Why Underwater Basket Weaving Might Be Just The Career For You

by Chase Parnell — January 19, 2020

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Part of what I want Treeline Journal to be is a place where Nikki and I can write and share our experiences in navigating life’s challenges so that you can glean some sort of wisdom from the venting of our mistakes, missteps, successes and epiphanies. This is our repository of contemplations of sorts. This site should be creating value for its readers and the only way we know how to do that is through bold and honest writing. In the header at the top of this page, we’ve designated one of the categories as “GROWTH” and that is where we will be posting our articles that are only tangentially related to running and actually more about life, its madness, and how we might reach a higher plane of existence. This particular post is about giving you permission to rationally pursue your interests and passions, instead of suffocating those things or dismissing them as unrealistic or dead-ends. Whether you are in your 20s and wanting to launch your career or you are are in your 40s and want to switch careers, the lessons I’ve learned apply the same. 

What Are You Going To Be When You Grow Up?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about what career or profession you want to pursue instead of focusing on stoking your passions and pursuing the things that light your heart on fire. Since entering the legal profession, flopping magnificently, and quickly exiting, I’ve become a much stronger advocate of following your heart in your work life, and less supportive of doing “the smart thing” and pursuing a career where your only real objective is to secure lasting steady employment. 

My girlfriend in high school had an alcoholic for a father. I have many a story from the era and my interactions with him. As far as I know, he’s now sober and when he finally was open to discussing his alcoholism with my girlfriend from the time, he said much of his reliance on drink had to do with his unhappiness at work. He was a state worker I believe, Department of Transportation, and managed large construction projects like the building of bridges. He hated it, but felt trapped, and so he drank. My belief is that countless millions suffer a similar fate. 

At the end of the day, one’s work needs to matter and I think its okay to not stop looking until you find a job you enjoy. Yes, enjoy. As the saying goes, you spend a third of your life sleeping, a third of your life working, and a third of your life doing what you want to do. Screw that. When I’m awake, I want to be living. Work is an extremely fulfilling and integral piece of our human nature. It’s so important that we find the right style of work to make us feel like productive and important members of society. 

And I don’t care what it is that you want to do. Honestly, the joke that you always hear is the attack on the underwater basket weaver. Become a programmer, a physician’s assistant, an accountant, but don’t get your degree in underwater basket weaving. You know who the people are that usually say things like that? People who hate their own jobs and want to normalize how miserable they are by bringing others down to their level. 

I’m here to tell you that forcing yourself to become something and pursue a profession that “makes sense” will only lead to a lifetime of professional misery. At the end of the day, you are going to have to deal with the fact that something you have essentially no interest in is going to be your life’s work. How sad is that? So if you want to go back to school and major in underwater basket weaving, or medieval Celtic literature, or art history with an emphasis in bronze age sculpture, do it! And do it with all your heart. You will have the joy and confidence that only comes from pursuing your dream and having a deep sense of WHY. You will be surrounded by others who are interested in the same thing and you’ll develop connections with those people that will serve you the rest of your life. So what if you graduate and can’t find a professorship or industry job right out of school, you might just team up with a classmate and start the best Celtic literature podcast in the business. And not only that, the passion you bring to the world from your particular area of interest will create far greater value than any job you might take otherwise. Trust me, if you do the “smart thing” and become an accountant, and you have no passion for accounting, the horror will set in that first week on the job when you realize what it is exactly that you’re supposed to be doing for the next 40 years. Alternatively, can you imagine the satisfaction and excitement of following your dream and hustling to scrape together a living while doing it? Sure, you will need staying-power and you might end up teaching just regular old basket weaving at the local community college and wish you were doing the underwater work, but you’ll still find contentment in working in the realm you set out to work in the first place.

What If You Don’t Know What You Really Want To Do?

I used to joke that I could become a high school career counselor because I knew exactly what it took to become just about anything because at one point or another, I’d considered doing it and researched it ad nauseam. It was an addiction really. I could piss away hours looking at educational and professional requirements — undergraduate courses, standardized testing performance thresholds, letters of recommendations — a whole slew of hoops to jump through to become a certified X. Marine biologist, officer in the military, meteorologist, physical therapist, archeologist, teacher, or antiquarian clock repairman (believe it or not, these are all professions I thought I wanted to pursue at one point or another). 

