Going corporate...

I used to think that all members of the corporate world were money-grubbing, slippery lords of excess who played poker with Lucifer and Darth Vader. ‘How could these people auction off their souls to settle for less than what would truly get them up in the morning?’ I would ask myself.

But then, I started to pay bills. As it turns out — and this pains me to concede — passion and self-will can’t always pay them. After the rush of post-college zeal to launch a career, settling for less than what you expected or envisioned for yourself is tough to accept, but necessary.

Raised by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in suburban bubbles, the Millennial crowd was told repeatedly, ‘You can grow up to be anything you want. The sky’s the limit.’ Actually, student loan payments and the need for a consistent cash flow are the limits these days. Sorry, Big Bird.

In a period when you’re still fumbling around, trying to align your strengths and passions with a fulfilling career, taste-testing professions is encouraged, maybe even required. Millennials will have — on average — eight jobs before they turn 32, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

With taste-testing in mind, I — a former corporate-world basher — joined the realm of quarterly bonuses and elevators with 10” TVs. I enlisted in “the dark side.”

I had imagined myself as the Clark Kent of sports writing, strutting around the Yankee Stadium clubhouse uncovering the next big back-page splash. Instead, I got a gig covering education for a small-town Virginia newspaper, and then a spot as a high school sports stringer, a.k.a. a glorified secretary who wrote the occasional story. Not quite Bronx, N.Y., in October.

A good man named Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” So true. Times of frustration and regret are inevitable — unless you insulate yourself in a no-risk bubble, and what kind of fun is that? Was the job that I just accepted ever a pipe dream of mine? No. Are my “corporate” co-workers soulless blood brothers with Satan? Absolutely not.

Leveling rosy expectations with pragmatism is a tough balancing act, and it doesn’t mean you should let a job define you or surrender your passions for it. After all, talent is figuring out what you do well and finding a career where you get to do that every day. The search can be nomadic and fraught with letdowns. It may also require a sacrifice you can only truly appreciate after you've lived through it. C'est la vie.

I’m finding that the key to sanity amidst the question marks is to accept and embrace the uncertainties and weird twists and turns. You might see that those Darth Vaders are actually interesting people…