An Odd Ride Home

Today I was working in a different location of town so had to take a different bus home.  Not knowing exactly sure where I was going, I walked to the nearest busy street.  I got there, waited, walked a bit more, and then got on the bus I thought that would take me the direction I was going.  I found a seat on the bus, pulled out my book and began reading.  Not realizing that we had changed direction, we stopped and the only other person on the bus got off at that stop.  Of course I panicked, ran up front and asked the driver exactly where this bus was going.  Cosmic joke: It was going exactly where I needed to go.

Since I was the only person on the bus, which never happens in a city such as LA, I stayed up front and asked the driver how his day has been?  I spent the next ten odd minutes chatting with Jose and got some great knowledge out of it.  I learned that he has been driving bus for eight years.  He is originally from Los Angeles and he loves his job.  It wasn’t that he loved his job, but he feels that he had found the perfect job for him.  He loves the routine of the bus routes but gets the diversity of the bus riders.  “Of course you get your bad riders once in a while, and traffic isn’t always easy to handle, but that doesn’t interfere with the goal at hand.” 

He also went on to talk about when you find what  fills you up every day, challenges you, and makes you happy to actually go to work, then you better find a way to fit that career into your life.  It really was inspirational to see him so extremely happy about his job.  That was that, me  by myself, on this double length bus, chatting with the bus driver.  The lesson behind this: Inspiration comes from surprising places and sometimes your dream job isn’t always something that appeared in your dreams.

If  Jose’s story inpsires you a little, or you’re just interested in the idea of really knowing what to do with your life, then I suggest this sample of Po Bonson’s book What Should I Do With My Life?  It happens to be a great book that provides a wide range of examples of how certain people fell into the surprise careers that they did.