In 1989, I was earning $6.50 an hour at a local suburban Cable Access station. In addition to driving the van to city hall to cover live school committee and city council meetings, my job was to help produce TV by and for the good people of Newton, MA. I had finished college six months earlier, and landed this position right after graduation. It was my first “real” job in the field in which I majored, and yet job satisfaction was low. My roommate Molly was in her last year and was working at a bookstore. Her job satisfaction wasn’t much higher, and could be measured by the dozens of books that lined her bedroom floor. We often sat on the floor in the hallway, just outside of my bedroom. Our apartment didn’t fit us. We were on the 2nd floor of an 1890s three decker in the heart of Brookline Village, across from Town Hall and the Police Station. We had a working fireplace, and all the wood trim was either cherry or mahogany. To this day, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived. Yet, for two kids barely old enough to buy beer, our apartment was too grown up. Plus, there was the third roommate. She was in her 40s, and it was more her place than ours. She rarely came out of her room. When she did, it was to refill her plate of food and sigh. So we’d sit there. Leaning up against the wall, butts numb from the hardwood floor, giggling. Like children.
As we tried to picture adulthood, we wondered who is completely satisfied in their work. Could there really be people who got up every day excited to face it? We concluded that Seiji Ozawa (the then Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) had the world’s coolest job. He travels the world, and spends his days with artists at the top of their craft. He has creative freedom, respect, wealth and fame. Music was his life, and now his life was music. It seemed like a pretty good deal. And so, from this casual observation, we developed “Seiji Ozawa Scale of Job Satisfaction.”
I don’t think either Molly or I truly understood the magnitude of genius to which we dared to compare ourselves. For the rest of us who aren’t Seiji Ozawa, things usually fall somewhere in the middle. We have our Seiji moments, rather than our Seiji jobs. Perhaps the hubris of youth led us to believe we could find a way to make a living loving what we do every day. The cynicism of mid-career taunts us by holding up Seiji Ozawa’s impossible standard, and inventories the number of times we’ve fallen short. Still, every time I take on a new project, I do a little mental Seiji check. The wisdom of experience reminds me that turning my back on Seiji would mean losing faith in myself.
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