Location, Location, Location

So how do you feel about your cube? Yeah...guessing you don’t love it. Where we work is a major driver in the DWYL movement. Check the title of one of the early entries into the canon: Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur. Our corporate work spaces are flexible, efficient, practical…and utterly dehumanizing. We love to slam The Cube. It has been satirized and vilified far and wide. Think Dilbert, Office Space, Real Life Adventures:

Those of us who work in corporate cube farms want desperately to escape the monotony. Workers decorate their cubicles like stylish mini apartments, yoga studios, even beach vacation getaways. This cube has a “window” onto longed-for nature, maybe even a permanent vacation destination. Most cube dwellers’ décor demonstrates a yearning to be somewhere else.

But where else is a question that deserves consideration. Your passion may happen in a different but equally unhappy place, for you.

Take archaeology, which I love. I once thought I’d found a great career fit in archaeological illustration because I also love drawing from life. The primitive visual nature of early human settlements and objects speaks deeply to me. I knew I could happily draw them for weeks on end. Well, happily, except for the dirt, and the blazing sun, and the sleeping in tents, and the sheer physical discomfort of life on an archaeological dig. Being in the field, in situ, where the work needs to happen, would be as bad as a cube farm for me. Maybe worse.

Think of the work you think you'd love. Where does it happen? Do you love that location as much as you love the work? You'll be spending a lot of time there.