Your Career and You: "Jambalaya"

I woke up this morning with the sounds of Doug Kershaw’s “Jambalaya” running through my head.

“Yeah, jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo,
'Cause tonight, I’m gonna see my ma cher amio.
You pick guitar, you fill fruit jar and be gay-o,
'Cause I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou."

Then I logged onto Facebook to find a message from my longtime friend/Saigon, Vietnam roommate, Bill Jackson, updating me on his developing plan to accept a position in Abu Dhabi…with the enthusiastic support and encouragement of his wife, Pat.

How totally cool!

I love it when someone (besides me) goes “job-search bungee-jumping”! There are adventures around every corner, bright shiny objects to chase, and enormous balls of string to play with. Carpe diem!

My students, both at Curry College, where I oversee the Communication Department's Public Relations Concentration and teach most of the PR courses, and at Regis College, where I teach in the graduate Organizational and Professional Communication area, hear it from me all the time. Enjoy life!!

So why “Jambalaya”? Well…my friend Ted Chaloner’s wife, Lydia Walshin…a genuinely awesome cook and terrific blogger…makes a mind-blowing rendition that I would crawl through alligator-infested minefields for.

And when I was working with Ted at his executive recruitment firm, Chaloner Associates, we would occasionally have it for lunch. We would sit there...talking about work, the world, and everything in between...and savoring each spicy, flavor-packed bite. Oh…My…God!!

Now to the musical version. There is fun, adventure, out-and-out joie de vivre that should be a part of your approach to life, careers, job searches, and everything else. This song, for me, captures that feeling…that spirit of freedom and love of life.

In other words, lighten up on occasion and do fun/brave/ slightly (but not completely) insane things.

Find the fun in your job…it’s there, buried under a mountain of “to-do’s” that somehow never gets any smaller. Or it’s up the street in a great coffee shop or bistro. It’s out there waiting for you to come find it.

I’m not suggesting that you should blow off work and party. Or that you should forego your job search activities.

What I am suggesting is that you should not lose sight of the human side of life.

Even Ebenezer Scrooge, with the help of a parade of ghosts, figured out that life is actually made for living.

You can be intently focused on your business or your life goals; but take time to “smell the roses (or coffee)” in the process.

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays: First Series, 'Circles'"