Imagine your skin tingling from head to toe, your heart hammering on in a dancing rhythm, your breathing quickening in excitement, and your brain lighting up and expanding with possibilities…
I can count two times in my life when I got this excited about a job offer…
The first was for an internship for a local news broadcast station right out of college. I’d met a producer while working as a media intern for my university’s sports department. After helping him out in the TV production van for a televised basketball game, he invited me to apply for the internship for the news station. He thought I might like it.
I remember walking into the newsroom and feeling the buzz of everything—and immediately felt how excited I would be to work there. I remember when he said, “It’s safe to say you got the job!” And I felt like crying because it felt like such an exciting opportunity to grow into and learn from. I remember thinking, “This feels like Disneyland!”
Yep, that excited.
Ended up completing the internship, then was offered a part-time evening production assistant job a handful of months later. And I loved working there, I truly did. Every bit of it.
But then I realized, several months later, that I wanted a job with 9-5 work hours so I could still do theatre in the evenings—for what I felt was a balanced life where I could still be creative and have a steady job. So, I loved working in the newsroom, but my other creative passions were calling for my attention.
My Disneyland needed a shift.
Around that same time, I got another invitation for a full-time job from one of my other part-time gigs that sounded like a great fit for me. That job allowed me to stretch my wings as a baby magazine editor, which I loved. That was pretty lucky!
And the second tingles-inducing job offer came a couple of years into my New York adventure…
It was a secret desire. One I wasn’t sure I could do because my career trajectory thus far hadn’t necessarily or obviously pointed to a career in my desired field. But I had privately shared it with my intuitive coach at the time, and I had written it down in my Evernote as a potential business idea. But the niggle of the idea had always been an interest of mine…
A psychic even predicted it was coming. “Watch out for August. Editing work will come in then,” he said.
While not all of his predictions were correct, this one was.
At the end of August, a book editor—the one who had helped me edit my own book back when she was a budding book editor herself—reached out to me and said she wanted to expand her stable of editors for her business to provide a more thorough editing experience… She thought I might be interested.
Y’all… When she offered me a spot in her stable, I HAPPY DANCED MYSELF OUT. I’m pretty sure I cried. It came out of left field, and it felt like the perfect job for me. Came to discover I loved learning from her and working with her. I loved learning the process of book editing, and couldn’t wait to dive into more in-depth editing types for books. And I’m blessed that I still get to work with her from time to time!
Book editing became my absolute favorite job. I get utterly lost in the work while editing—helping the narrative become clearer, polishing up the errors and mistakes, offering words of encouragement when desired, and providing constructive criticism. I still lose time in this work since I’m having so much fun. That could be why I started my own editing business… 😉
Never have I loved a job so much—which is saying something because I’ve been fortunate enough to have loved all of my jobs to some degree.
But it was those excited tingles, that sense of my whole body just buzzing as if I’d been hopped up on a dual coffee-sugar rush—only it didn’t have a crash. Only up and up from there!
That excitement felt like the biggest YES I could have felt when it came to my work.
Reminds me of that saying… If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
Not that you can’t say yes to things that don’t spark the living daylights out of your veins… You can also feel at peace or a general contentment to know if a decision is right for you.
The trick is to notice what your unique yes/no feels like in your body, so you can make those aligned decisions for yourself.
My hope is that you can find something you feel excited to say YES to very soon.
Cheers!
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Originally posted on magicwithmikael.substack.com