I Changed Careers Mid-Life and So Can You!
In 1974, I was a 37-year old attorney unhappy with my job and looking to find a way to escape. I was taking my work home with me at night and I could sense my health was being adversely affected by the stress of solving other peoples‘ problems.
On weekends, just to get away from matters legal, I began learning to write confession stories for pulp magazines. I had always enjoyed writing (as a humor columnist and cartoonist in high school and college) and thought it sounded like fun — also the 10 cents per word remuneration for doing something I enjoyed beckoned.
When I grew up, the traditional path to happiness and riches included a college degree—for me it was San Francisco State University—followed, ideally, by graduate school—University of California, Hastings Law. A career in the law looked okay on paper, but eventually I realized I had less in common with Perry Mason than My Cousin Vinnie.
I dragged myself to the office in Palo Alto (a suburb of San Francisco that would become the heart of Silicon Valley) for what gradually became a daily grind. Then, one day, while I was exploring the depths of my professional doldrums, the Comedy Fates suddenly and unexpectedly tilted their golden scepters in my direction.
By accident while researching pulp magazines that were looking for writers, I ran across an article in “Writers Digest Magazine” written by a TV comedy writer named Gene Perret which suggested writing jokes for a local performer or speaker. I began sending material to a San Francisco disc jockey named Don Sherwood who liked my lines and performed them on the air.
About six months (and dozens of submissions) later, I noticed Perret’s name among the writers of the “Carol Burnett Show.” I bundled up my Sherwood jokes and sent them off to CBS Television City.
Gene saw promise in my jokes. He had been freelancing monologues for Bob Hope while working on Burnett and welcomed a little help that I was more than happy to provide. My comedy writing career was off and running.
But, ideally, anyone seeking a job in television at that time had to live in New York or Los Angeles. That’s where the work was. So we sold our house in Los Angeles and moved to Burbank where over the next several years, I would gain valuable experience on the staff of “Dinah!,” a 90-minute daytime talk show, and the “Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts” — both of which Gene recommended me for. Just one year later, I was hired to write for Bob Hope and traveled with him as a script writer for almost two decades.
Hope had been visiting America’s living rooms, first on kinescope and later on tape, for almost three decades. Yet, at the age of seventy-five, he was in many ways just hitting his stride and would, over the next fifteen years, produce and star in over eighty-five television specials, many of which would rank among his best and all of which I would work on.
When you signed with Bob Hope, it was akin to entering an ancient, tradition-laden religious order where you agreed to forego the temptations of the secular world in exchange for a life of unwavering loyalty, absolute obedience and, I have to admit, more thrills and excitement than anyone could possibly imagine.
When asked once when he planned to retire, George Burns said, “I retired the day I got into show business.” I know exactly what George meant. Doing anything you love and are passionate about never seems like work — no matter the pressures inherint in it. To anyone doing what they love, what appears on the surface to be stress isn’t stress, but rather, a challenge. Sure, writing every day for one of the most famous comedians in the world posed challenges — but meeting them wasn’t stressful because I had found what I was meant to do!
The lesson here is this: If you are in a job that you don’t enjoy, or worse, that’s threatening your health and well-being, seek out something else. It may take awhile to recognize that “something else,” but if you have persistance and keep at it, you’ll almost certainly improve your outlook and sense of well-being. When you’re doing something you don’t enjoy, even looking for an alternative is a vast improvement.
So start today. Don’t be afraid to go for it. And if the job you find pay less, If you truly enjoy your work, you’ll get better and better at it — and the money will follow. Find something you like to do and you’ll never have to “work” again. Hey, If I could do it, so can you!
Excerpted from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media. To order: http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com
Kindle e-book .99: www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO
A native of San Francisco, Bob Mills served in the Navy after high school, graduating from San Francisco State University in 1962 and the University of California Hastings Law in 1965. He practiced in Palo Alto, CA for ten years before moving to Hollywood to write for television. He worked on the Dinah Shore Show, the Steve Allen Show and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts before joining Bob Hope as a staff writer in 1977. He traveled the world with Hope for the next seventeen years. In 2009, his book The Laugh Makers: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope’s Incredible Gag Writers was published by Bear Manor Media and was named one of Leonard Maltin’s “Top 20 Year-End Picks.” To order: http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com
Kindle e-book .99: www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO
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