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The answer to a casual question at lunch, 35 years ago, taught me everything I needed to know about choosing a career.

I knew my father’s cardiologist for a dozen years before my father needed him.
In the early 1980s the medical community was just starting to build applications for patient record keeping using the new personal computers coming on the market at the time. Through circumstances I am totally unable to recall I was introduced to an eminent cardiologist—I’ll call him Dr. Don—whose research work required him to collect data on his groundbreaking coronary angioplasty cases. I wrote a little code for him and it remained an entirely professional relationship except for the occasional lunch at the local tennis club. They were awkward discussions...
Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. This essay is the story which provided inspiration for The WorkNotWork Show (http://the.worknotwork.show), a podcast dedicated to finding and speaking with those, like Doctor Don, who are living their dream careers. A version of this essay also previously appeared on Medium (https://medium.com) on October 14th, 2016. (header photo: ©Jim DeLillo on iStock.)