. The veterinarian thought I was too young, but offering $25 a week with an in-clinic efficiency apartment but no benefits, he didn't push back too hard against the office manager's choice. 

I think maybe I was hired because I was only a few years older than the manager's super-smart, sweet, and hardworking daughter, who cleaned and assisted on weekends.  Also, a young and rather-meek youngster would probably be a bit more malleable than an older person set in her ways - especially for a live-in job. A week later, an older rather acerbic vet tech quit (or was fired?) and I got extra duties and a boost in pay to $60 a week. I kept that job until I left for college two years later. The vet trained me hard, thinking that my acceptance to "Ithaca College" meant "Cornell in Ithaca to become a vet." He wasn't particularly pleased when he found out my future major was environmental ethics/philosophy, but I got six solid years of vet-quizzed education (two full-time years and four additional when I was home from college during breaks, summers, or weekends). 

From then on, that lucky foundation led to one job after another. And each and every job was unusual and eye-opening.

After career twists and turns, and immersion into countless different worlds, from animal control and cruelty investigation, to a fabulous internet start-up, to ratings-centered TV and digital entertainment, pet food, police emergency dispatch, humane wildlife control (my own business), laboratory animal and plant science, and digital/brand marketing, I'm actually back in the veterinary clinic space with a spay/neuter/special-surgeries clinic about 35 minutes away. 

The pay is unremarkable, but it comes faithfully every Friday, unlike my last 2 years working for online marketers who sacrificed the well-bring of their team for their online image. The commute eats up a lot of gas in my not-meant-for-daily-driving van, but it's purging to have 35 minutes of time in my own head twice a day. And it's actual work for actual humans and actual pets. No more creating false realities for online professionals who have fallen for the belief that just a shiny online image will somehow bring profits rolling in.

And wow, is it eye-opening to be back in an environment that cares about animals and their owners, with a team who to put their effort where their heart - and public image - is. I didn't realize how much fibbing I had been asked to do in my previous digital marketing life, and it's almost a rebirth to shed all of that. Every workplace has its bumps and quirks, but when the work has a real cause, rather than a super-shiny professed one, it's so much easier to sleep at night.

I've taken the first tiny steps to dig myself out of the huge financial hole I allowed myself to be shoved into. Sadly, when people said "Hey, could you jump in this hole?" I replied "Sure, you seem like a nice person, I trust you and admire your creativity so I'll jump and trust that you'll jump with me." Yeah - no. Not how it worked. It's a lesson I should have learned a long time ago, but you know...you always hope.

Yeah, I'm bitter, but it's fading fast. It's going to take years to clear away the financial damage, but luckily I have retirement resources I can tap that will allow me to pay back people who helped me shortly.

And seeing - every single day -  animal rescuers and pet owners so incredibly relieved to find a veterinary option they can afford for spay/neuter and emergency services,  helps douse the anger I have after years of smoke and mirrors in the so-called online 'pet space.'  Trust me. The real 'pet space' isn't online. 

The long and the short of it:  I am so glad this opportunity came by, to get me back to the roots that really mattered to me back as an 18-year-old, taking my first working steps centered around animals.

Becoming the architect of your endgame

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a scary epiphany. I realized I had begun counting my life from the end back, versus from today forward. Somewhere ahead is my last day, and between now and then, I have a finite stretch of time that is mine to use. 

And this wasn't necessarily a bad way of looking at the rest of my life.

I'm no longer living on a big bright forward curve full of possibility. I'm living a big bold black line with a stark beginning (today) and an end. I'm in my endgame. Every day I don't do something, my endgame is a little bit shorter.

When I was young, I was drifting toward some hazy, undefined future that seemed full of possibilities. Even if my current life, finances, or love life sucked, there were still all those bright decades ahead when I could buy that cabin, get that horse, find that perfect guy, build that spay/neuter clinic, etc. 

I first realized time was truly finite when I gave up the dream of the horse. I'd chosen cats, and they were taking up all my time and dollars. Even though I had acres enough for horses, I didn't have fences, and a big enough bank account to be immediately available for horse injuries and monthly farrier visits. When I looked at my priorities, those fences weren't on it. I also suspected that if I built fences, I'd become the caretaker of every local shelter's found horses. So...

• Horse = strikethrough.
• Gut the upstairs of my house and add a balcony = strikethrough
• Learn the mandolin to expert level = traded for ukulele (easier on the fingers if practice is haphazard)
• Build a spay/neuter clinic = Love the vision, but prefer the hands-on to the ownership admin work

At first it seems like striking things off your list is kind of sad. On the other, I begin to focus more sharply on what I could really do over the course of that big bold black line. What thing could I do that might REALLY make a difference? Did it have to be what I was doing now? Did what I was doing now make me happy - or even make a difference?

More and more of us over 60 are waking up to the reality: there’s no cushy, pension-paid retirement ahead. We have to work. The question is — how? 

