An August Christmas: The Illusion Behind Most Careers

A guide to spotting the "artifice" in your professional life and mapping a sovereign exit.

(Field observation from the world of The Half-Finished Man.)

Most professional lives are built around carefully maintained illusions.

I learned that the hard way while helping stage Christmas in the middle of August.

The sweat was real, but the season was a lie.

There we were: myself, an inexperienced assistant, an increasingly agitated photographer, wilting models draped in heavy wool sweaters, a roaring log fire (gas-fed and relentless), and a "festive" atmosphere that felt like a fever dream. We spent fourteen hours polishing a searing illusion of ‘The Holiday Season’ while the real world melted outside the windows.

It was mid-August in New York City—the kind of triple-digit heat that turns Manhattan into a humid kiln. Through a series of bizarre coincidences and a sudden bout of unemployment—the result of a whirlwind romance that ended, I thought, unfairly—I found myself the assistant to the photo editor at Cosmopolitan. We were currently staged in a house with a dying AC unit, shooting the much-anticipated Christmas interior spread.

That day will stay with me forever. Not just because of its surreal qualities but because it was my first real, enduring Field Observation of what I would come to call the "Human Artifice."

It was the moment I realized that much of the professional world is just people in heavy sweaters, desperately pretending it’s December in the middle of a heatwave because three months of "Lead Time" or ‘Quarterly Reports’ or ‘Newly Established Quota Demands’ require it.

The Honest Hustle vs. The Manufactured Role

Before the photo shoots, I’d worked in bars and restaurants all over the country. Those were places where the heat and the hustle were at least honestly sourced. If the kitchen was a furnace, you opened a door. If a customer was surly, you dealt with it in real-time. There was no "lead time" on a cold beer or a clean plate. At least on the restaurant floor, that is. With the various owners you could often catch a consistent world of pretense as they tried to figure out why running a restaurant wasn’t as easy as Rick made it look in ‘Casablanca’.

But as I moved forward into the ‘grown-up’ worlds of Finance and Real Estate (because that’s what you do as you contemplate marriage and fatherhood), I saw the August Christmas everywhere.

I saw men and women in the ‘Last Third’ of their lives, sweltering under corporate titles and golden handcuffs, desperately maintaining an illusion of security while the reality of their own burning desire for something else screamed outside the boardroom door.

Many of those I saw were "Half-Finished"—not because they lacked talent, but because they were trapped in a role that contradicted them. To be honest, many of them were running out the clock. Which is absurd. The ‘Last Third’ of your life could well be twenty-five or thirty years. It’s substantial living time, not throwaway time. It needs to be treated as such.

The Outsider’s Inventory

I cannot claim to have scaled any corporate ladders. I had the opportunity many times, but I had a kind of reverse Groucho Marx ‘club member’ concern about it. A club that declared it would, could, might have me, but I didn't want to join. I looked askance at the future the ladder foretold and felt instinctively certain that it could never be me. Not entirely sure why. You pay a price for that, of course. Your life is less settled - less promising - in the end, less ‘sure’, which is an illusion all its own because nothing ever is.

Instead, I stayed on the outside—a student of human nature to be very charitable. Or someone with a Bobby McGee perspective on freedom to be less so. I had emigrated as a teenager and hitched across the spine of America when that was still a perfectly respectable mode of transportation. That ground-level perspective never left me.

Even when I entered Sales and Finance and other disreputable activities because compromise becomes a sliding scale with the calendar’s advance, I still didn’t see a career path. I felt like a very temporary double agent, sure to be discovered at any moment. More than that, though, I saw Equipment.

I realized that if I could master the "money game" mechanics—the storytelling persuasion of Sales and the logic of Finance—I would never have to put the fake sweater back on for anyone. That realization led to even greater self-analysis. If I wasn’t just ‘this’ what else could I do?

I proudly told myself that all was well when I helped out a charity by writing a couple of independent films for them. Then, I got to direct them when no one else was available. The revenue from the films, of course, went back into the very worthy charity, but I realized that the whole process was just as big a part of who I was as the way I brought in income. And far more rewarding. And that’s a key.

You can be many things, not just defined by the one that pays the bills. Even if you might not be able to make films whenever your inner life desperately needs them, there is almost always a part of yourself that can be enriched. The good news is that certainly doesn’t stop when you enter that ‘Last Third’.

Mapping Your Exit

Many people look at their work history and see a resume they don’t really recognize as theirs. Seldom is it one they would have composed for themselves back when it all started. They see blocks of time they cannot believe they actually spent on this endeavor or that. The reality is that you don’t have to care about any of that. Not anymore. What’s important is the Terrain ahead. To move toward personal and professional sovereignty, you have to examine the inventory.

Look for the areas of your life and work where the "official" goal contradicts the "actual" reality. When you find that reality, take time to recognize it. It is the only way to find the door. Then be very sure on which side of it you belong. Even if you can’t exit quite yet, you can see the writing on the wall and the bright Christmas sweater you don’t want to be wearing in August.

Contemplating the full reworking of your life might not be easy. You are after all occupying what you thought was the path of least resistance - perhaps for decades. Is that how you want to spend your last twenty-five to thirty years? If it is then congratulations, you are content, at peace, satisfied.

If not, the fact is that it is these last few decades that have been the reworking of your life. That was the unnatural part. You just need to undo the artifice you forced yourself to adopt and inhabit.

The Human Premium: Viewing from the Director’s Chair

When you sit in the Director's Chair of your own life, you stop looking at the sweater you were forced to wear and start looking at the person wearing it.

The experiences of making those films taught me something the sales and boardrooms never could: Every system is composed of human actors playing roles. Nothing terribly revelatory about that until you realize that most of them are miscast.

You know if that’s you by now. If it is, and as you approach this part of your life which can very possibly be just as rich as the years before it, then it is absolutely necessary and completely permissible to recast yourself. Why stay in a role that isn’t you, probably wasn’t ever you and was never meant to be?

Cast yourself instead in the life you truly feel you belong in. You don’t want anyone else doing the casting for you. Life isn’t over. The time for artifice and self-deception is.

The Expedition Begins

Reclaiming your life isn't about finding a new job; it's about realizing you were never a "job" to begin with. You are a navigator. And the map for the last third of your life is one you have to draw yourself.

Recognizing the sweater is the first step. Yes, it’s heavy. But it isn't your skin and taking it off requires a different kind of gear.

(These ideas are explored more deeply in my book, The Half-Finished Man: A Field Guide to Reclaiming the Last Third of Your Life.)

In the next field observation, we will look at the Sovereign Inventory—how to find the 'Red Thread' in your own fragmented history and calculate the 'Freedom Math' required to walk away.

About the Author: PD Oliver is a participant/observer and author of "The Half-Finished Man: A Field Guide to Reclaiming the Last Third of Your Life." He presently lives in Malaga, Spain.