listen to your gut

my older brother did a wonderful thing this morning. it was 8:30 a.m. and i was still half-asleep when he called for some...advice. my ears immediately perked up and i listened as he explained how he was torn between going into work today and turning around to take a job interview. you see, my brother is currently an employee for a family-owned business that affords him the security of a paycheck but absolutely no challenge. he will text me just an hour into work about how bored he already is, and when we talk about his job, i am saddened and frustrated that his natural energy and personable qualities are being wasted daily.
motivated to improve his situation yet cautious of jumping into anything on a whim (he was a pizza delivery man for a total of twenty-four hours before quitting), my brother continues to search for other opportunities while at his current job. which brings us to the reason why he called me in the first place...should he continue on his way to work or take the day off to attend an interview instead? the interview was for a management position at the front desk of a hotel. he expressed his concerns over the hours: 3-11 p.m. on most weekdays and weekends (i knew exactly what he had surely already calculated in his head...less time to watch baseball, football, and basketball...oh, the humanity!). anyhow, my brother had intended to decline taking the interview on account of the hours and drive into work. but as he was driving, he started to second-guess his decision, hence resulting in a conversation with his little, unemployed sister (i can't help but wonder whether or not i would've still been his first choice to call if it wasn't 5:30 a.m. pacific time where our older, employed sister lives).
i could sense in his voice that he wanted to take a chance. i told him that the hours were really not that bad...that he could still go out on the weekends and also have a day or two off during the week. i told him that walking into the hotel and taking the interview would give him a much better sense of whether or not the job would be a good fit for him. i assured him that if he proved dependable and hard-working, his hours would more than likely change down the road. essentially, i told him what his gut was already trying to tell him: turn this damn truck around and take the interview! so he did.
although not a scary, gut-wrenching story, let my brother's morning be a reminder to us all that our gut is something worth listening to. as twenty-something men and women, we all face similar situations that leave us torn between what we already have and what we could have. this is the time in our lives when we are continually defining and re-defining what our "dream job" is. do we find a "safe" job that bores us to death but pays the bills? or do we opt for something enticing that may leave us (gulp) living with our parents? there is obviously substantial gray area between these two extremes, but i am not a believer in attending an unfulfilled job day after day just for the sake of "doing your time" at the bottom of the job market food chain. i think that it makes the most sense to start out at the bottom if the bottom is at least within the industry that you love. by all means, work at a fast-food chain if it is restaurant management that you are passionate about. don't settle for something that you can never see yourself being a part of professionally. i understand that we all face varying degrees of financial (and emotional) burdens which can thwart our aspirations, but sacrificing our passions in favor of, well, ANYTHING, is possibly the worst mistake we can make. my understanding is that the older we get, the greater our responsibilities become and the greater our sacrifices are. take responsibility for the people you love and the things you love, and in that same breadth, make sacrifices for the sake of those same reasons. if that means turning your truck around to take an interview, then turn your damn truck around.