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Catherine Gacad

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

I was listening to Steve Jobs’s Stanfurd commencement address on my way home from work yesterday. It made me glum because he talked about doing what you love. If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. An eternal optimist, he encouraged the audience to find your passion and to keep looking for it. If you don’t find it, that’s ok. But don’t settle and keep on searching.

Well, shit, I don’t love what I do. I mean, when I was a kid with grand dreams of my future, I wasn’t thinking that I was going to stare at a computer all day long and go blind. There has got to be something else out there. I’m 36 years old and I’m clearly not at a place where Steve Jobs would smile down at me and be proud for being true to who I am.

The problem is, what is that dream that I need to make a reality? I don’t know what it looks like. Hell, if I can’t envision it, it won’t become reality. So I need to delve into my core and figure that out. It made me sad.

When I’m sad, I like to call up my friends and make sure we’re all on the same sad page. But seriously I’m not going to do that. Instead I thought about people in my life who are following their heart. There’s my friend who is bravely venturing out on her own; she’s got the brain to do it. I think about so many people I know who started up their own businesses and they failed! That keeps my risk-aversion in check. Wait, I take that back. I can think of a handful of guys who separately started up businesses and then cashed out. Cha-ching. They’re living the dream for sure.

When you apply to business school, you’re supposed to convey to the admissions team your projected career path and how an MBA will ensure your success. I don’t remember what I wrote…because whatever I wrote I fleetingly made up. Regardless, who really wants to be a management consultant or investment banker? No one.

All grown up and still don’t know what I want to be.

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01.05.12

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Welcome to my site, derived from an advice column I wrote while getting my MBA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I give helpful, opinionated advice based on my own experience and from the expertise of my extensive network. For more, click here.

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