‘Roadtrip Nation’ compiles wisdom on finding fulfillment
Fifteen years ago, three intrepid, angst-ridden college graduates, Nathan Gebhard, Brian McAllister and Mike Marriner, bought a beat-up RV and crisscrossed the United States looking for answers to that age-old question: What am I going to do with the rest of my life?
The thought of a traditional career path gave them the heebie-jeebies, so they sought out people who loved what they did and made a living doing it. These outliers, they discovered, make their own rules, foremost of which is to ignore the old rules. The result has been the much-admired public television series “Roadtrip Nation” and an educational organization.
Now, the cumulative wisdom gathered from “Roadtrip Nation” has been compiled in “Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do With Your Life.” The book’s contributors include the trio of founders as well as other members of the series and organization. In one sense, though, the authors also are the people the “Road” trippers sought out and interviewed. Their insights about finding a life, not a job, may be as relevant for new high school and college graduates as they are for entrenched midlife careerists looking for a better way to live.
The book contains exercises, activities and interviews with leaders in myriad fields. Among them is Jad Abumrad, host of the syndicated public radio show “Radiolab,” who said, “I don’t want to just look into the future and see the person I thought I was going to be. That’s the worst thing in the world. I just want to be surprised by who I become.”
In another interview, professional skateboarder and entrepreneur Rodney Mullen said, “Success is elusive. Look within.” Asked how he defines success, Mullen put it simply: “Peace. It’s just peace.” Skydiving instructor Ward Hessig naturally understands fear. “My first jump, I was terrified,” he said. “And after 11,000 jumps, there’s still fear. But there’s fear and fear management, and you have to weigh the rewards. Courage is not being fearless. It’s acting in the face of fear … and (doing) it anyway because the reward is so great.”
As for failure, the book relates how Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, went to 240 potential investors with his vision of European-style coffee shops, and 99 percent showed him the door.
Through interview after interview, the book walks readers through concepts such as self-construction, redefining success, exploring the positive aspects of “getting lost,” taking risks and moving forward through fear.
We caught up with Gebhard, now 38 and with a family. Following is an edited transcript.
Q: Why did you write this book? There have been plenty of self-help guides to finding the right job or career.
A: Gallup did a State of the (American) Workforce study and found that 70 percent of employees are not engaged in their work. That’s a big reason why we wrote this book. Clearly, the resources that are out there preparing young people for building a life are just not functioning. It has to do with the idea that most of society thinks in terms of occupation. We think in terms of what you’re interested in.
Q: The book is centered on what you call “self-construction.” Is that an allegory for the opposite of seeking a “career”?
A. Yeah, it’s the concept of living in beta. You’re always testing, iterating, proving, gaining skill and evolving. You are never arriving. It’s more of a continual process. Most of the resources out there are still based on the original idea of career, putting your head down and doing the rightih thing.hi
Q: You refer to taking comfort in our “collective confusion.” What does that mean?
A: I don’t think we shed the noise of society and have pure thoughts about who we want to be. It’s easy to say “my parents told me to do this” or “my teacher told me I’m not smart enough to do this.” We interviewed the sculptor (Glenna Goodacre) of the Sacagawea coin, and she had a professor who said, “You are blind, dumb and can’t see in three dimensions.” She dropped sculpting for 10 years and accepted what he said. It was only after she revisited sculpture that she found the truth. (Goodacre went on to create more than 500 bronze sculptures, including the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.)
Q: What do you think is the first thing someone can do to identify meaningful work?
A: To identify meaningful work, you have to experience it. The problem is how most people approach it. It’s good to find someone you can talk to who is doing what might be meaningful to you. Or do it on a small scale. If you want to be a writer, start a blog. Look for the smallest way you can put yourself into an experience and see if it resonates. If it’s meaningful, it will turn you on.
Q: That takes courage, doesn’t it?
A: It does take courage. A practical way of explaining that is what Jonathan Poneman says. Poneman, co-founder of Sub Pop Records, home of the Shins and, early on, Nirvana, (is quoted in the book): “If everything in life is characterized as risk versus safety, the human instinct is to choose safety. But if you use a whole different standard for evaluating your life, like necessary versus unnecessary, happiness is necessary and love is necessary. For me, it was just changing the way I evaluate my life, and taking the whole idea of security out of the equation.”
Q: How would you explain the positive spin you put on “getting lost?”
A: You can compare it to the way we go to school or work or taking the kids to soccer practice—anything you do that becomes a ritual. We go the route we know. It’s comfortable. We are uncomfortable being lost, and that goes for how we drive and how we live our lives. So we make up answers to avoid feeling uncomfortable. I said I was going to be a consultant, and I didn’t even know what that was. Getting lost is being willing to explore and having the courage to find yourself.
Q: What’s the best way to deal with other people’s expectations of you?
A: When you’re in school, you don’t want to be an outlier; you want to be like everybody else. Yet the second you’re looking for a job, nobody wants someone who’s like everybody else. Jeff Johnson (a BET network host, said, “Most people who are successful didn’t do what everybody else did. They didn’t go the same routes everybody else went. It is the people who think outside the box in whatever discipline they are in who shake the world.”
Q: The most hated interview question of all time may be, “Where do you want to be in five or 10 years?” Isn’t that antithetical to the foundation of your book?
A: You’re right to hate that question. It’s one thing to be talking with a trusted friend and thinking about your values and where that will take you. The context of the question as it’s usually asked is: “Tell me something really fancy that I will be impressed with.”
Q: One chapter titled “Hustle” is intriguing because it implies that everything the book has covered to that point isn’t just about daydreaming.
A: I love the quote from Kevin Carroll (Nike branding guru): “You have to be willing to put your dream on the street.” What surprised and inspired us on the road was how hard these people pushed, how hard they worked. We’ve interviewed people who were homeless for years before they got going. They worked hard. It’s not as if they followed a manual for success that included living under the New Jersey Turnpike. Hustle also means humility, because in those grinding years you have to block out that question of where you see yourself in five years.
Q: Do you have advice on how to use the book, or does that run counter to what the book is about?
A: (laughs) The advice is to not see it as a once-read-and-done. It’s intended to be used any time you’re asking that question, “What am I doing with my life?” I hope that people will dog-ear pages, and when they get frustrated they’ll throw it against the wall and pick it up and put it on the shelf. And then they’ll define that next version of themselves, start asking questions again and come right back to it.