Next

Having a child is an event in itself, for obvious reasons.

But parents often experience another event with the arrival of each new child: the decision to work full-time, stay home full-time, or do a combination of both.

Many of my girlfriends chose to put their careers on hold in order to stay home with their children during the early years. I chose the same. Although some of us have worked part-time or have freelanced during this period, the careers of old have been sidelined for a while.

But now our children are getting older. The kids don't need us every minute of the day like they used to. And our daughters need us to model career life for them. Last night, a couple of my girlfriends and I were talking about next careers. We discovered that we had each come to the conclusion that we didn't want to do what we did before, although we had been very good at our previous careers.

Now, those old careers don't seem likely to fulfill. But what will?

Last night wasn't the first time I'd mulled over the ideas of career, success, fulfillment. What is a career? Does it have to mean working for someone else in a 40-hour-per week job? Owning one's own business? How does one identify success? Is it by money earned? Awards received? And how is a sense of fulfillment measured? Doing what we think we ought to do? Doing what we feel others want us to do? Or perhaps as a state of flow, the concept that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified and that I try to apply in my own life.

In the intervening years between leaving our old careers and, now, exploring new ones, much has changed in our lives. Indeed, our definitions of career, success, and fulfillment have changed. Our tasks now are to identify and pursue careers that meet our new definitions, and allow us to experience that feeling of flow.

So, what's next?