There was definitely some sort of serotonin pulse going on whenever I’d get deep in the weeds of exploring a new future for myself. Just the prospect of being something else, somewhere else, pursuing a big objective, academia, and the journey to get there would keep me consumed for weeks. And sometimes, maybe I needed that escape to simply help me cope with the uncertainty I was feeling wherever I was at in the moment. But for one reason or another, I’d hit some sort of roadblock or simply lose all interest in the prospective career just days after I’d thought I finally found the one for me. So I can empathize with the directionless. I can empathize with the thought that if you only knew the right path to travel, then everything would work out. All I can say at this point in time is that you need to try as many different things as it takes to find the thing that is quintessentially YOU.

Do The Thing Then Get An Education In It Later.

I wasn’t joking about the clock repairman thing. I wish I could tell you this was some sort of middle or high school fantasy — it wasn’t. I was in my early 30s when contemplating this career move. I read a biography of Corrie Ten Boom, a WWII holocaust and concentration camp surviver. Her father owned a clock shop in the Dutch town of Haarlem, Netherlands. I just fell in love with the romanticism of tinkering away on clocks. Your customers would bring in new interesting projects, their family heirlooms each with a mysterious mechanical failure, and your job would be to work away behind your weathered workbench and all your tiny screwdrivers and tools that line your shop walls. Your mastery would shine and your reputation would spread as one of the rare few who could actually fix these timeless pieces. I loved the idea that old clocks and watches were powered by tension in their internally coiled springs, and charged by either by twisting a simple knob on a watch or by suspending a weight to hold the tension in a large wall clock. There are no batteries or electronics and it seemed like once you understood the basic workings of clocks, generally you could develop quite quickly a very interesting old-world trade.  

Now, I must add that at the time I was working as a child support case worker for the State of Oregon so you can imagine how adopting a reclusive existence, working with old hardwoods and oily clock bits sounded far superior than trying to collect child support payments from delinquent parents who often chose drugs over their children. I know now that what I was doing was taking this obscure interest and turning it into a savior from my unsatisfactory professional predicament at the time. During those months of intense investigation, I downloaded podcasts about watches, I read three books on repairing and refurbishing antique clocks, I looked into all the schools that had trade programs in the field, and I began to communicate my interest to family and friends. I received some pocket watches and a grandfather clock as gifts that Christmas. My father in law gave me a collection of broken watches and an entry level repair kit so I could start dabbling in the work. 

I remember those first few nights with my repair kit and an old Lucerne De Luxe watch. It was a blast taking it apart. I had my magnifying glass, my tweezers, a set of tiny screwdrivers, and I began turning wheels, pulling screws and detaching springs. 

I’d listened to a podcast about how other repairmen entered the trade. They said it usually started out with a project that fell onto their laps. Maybe they inherited their grandfather’s pocket watch or they found a cool old clock at a garage sale and they took it home to try to make it work. They’d take it apart and figure out the problem through trial and error. Then, they’d ultimately experience some great level of satisfaction in finding the chink in the clock’s armor and tickering with it until they put it all back in working order and listened to it sing. They enjoyed the process so much that they sought out another project, then another, and along the way developed a reputation for being able to fix clocks and watches and before they knew it, they opened a storefront and entered the trade. Some would go on to further training, often in Switzerland, and pursue other credentials of consequence in the field. 

My experience did not work out that way. Once I finished taking that first watch apart and all the parts were separated into little pillbox containers, I began trying to put it all back together. I had even taken pictures along the way to remind me of how the parts should fit. So there I was on a cold winter’s night, the kids were in bed, I had my soothing cup of green tea, I pulled out all my tools, and settled into my new after hours apprenticeship. I placed the magnifying glass to my eye, took my tweezers in hand and begin to try to place the parts back together. It was only a few short minutes later that the frustration began to mount. One of the wheels was not fitting onto the pillar plate and I couldn’t securely attach the balance spring. I found myself getting more and more angry at what I was now calling this stupid watch. I started to force things, which is typical of me, and before I knew it I strained a part so greatly that it broke. It lived for 75 years and yet I managed to break it in one solitary flareup of frustration. Poor thing. 

To further make my point, my father in law once gave me a sleeping bag that he used for decades and I somehow managed to rip the zipper off it the first time I used it. I’ve never been able to neatly wrap a present. I’m not patient when it comes to this stuff and I wasn’t feeling that sense of satisfaction that some of these clock guys were talking about. 

What I’m trying to communicate is that I had no business thinking that clock repair was in any way, shape, or form meant to be my calling in life. This is an example of me grasping at straws, a whimsy that I turned into a potential life-raft. So I’m adding a caveat to my whole pursue your passions message by advising that your passion should be paired with some level of aptitude that you’ve developed over time. 

