Color and Brightness

Should I Do What I Love? (Or Do What I Do – So I Can Do What I Love on the Side)

by Katy McColl

Sasquatch, 206 pp., $14.95

In Should I Do What I Love?, Katy McColl gathers interviews from a surprisingly broad array of off-the-beaten-path professions, putting jewelry designers, comedians, DJs, and "political operatives" side by side. It's a hit-and-miss strategy. An aspiring writer might find it hard to mimic the career trajectory of a chef, and often the serendipitous nature of their success stories seems unrepeatable. However, an overall pattern does emerge suggesting that ramen-noodle-eating persistence perhaps manufactures such serendipity. More importantly, McColl's comforting, big-sister approach to her audience goes a long way toward assuaging the paralyzing guilt common to quarter-lifers: "There will always be that prodigy freak show conducting an orchestra at 23. ... I don't want their immediate accomplishments to discourage you from undertaking any project more ambitious than a nap," she writes, plus "we probably do expect too much happiness from our jobs. Then again, people from our parents' generation use canned cream-of-mushroom soup as sauce." McColl also shares familiar anecdotes about out-of-touch career counselors and offers practical suggestions for post-college types (keep framing your life in four-year chunks) and dreary day-jobbers (you can transition seamlessly from one field to another). I have to admit that McColl's demographically fine-tuned prose can be off-putting sometimes; then again, our parents' generation read Richard Bach. It'd be nice to be a seagull, but my money's on the comedic, jewelry-designing DJ-chef.