A Birthday Thought

When I was preparing to move down to Austin, nearly four years ago now, I had a lot of networking conversations. I’d left a corporate job, and rejoining the corporate world was still a possibility, though I found myself recoiling every time I considered it. One of the most helpful conversations I had included hearing this from a guy who’d just completed an intense job search of his own:

“If you’re driving Uber at 24, getting by while you try to make your own business work, people in hiring rooms will see that as gritty. If you’re doing it at 25, they’ll start thinking you’re a loser.”

I’m not sure I fully believe the point the guy was trying to make, but I think there was some truth to it in my specific scenario, especially in the hiring rooms the man talking at me viewed as desirable. Regardless of its accuracy, though, it was an important message for me to hear. If I’d continued on my path for the wrong amount of time before trying to pivot to a more reliable course of employment, I’d be surrendering to a hostile force, one which viewed my pursuit of satisfaction so definitively as to sum me up in a single, black-and-white word: “Loser.”

“Loser” is a big word, but the thing about that word is that to be a loser, you have to lose, and to lose, you have to be beaten. Somebody else has to win.

This morning, I turned 28. I still drive Uber. I’m still trying to make my own business work. And it’s possible it won’t work, and it’s possible I will one day lay down my arms and shape this keyboard into a pruninghook. But if that happens, I won’t be walking into that guy’s hiring office, to lie prostrate before his gods. To be a loser, you have to lose, and to lose, you have to be beaten. Somebody else has to win.

Bark.