Your Career isn't a Path: It's a Garden

If you're like me, you've spent your life thinking of your career as a path. If you're really like me, you've also spent most of that life describing it as a "meandering" path. But I've come to a recent realization: that's bullshit.

And it comes with so much baggage. Anything but moving directly forward on a clearly-defined track feels like being lost: losing the path, going backwards, making a wrong turn. And all of those things come with a sense of shame.

One day, though, I woke up from this lifelong metaphor and found a new one. My career grows, it requires nurturing, it's a complex result of factors both internal and external, it can be beautiful and it can require hard, sometimes unpleasant labor.

It's a garden.

Cultivation, Not Control

I'm going to go ahead and lead with what I see as the most valuable thing about this metaphor, just in case you get bored and stop reading soon: you can neither predict nor control exactly how any plant will grow. And that's ok.

Have you ever told someone you "just sort of fell into" your job, industry, or expertise? Generally, a career isn't something you choose off a list. Even if you choose early on to be a doctor, and you stick with it, there are a lot of elements that feel like they happen to you. Maybe you couldn't get into your first choice medical school, so you go to your second choice. That school has a brilliant professor in a specialty you've never been excited about, and they spark an interest for you. Suddenly you're learning about biological systems you never considered before.

For even more people, your first job is just whatever you can get, then it might lead to something else that pays a little better. Or you need a job in a new city, so you take the first thing you can find. You may not be thinking "ah yes, retail, my dream job." But it pays, and you need money. Next thing you know, you've got a resume full of retail jobs and you feel like you never chose to do it.

In the "path" metaphor, you're picking a road to go down, then choosing again at each crossroads. And it's very easy to think of it like you're stuck. It's too late. You've come too far. It would take even more time and effort to go back and pick something else.

Not anymore, I'm freeing you of the path through the woods.

This is a garden. Guess what. You can plant something new in the soil, right there next to the retail shrub or the doctor tree. Plant a seed–a volunteer gig, a side hustle, a passion project. And see what it grows into. Will it turn into a money-maker that allows you to raze the most hated shrubbery to the ground? Maybe.

Plant it and see.

Because even that first plant? The doctor tree, the retail shrub? You planted that at some point. Maybe it was the only seedling you had. Maybe someone told you it would be a great look for your garden. Maybe you really liked the picture on the seed packet. But whatever it grew into, you couldn't truly see coming. Nothing ever turns out like the picture.

And that's going to be true every single time. Your life, your career, will grow how it grows. You can cultivate it: prune here, provide extra fertilizer there. But sometimes a plant will grow in a weird direction, or pests will slow its growth, or a drought will force you to focus all your time watering and not on planting new things. But every piece in your garden will be at least a little out of your control, a little unexpected.

You can try to force it. Bonsai is a thing–a thing I know very little about–but I know it takes a lot of work to carefully craft into the exact shape you want. If that's your taste, and it's worth the effort, go for it.

For the rest of us, it's often more rewarding to see what happens. To see where the branches grow, how a plant flowers or bears fruit. Eventually, you'll have a plant that's entirely unique to you.

Biodiversity

"Plant it and see."

So what about that second plant? Or the third? A garden isn't just a single plant, Jaci, and I don't exactly want to work 30 jobs at once just to have a pretty garden.

Well, yeah. The garden can be simple–a potted plant? A single tree? Not a problem. On the other hand, if you prefer a life full of different lush bushes and bright flowers, that's an option! No "picking your path" here.

If you're a freelancer or contract worker or artist, or anything else project-based, this is easy to picture. I'm writing a novella at the moment, that's a nice little flowering plant. I'm also working with a software consultancy to bring in new clients and onboard contractors, that's a very fruitful vegetable patch. And my podcast network, this blog, my various gigs consulting with other companies...each one is its own plant.

Some of them bear lots of fruit and some of them are just pretty and some of them never fully sprout, but I enjoy planting them all.

But Jaci, you say, I'm a busy attorney with no time for plants or side projects! I just want to work on my legal career!

Well, random made-up lawyer, it's your garden. If you want to grow your career at a firm and climb the ranks, your "garden" may turn out to be a beautiful old oak tree. Each client is a branch, maybe, each matter a leaf. But hey, maybe some pro bono cases pop up as little saplings, or you take on a flowery side gig looking over scripts for a legal drama for accuracy. Multiplicity is always an option.

It's your garden. Do with it what you will.

But for those of us who have always felt shame for not being specialized, for "lack of focus"? Instead of walking down a predefined path, we get to look around with dirt under our nails and enjoy a riot of color.