• We can find a job that keeps us moving, gives us some satisfaction, and maybe even some benefits—something that lets us live while we do what we love on the side. 💥
• We can grind ourselves into the ground, making someone else’s dream come true, just trying to keep the lights on. 😖  (Hint: This is where I am now)
• We can cling to a career we’ve outgrown, constantly updating our skills to stay relevant in a game we no longer care about.😕 (I'm here, too)
• Or we can be the architect of our own endgame.✨

I like to think that an endgame architect doesn’t waste what time is left. You don’t mindlessly chase money, or work yourself into exhaustion for a mission that no longer fuels you. You don't just give up, plodding away at what you are currently doing hoping that something will change on its own.

• Maybe that means quitting the thing that’s draining you. 
• Maybe it means starting over—crafting a legacy that actually matters to you. 
• Maybe it’s finally making something of your own rather than building for someone else. 

One day, our names will be printed in an obituary. What do I want mine to say? (Quiet tip: Go ahead and write your own obituary now. I would have loved it if my mom and dad had left a rough draft of what they wanted to be remembered for, rather than me worrying my sisters and I had left something important out, or highlighted something they really didn't care about). 

We don’t have forever. But we have now until our end day. And that’s enough to build something that lasts.

So what about me? I do have a pretty good idea of what mine will be. I've been talking about it with a friend, and making a few new professional contacts in hope it will come true. It needs to be simple (because you know, I'm tired). But it needs to make a difference.

I'm just putting Step 1 here, now, just in case anyone else has also discovered that perhaps that unforgiving big black line right in front of us could have even more power and potential that that big misty curve did, decades ago.

My word for 2025

I've always kind of felt a 'word for the year' to be another New Year's cliche - a marketing ploy that coaches etc. use to get people engaged so they'll commit to even more communication. It's fun, it's easy, and what does it hurt? It works on me, after all. In previous years, when I saw a little "what's your word for the year" call to action online, I usually paused to spend at least a few seconds mulling the thought.

But, let'ss face it. Anytime I've chosen a 'word of the year' by the time it comes around to choosing the next one 12 months later, I've forgotten the last one. So much for impact!

So this year, I found myself rolling my eyes and scrolling on by when I saw online-product coaches prompting readers for their 'word of the year for 2025.' Although for the purposes of this blog post, I did ask ChatGPT it's AI suggestions:

Resilience – For staying strong and adaptable through challenges.
Simplify – Focus on what truly matters by decluttering your life.
Intentional – Live with purpose and focus.
Bold – Step out of your comfort zone and take risks.

..Blah, blah, blah.

That doesn't mean that I'm not using the New Year as my excuse to get shit done. After all, see? I'm blogging. But after 5 surprising years on the fringes of digital marketing, I've become very skeptical of so called self-help suggestions that are really just marketing hooks (IMO)

Until, as I was reviewing my 'gotta do if I wanna be' and rephasing my 'I wanna be' thoughts into "I am' affirmations, a word of the year suddenly stamped itself on my brain as I was writing down phone numbers for businesses, goverment agencies, and financial institutions I need to call to wrap up loose ends.

ENOUGH.

Not "I am enough."
Not a big, round fulfilling "enough."
More like "Enough of this shit"

I'm not going to go on a blogging rant about what I'm fed up on, but I am going to plop this here so that throughout the year, as I squash a few ridiculous connections, or solidify a few good habits, I can reveal that I've put this or that thing behind me. None of these are earth shaking, which is why it's important to just say ENOUGH!

If you've got a word of the year, I'd love to hear it. However, if you are rolling your eyes and moving onto better things, I'll absolutely send you a virtual high five.

New Year, New Cliché

It's hard to write on New Year's Day without resorting to some cliche about new beginnings or new resolutions. After all, every year we get older we hear the same things over and over again, so yeah, since I started paying attention at about age 5 (my parents would bring home party hats and noise makers that they'd pass over to us kids) that would be 57 years of the same old platitudes.

Nonetheless that "new start" vibes are hard to shake after all that time. The higher the expectations you place on 'starting over,' the further you fall when you don't meet those expectations. Which is why I'm aiming for a lot of little 1% changes this year. Day by day, month by month.

I had to do some bigger 10% changes yesterday, getting all the cats on AdoptAPet.com after giving up on Petfinder when it kept giving error notices everytime I tried to add a photo. Of course, as soon as all of my cats were added, Petfinder started working again. But, too late. I'm too tired to re-add them all to Petfinder this week. And I've already gotten some inquiries via AdoptAPet. Now my 1% will be improving their bios a bit each day, and maybe adding one each day or so to PF. We'll see.

Today's 1% is writing this blog post. Any blog post. A blog post a day will help keep the lonelies away, once I've gained a little traction again, and follow up by reading my friends' blog posts, too. There are still a few old-time bloggers out there, doing it to stay in touch, rather than to sell, sell, sell.

Here's to incremental changes in 2025!