THE IDEA OF RIGHT livelihood has been close to my heart since childhood, though I had no idea such a concept existed when I was a kid. I just knew I didn’t want to turn out like my dad.
Nearly every evening when I was growing up, my mom and I would wait for Dad to come home from work. He was always late, and by the time he sat down to dinner, the food was cold despite Mom’s best attempts to keep it warm. Once the mealtime conversation started, much of it revolved around Dad’s discontent with his job. He felt perpetually overworked and stayed long hours to try to catch up—hence his tardiness to dinner. He complained endlessly about his boss. I sat there and witnessed my father’s unhappiness and felt heartbroken for both him and my future self. Was this misery awaiting me when it was time to start working?
My dad was a travel counselor for the American Automobile Association, a job he chose because of his own love of travel. Long before GPS, he would hand-create TripTiks for clients. These personalized maps showed the best route for your vacation. They included places you shouldn’t miss along the way, like the amazing natural rock bridge in Utah that nobody else knew about, or the quirky motel in Nevada that doubled as a peacock farm. I can still picture my father at his large wooden work table at home, tucked along the side of our dining room, getting his orange markers out and highlighting routes that would bring the most joy to the traveler.
This should have been a great job for my dad. But in reality, he spent all his time and energy planning other people’s trips, rarely taking one for himself. Dad got two weeks a year, the standard amount of annual vacation in the United States at
