Once I start work with my coach, this question underpins so much of what we talk about. Not necessarily using that precise phrase, it often sneaks in by the backdoor, in a disguise. Sometimes it’s called Ikigai (Icky by name, pretty Icky by nature, as far as I’m concerned). Sometimes it’s “what do you see yourself doing ten years from now?”. Sometimes it’s “what brings you joy?”. And countless other versions of probing into the question at the heart of the matter, to which if I had the answer, I would not need the help I was seeking. It feels like my coach, my friends and the internet all think maybe, if the question is posed in some exotic and unconventional way, I will suddenly find myself speaking deep truths that even I didn’t know were buried there. 

This is of course completely unfair to my coach, who proceeds kindly, methodically, supportively through all the things I like to do, think I’m good at, think the world needs (yes, there’s the Icky Guy). But I am impatient and short-tempered: if it were obvious from those components, I really would have figured it out myself, I want to shout. It is visible from space that primarily, I am frustrated that it is not clear to me what I enjoy, that I do not have an innate sense for what I should be doing, and therefore can’t chart a bee-line to it.

You often hear about how people end up in their dream job by accident. They were doing something completely different and stumbled into something. Or they thought they wanted to do one thing, but then started doing another and discovered they were exceptionally good at it, or truly loved it. I don’t think many will have crafted their dream job in a void.

It is like designing your ideal garden, when you have not seen a plant in 20 years. Or writing a lyric love poem in a language in which you only know the phrase “where is the train station?”. How can you describe something when you don’t have the vocabulary, you are unfamiliar with the component parts, and you may not even know it exists? I hear echoes of Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns.

Again and again, I hear from well-intentioned givers of advice that I need to be specific about what I want to do. It is apparently a prerequisite to effective networking. The effort of figuring it out, though, is confounding and thwarts me in the earliest stages of getting myself out there. I cannot get a role without knowing what I want to do, and I cannot know what I want to do until I start doing something!

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it takes many weeks to get there, but eventually the solution becomes obvious, even to me: Just do something that sounds vaguely interesting. 

I recalibrate phasers from “my forever role” to “yeah, alright, that’ll do for a bit”.