In 2.5 weeks, I'm done with my job as a project manager for a roofing company. It's only been about a year and a half that I've been in this crazy industry, but it has felt like a lifetime because I felt I was sacrificing my dreams to do it. I was a gardener before, getting my hands in the dirt every day was my job, and I moonlit as a folk singer in my band Smith House. I loved it but I didn't plan very well and I didn't know what it takes to get by as a self employed worker, and I got pretty poor (at least for an American). I remember one fall, all I had to eat in my house for weeks were carrots and eggs from my garden. I would cook them together one night as "asian" by putting curry powder on them, the next night as "mexican" by putting chili powder on them. I found myself working snow removal shifts down at the Colorado Springs labor pool and taking odd jobs for kind Aunts and Uncles to get by. I was pretty tired of having no money, so when a job offer came along to sell roofs, I took it. In my mind it felt like "selling out", giving up my dream to grow food and help people grow food, to take an office job purely for the money and not at all for the passion. Objectively, it's been a pretty nasty and uncomfortable job as well, but mostly it's been so hard for me because of the pride I had to sacrifice to take it. I am so glad I did, I made a lot of money the past couple years and I learned a whole lot about how to run and sell a business. Thankfully, my "selling out" didn't crush the memory of my dream, and it's now time to return to my passions full fledged, WAY better prepared, and with nothing held back. In 2019, I re-launch my business Brown's Greens! I'm preparing this entire coming year by going to school for certificates in Urban Agriculture and Landscaping, and working in my new career field for a landscaping company on the days I'm not in school. I'm in business counseling, and I'm trying to check all the boxes. With a whole year of learning and preparation, a better money buffer, and a lot more grit, I am confident that this time around I can make it work!
I write this post not to brag or rub it in anyone's face that I'm quitting my unsavory day job, I'm writing in hopes to inspire a couple folks to think about what they are doing and if it's worth the sacrifices they make to do it. In case you are wondering, YES I am a millennial. The infamous "job-quitting" generation. There's a whole lot of issues with my generation, I totally realize that. In fact, I'm generally against my generation’s values for a lot of stuff. I hate how technology obsessed we are, I hate social media for the most part and how it's dismantling true community. I hate our demand for immediate gratification and I hate our lack of commitment to things. But lately, I have been feeling really proud of our tendency to choose career paths that are our joys and passions, rather than whatever careers pay the biggest paychecks. My wife and I were talking about this today, and were thinking about what we will look back on in our lives when we're old and what we wish we would have done different. If it's anything like what old folks have said to us, it's not going to be how much money we had, it's going to be how we followed our passions and made a difference through them. Perhaps my faith in Jesus makes a big difference in the way I think about this since his teachings were so far from the over-arching American goal to make loads of cash, but I still think regardless of your spiritual belief, there's an emptiness in wealth and security for its own sake. No one wants to look back on a life of sacrificed joys for practicalities. My good friend Adam Morley is a young business owner here in Colorado Springs, and he was interviewed recently by our local business journal. They asked him this question: "What should Colorado Springs do to retain young professionals?" He answered with this, I think it's beautiful.
"My generation cares about stories and people and how we can make a difference individually and together. That’s half the reason Millennials can’t keep a job, because they go through a few months of it and they don’t feel like they’re making any difference. We would be wise to keep investing in the things that our generation cares about — community events, and making room for good food, good bars, good coffee shops and good community spaces that are going to foster a foundation that our generation cares about."
I also think that following your dreams IS practical. Obviously, there are some parameters to what you should try to make a career out of, but generally I think that if you are working something that you love and pursuing it passionately, people are going to be drawn to that. A person’s passion for their work is a tangible thing, and at least from my experience, a huge motivating factor to do business with that person.
One more also, I'm also not saying money is bad. If you find a passion that happens to make loads of money for you, all the better. And some folks just don't have a passion that translates to work, which isn't bad either! I'm just saying, I believe that living for the things you love is vastly important, and for me it means how and what I do for work.
Anyway, if you've read this far you're probably tired of hearing it, so I'll stop. But I am so excited to get my hands back into what I love, and I encourage you to think about doing the same if you haven't done so already. If you have, I congratulate you! Maybe you could comment on this post and give a quick story of how you started following your passions?? That would make me and the other millennials reading so happy :)
Thanks for reading!
P.S. the other guy in that photo is 