When do you know it’s your dream job?

One of the things that I love the most about living in Brooklyn is that there are so many people here.

So many people to garner life experience from and hear their stories.

When listening to my new audio book “Barking up the wrong tree”, (review post to follow)  I was reminded of a story that stopped me dead in my tracks about 5 years ago.

The spot in the book that I just passed dealt with an interesting concept that has always eluded me, but especially recently.

In today’s 24hr work world, we need to choose how we will limit the time that we spend at work.  Because of modern technology, It’s actually a choice now.

A few years ago, we had selected a new lawyer to draw up our will.   The lawyer was a local Brooklyn native who I liked, and enjoyed discussing our situation in his office.

He was obviously self-employed and his office looked like he truly made it his own, with family pictures and autographed baseballs, etc.

Somehow we got to talking about the stresses of working in New York City, and he immediately latched on to that conversation thread and totally “got it”.

He told us a story about how he worked for a big firm in the city and one time they flew him and another lawyer to Paris to settle something.  Upon their return to New York City, he said that when the company plane landed at JFK they had a car service waiting for them.  Since it was late in the afternoon, he figured he’d be going home for the day, after such a long flight.  That wasn’t the case.  The car was there to take them back to the office to finish out the day.

He told me, right then and there, he knew he wanted to work for himself as soon as he possibly could.

That story really drove home the point for me.

The book offers several good quotes and one from Warren Buffet that (paraphrasing) “Working at something for 10 years that you don’t really like and saying then you will do something else, is like saving up to have sex for your old age.”

The book makes the point that we need to decide “What we want.”  “If you don’t decide, the world will decide for you.”