Clock making and repair was an interest of mine, but more of a passing fancy. When I actually sat down to do the work, its was so clearly not in my wheelhouse that had I left my law job for clock repair, that would have been a very poor decision. And thank God I didn’t enroll in some technical program before I’d even attempted to do the thing that I’d convinced myself I wanted to do. This is one of the biggest take-aways here: try the work or shadow someone in the profession before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on educating yourself in it. In doing so, you might just save yourself a lot of money and heartache.

That said, I do still love clocks and pocket watches but I’ve discovered that maybe I’m meant to be a collector, not a fixer. 

Visualize What The Job Would Actually Be Like Every Day.

There was a time when I thought I wanted to be a teacher. You know, I could coach high school cross country and track, teach history, become a part of the school family, sounds great. So after receiving my undergrad degree in sports business, my mom and I went and visited a few graduate schools. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a career in education. I know now that that too would’ve been a disaster. I don’t enjoy public speaking and what do teachers spend their entire lives doing? Speaking in front of crowds! Warning! Warning! Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge that it’s typically healthy to push yourself outside your comfort zone, but that doesn’t mean you should totally disregard your natural tendencies and aversions and enter a career where you’d be constantly doing something you don’t actually enjoy or look forward to. 

What I’m getting at here is that I don’t think we need to be a combination of all the most optimal human characteristics and that if we are lacking in one, then we must fight it to the death until we conquer our weakness and then move on to the next “flaw”. I’m learning to not conflate the fact that I don’t like public speaking with me being insecure and lacking in confidence. It’s part of me owning who I am and embracing my personality. Sure, I want to continue to grow, but I want to grow closer and closer to who I really am instead of pushing up against what society has somehow deemed the most choice amalgam of successful personality traits. 

My most recent failure in overlooking my personality was when I took a job as a family law trial attorney. Most of the appeal was that I wanted to finally practice law and I told myself that I just needed to tic the lawyer box before moving on. But God, this job was a terrible fit for me. I’m just going to say right here that if you’re in a job that you regularly dread going to, get out of it. Plain and simple. Get. Out. Of. It. I don’t care what the consequence might be. You aren’t doing anyone any favors by staying there. We live in America, this idea that you need to suffer for 40 years in a job you hate “to put food on the table” is false and actually quite stupid. Sure you’ll be putting food on the table but you’ll also be creating a toxic environment with your sour-puss grumpy pants demeanor and you, your family, and your employer will pay the price for this out-dated perspective.

Once You’ve Found The Thing With No More Attractive Alternatives, Run With It. 

If you want a primer on the steps that led me to take the leap and follow both my passion but also something that aligned with my core personality and skills, read Why Treeline Journal and Why 24 Hours on Pilot Butte. I can now confidently say that I’m doing what I was meant to do. When I place any other potential career up against what we’re doing with Treeline Journal — writing about running, growth, and outdoor family lifestyle — no alternative professional pursuit is more appealing. That’s not to say that there haven’t been moments of doubt, because there have been, but those doubts have actually ended up being positive tests that after walking through different hypotheticals, I land with confidence and clarity that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I love being in control of my own work, I love crafting articles and editing them until they’re finished, and I love the response I get from readers when my work resonates with them. The success or failure rests on my shoulders alone and I’m not concerned about letting down a boss or colleagues or anyone else.

The Bottom Line.

Say, for example, that Treeline Journal doesn’t work out. We don’t get the patrons we need to stay afloat or the brand and advertisement deals don’t eventually come. Well first, those are actually more failings in business than failings in writing, and second, I feel as if I can’t lose because through this process I’ve discovered that compromising passion for a steady paycheck does not work for me. 

While I lack the patience for fixing clocks, I do have a certain patience with words. And being a writer requires honesty and communicating in a way that cuts through the veneer of social constructions. At least, the writers that do this are the ones that I want to read. I hope that at the very least, my writing is refreshingly honest and that when you read it, it causes you to consider what alternate realities might be possible for you.

If you’re thinking about making a change, let me know about it. And if not me, then tell somebody else. That simple act will set the wheels in motion. Your trajectory does not need to be linear and it doesn’t need to “make sense” — but it does need to stir your heart. Let’s not reach the finish line of life and look back with regrets. Courage is required, there’s no doubt about that, and the process is not always neat and tidy and clean, but when you rest your head down on the pillow each night, knowing that you are following a path that is uniquely you, that’s a feeling like no other.

Some of you reading this might be thinking, who the hell is this guy and why does he think he can tell me what to do with my life. First, good point, but second, if you don’t want to hear it from me, take it from Jim Carrey, a man who by most people’s standards has experienced tremendous success in life: 

“So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. 

I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” – Jim Carrey

I stand with Jim here. If you’re doing what you love, if you’re pursuing your passion, you cannot lose. 

Let’s get after it. 

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