Clarity from a hygienist

Clarity about your career and how it impacts your life comes in drips and drabs. For some, it seems like they are born with an innate understanding of who they are and how they hope to parlay that into a career. Be it an artist, chef, or secretary, these are the people that continue to stupify me. I look upon them with the same queer curiosity one might examine a baboon at the zoo with. It is a familiar creature, but also a hopelessly foreign one.

Every once in awhile you run into someone that you can relate to and truly see 'it', the answer to the great mystery. This answer came in an odd package. My hygienist was a male with two small gold hoop earrings in one ear and none in the other, as if to counterbalance some minor weight disparity betwixt the two sides of his head. He was older. Age i could not guess, but too old for small gold hoop earrings. He stomach a large protrusion that loudly proclaimed a love of all things fermented of barley and hops. His face was unknowable, hidden as it was throughout by a surgical mask. So, how was this person so revelatory you may inquire? Well, despite doing something that i imagine to be repetitive, droll, and rather unpleasant (which my career choice may be to some.....as all career choices are to some actually), he was positively enamored with his vocation. He admonished me for my flossing habits (or lack thereof truly) but not in a flip manner that suggests the words were perfunctory in nature, but rather in an informed and concerned manner. He proceeded to rattle off all sorts of information while going about his task and did so happily. He did so in manner so transparent that I was compelled to compliment him about it and he told me he loved his job in a way that I would only describe a good book or film. It was at that moment that the bolts locked into their cylinders and I knew that that was what I wanted from a profession.....well, sans earrings. I want a career that I feel that way about.

I know he has to have bad days and good ones and, quite possibly, I just caught him on a good one. But I cant remember ever feeling the way he seems to about his job. I have had, and do have, some wonderful co-workers and have had the opportunity to do some enjoyable things at work, but I have not ever felt enamored of a job. Maybe nursing wont be that way for me, but I am willing to bet up to $50K that it is.