What if our resumes looked more like jungles than plantations?
How I'm choosing to frame my "career path" going forward + the best things I consumed in 2023
Hello!
It’s been a minute! I’m still plugging away at my book, which has had me reflecting a lot on (fraught) my relationship with work. I keep wondering where this concept of a career “path” originated, and why we’ve somehow all internalized that even if it has detours and peaks and valleys, it should be free of debris and with an ultimate destination in mind. Why?
We know that a thriving ecosystem needs biodiversity, yet we somehow think we humans are exempt from this law of nature.
It’s not just that we are as dependent on bees as squirrels are on trees or fungi are on leaves (ie no accomplishment is ever truly our own); it’s that our lives are naturally as messy as a path through the Amazon jungle (ie full of swarms of mosquitos, thorns, and dead ends).
The harder we try to keep our (career) path through life free of weeds and puddles and spider webs, the more it starts to look like a plantation and less like a jungle that could sustain jaguars and toucans.
One path smells like fresh air, the other like Deet. One tastes like organic, locally grown strawberries, the other like a banana ripened in plastic. One sounds like crickets and birds chirping, the other like tractors mowing.
I know which path I’d rather take.
As we head into a new year, I can’t help but wonder, what if our resumes looked more like the Amazon jungle than an accounting of the palm oil produced in its wake?
What if they showcased the help we receive instead of weighing the logs that once were trees?
What if they celebrated a wide range of experiences, not how neatly we fell into line?
What if they measured success by how much fun we were having and not how much pesticide we needed to spray to stay within those neatly cropped lines?
2023 Round-Up
Because I have a terrible memory, I pretty compulsively record what I do (watch, read, listen to..), whether through photos or apps. It doesn’t bring back the details per se, but it does help me recall the feelings.
Once a year, I think it’s fun to look back at all that I consumed and see what elicits the strongest feelings in me. Here’s a shortlist of what got me in my feels in 2023:
Favourite Essays of 2023
The Sterile World of Infinite Choice by Anne Helen Petersen of
Eating the Banana Peel by Anne Kadet of
A 50/50 Custody Arrangement Could Save Your Marriage by Amy Shearn
Favourite Show of 2023
Shrinking (Apple TV): so goooooooooooood. Funny, fresh, evocative, heart-warming.
Runners Up: alllllllllll the reality dating shows; Dave (FX); White Lotus (HBO); Platonic (Apple TV); Afterlife (Netflix); but mainly all the reality dating shows.
Favourite Documentary of 2023
This is a tie between Of Fathers and Sons (Netflix), a fascinating look into how we’re shaped by our families and the disturbing roots of terrorism, and Trip to Infinity (Netflix), a mind-blowing and nerdy examination of what it really means if infinity exists.
Favourite Book of 2023
I absolutely love what Ross Gay does with language in Inciting Joy. I also love the message. Take this excerpt:
“One thing I want to be cautious of—by which I really mean refuse—are the ways we sometimes consider, for instance, gardening (or health or healthcare or potable water or clean air or pleasant and stable housing or decent jobs or good schools or libraries or living relatives or being unabused or having “free time” or not being imprisoned or not living near a power plant or an incinerator or a landfill or a million acres of corn or soybeans sprayed with toxins) a privilege, which actually obscures the fact that to be without a garden, or to be without green space, or to be without access to a park or clean water or the forest or fruit trees or birdsong or shade or a deep and abiding relationship with a tree, or to be without health care, and so often to be without health, is violence, it is abnormal (even if it is the norm), and it is an imposition of precarity that is not natural.
Which is to say: life, though it is a gift, is not a privilege.
Rather than indulging in virtue signaling that simply reifies or maybe even enjoys the guilt—guilt can be titillating, let’s admit that; bathing in it oneself or dumping it on others—of so-called privilege, rather than wading around in that little impotent, indulgent cesspool of hand-wringing regret, how about instead we figure out how to get rid of disprivilege, which we could do.
What would happen if we acknowledged that none of this is privilege, but rather it is as it should and could be? And what if we figured out, together, in a million different ways, how to make it so? Or to say it another way: rather than cursing the darkness, what if we planted some seeds?
Favourite Standup Comedy of 2023
Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares (HBO): so refreshing to see a Gen Z comedian finally take the stage like this!
Favourite Movie of 2023
Past Lives gave me the most feels and learning about inyeon, the Korean philosophy of how relationships form over many lifetimes, has changed how I see the world.
Honourable mention to Barbie for bringing so much life and joy to the streets, but that one is obvious! Also obvious: anything Timothée Chalamet.
Favourite Podcast of 2023
We Can Do Hard Things had the most eye opening conversations of any podcast for me. In particular:
What are your favourites from 2023?! I’d love to know!
THIS! I've been on the job hunt, on and off, for two years and this hits home. Hard. Very hard. I even updated my LI bio after reading this, because I believe that my 'career path' does read like an ecosystem—rich in diversity. Thank you for these words, as they gave me a big boost in confidence!
Jaguars and toucans for everybody!
So pleased to have Banana Peel included in the wrap-up. Thank you.
Happy New Year Jen!