Career Paths Aren’t Real
There’s a phrase adults love to throw at children: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
As if being is a job description. As if adulthood isn’t one long improv performance where everyone forgot the script and the set is on fire.
But we choose something anyway. We declare a “career path.” We pick a direction and panic-walk down it for 40 years.
The whole concept is adorable.
Career paths are the horoscopes of capitalism.
They predict nothing, explain nothing, and require belief to function. Career Paths Were Invented For People Who Needed Permission to Exist
Before capitalism, you were:
A hunter
A gatherer
A farmer
Or dead
That was the original career map. Zero networking events. Zero résumés written in a Starbucks while leaking cortisol. Then industry happened, and workers became LEGO bricks. You fit a slot or you starved. Psychologist Barry Schwartz called it “the tyranny of choice”: You can be anything, so failure is your fault.
So we invented:
LinkedIn endorsements
Personality tests
Career coaches named Trevor
And “five-year plans” that don’t survive five minutes
Because nobody knows what they’re doing. Your Career Path Is Just Socially Acceptable Fight-or-Flight You pick a job because:
Bills exist
Your parents needed a win
Your guidance counselor looked disappointed
You panicked in college
Someone offered benefits
The interview didn’t feel like prison
Survival mode wears business casual. We call that purpose.
The Slope is Slippery and Paved With Buzzwords
You start as "Entry Level." Good. Humble.
Your ambition grows, You climb a few rungs. Your LinkedIn headline expands like a tumor:
“Innovative, passionate, self-motivated multidisciplinary thought leader.”
Translation: You reply to emails quickly and cry in the bathroom silently.
Career progression is just:
More responsibility
Slightly more money
Increasingly unstable mental health
Leadership is when the crying gets scheduled.
Specialization Is Just Self-Inflicted Tunnel Vision
Career paths force you to:
Narrow curiosity
Sterilize creativity
Become a brand
Pretend you're “focused”
But your brain is a chaos gym designed to lift heavy “What if?” thoughts.
According to Harvard researcher Todd Rose: “linear careers don’t match nonlinear humans” You weren’t built to be one thing. You were built to be constantly upgrading messy software.
Climbing the Ladder Means Becoming the Ladder
At some point, the goal stops being fulfillment.
It becomes:
Promotion
Prestige
Performance reviews
And pretending you love quarterly planning
You start managing:
People
Budgets
Expectations
Your worsening urge to flee into the forest
Eventually, you become the very system that traumatized you. You are the office now. Congratulations.
You Aren’t Burned Out — You’re Underwhelmed by the Plot
Burnout isn’t fatigue. Burnout is the soul’s union strike. It’s the moment your inner self says:
“This storyline sucks. Write a new one.”
But instead of listening, we:
Buy planners
Drink iced anxiety
Download meditation apps
Pray the weekend resurrects us
You don’t need rest. You need a rewrite.
Purpose Isn’t Found — It’s Invented
Careers pretend to offer meaning. But meaning doesn’t appear on job descriptions. Meaning appears when you:
Choose curiosity over compliance
Build instead of wait
Question instead of perform
Become someone you would actually hire
Philosopher Alan Watts put it simply:
“Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing
than a long life spent in a miserable way.”
….But HR disagrees.
The Only Career Path That Exists Is Forward
Your experience isn’t a ladder — it’s a collage. Your résumé is an autobiography disguised as bullet points. Every weird job you’ve worked:
Taught you something
Broke something
Revealed something
That’s the path.
Not titles. Not promotions. Not whether you had healthcare. Just the unfolding of a consciousness with a deadline.
So What Should You Do Instead? (Here comes the motivational part disguised as sarcasm)
🌀 Quit worshipping consistency
Growth is chaotic.
If you’re not a contradiction, you’re not evolving.
🌀 Follow the skills that make you lose track of time
Not the ones that make you lose track of yourself.
🌀 Treat careers like experiments
Not prisons with pensions.
🌀 Aim for a life you don’t have to recover from
The goal is not to “get ahead.” The goal is to get free.
Your Legacy Isn’t a LinkedIn Timeline
When you die: Nobody will say, “Wow, they were so organized in Jira.”
They’ll talk about:
How you showed up
Who you became
What you gave a damn about
What madness you dared to try
Your real career is the one happening outside your job title.
Career Paths Aren’t Real
But fear is. Doubt is. Expectation is.
And the sinking feeling that life should feel bigger than this? That is the most real thing of all.
Instead of serving the system…
Draft a new one.
Then promote yourself there.