I’m writing this the week leading up to “Oscars Sunday.” We’re now exactly 15 years after the biggest career pivot of my life.
Up until January 2005, I had been a mediocre consumer goods publicist. By February, I employed some personal PR and effectively convinced a high-profile TV personality to hire me – someone with zero true PA experience – in the middle of the entertainment industry’s busiest time of year: Hollywood awards season. The Monday before Oscars Sunday 2005 was my first day as a Personal Assistant.
I think it was actually my second day on the job – so, the Tuesday before Oscars Sunday – that I found out I’d be traveling with my new boss to L.A. on Thursday, where she’d be hosting live coverage from the red carpet at the Academy Awards.
It all felt like a dream come true, for it had been a dream job before it was ever actually mine, which is to say that I idealized it and pictured myself very happy in the role, but didn’t entertain the realness of it because it seemed out of reach. And then I was waiting for luggage in the lobby of The Four Seasons Hotel when Clint Eastwood walked by. And then I was in an elevator, alone, when Conan O’Brien stepped in. And then I was spitting distance from Alex Baldwin at dinner. And then I was having drinks in the bar with Jamie Foxx (who was about to win an Oscar). It was all real and bigger than my dreams, actually.
And then I dropped a very expensive necklace on a marble floor and dropped back into reality. (We were still in L.A.; I was less than a week into this job.) Thankfully, the necklace was fine, I kept that job, and loved it for many years.
To this day, I love sharing the story of how I landed my dream job before turning 30. But what gets left out of many stories like mine are the realities that fill the days of dream jobs. I took a pay cut to land my dream job, I sacrificed bits of my personal life for my dream job, I was challenged by types of people I’d never encountered, I had to fire a human I respected, and I had to fake my way through topics of discussion that didn’t resonate with me. I am grateful for every single one of these unexpected aspects of the job. Every bit – and more – taught me something I didn’t know I needed to learn.
Today, as a recruiter, often recruiting for positions I once dreamed of having, and engaging with people seeking their own dream jobs, I catch myself perpetuating the cycle of enthusiastically envisioning what could be, wanting for others to experience a dream actualized. But the part of me that sacrificed, sometimes cried, and got incredibly stressed within my own dream job, also cautions both clients and candidates to honor the reality that at some point, something may get dropped. It’ll be some version of pearl-on-marble-floor, or bigger, or smaller. The point being, our dreams can and do exist, but in real life.
With so much more I could say on all of this, today I leave this a short, mostly personal entry, and a quote from my favorite movie, with an amendment:
Welcome to Hollywood, what’s your dream [job, and are you willing to let it shape you]?
- Elizabeth