Wilderness Guide Diaries - the job

How it feels to work seems to be a question not many people know how to answer. Often we're told to think that we should do something we enjoy and that when we make our passion our career, we'll be happy. But I don't think so. Some people rightfully add that yes, your passion can also spend you and make you burn out. Making your passion can also take all the fun out of it and turn the passion into something you end up loathing instead of loving. Feeling happy, or like you do something meaningful is only one piece of the puzzle. We see a career as a separate thing, a path that should make sense for someone else when you explain what have you studied and done in life, or a way to measure success in titles, years, or expertise.

A career is also a story of how you adapt and lead your own life. It's a story about how you figure out what kind of a job helps you feel alive, who are the people you enjoy working with, it's about the things you do and how you feel about them, it's about the people you do it with, and the people you're doing it for. However passionate it shouldn't be the only thing that matters in your life - and it should be more than just a series of jobs you do and titles you collect.

I enjoy the feeling when you have a day off and don't have to worry about work. The ideas and thoughts are not pestering anywhere inside my consciousness, whispering that I should do this, that thing wasn't good enough or worrying about how a meeting will go. For now, this is good, that I can just go to work, and do my job and it requires me to prepare things, do things, and spend time with people.

I guess the problem I have often had in the office is that I care too much about what's beneath the surface. I want to get to know the people more informally, I want to do what's right instead of what's simply profitable, and I get so invested in what I do that the steady phase doesn't work for me. I always feel like not doing enough until I'm burned out. I need to do longer days, a short period of time and be off when I'm off.

Right now I'm responsible for safety while creating a holiday experience. It requires the same abilities leaders have: keeping people excited and creating an environment where it's fun while still explaining the risks and keeping people accountable for what they do.

Especially with snowmobiles, accidents can happen, which you want people to remember but not to focus on too much. I have often people who have never driven a snowmobile before. It takes the ability to read people and recognize their level of talent, and hesitation, correct mistakes, praise in the right spots, and know how to build up the experience so that within 2h time people have figured out how to drive safely nearly 40km/h. Doing what I do requires also performing abilities, we can have up to 40 people we talk to at once. So being afraid of public speaking is not an option. We also work as a team, and we still have to perform without friction no matter how tired or cranky we are. This takes stamina. Days are long and sleep is a luxury. Usually, we do the normal 40h in 4 days. My longest day this season was nearly 17h - so it's also important that I know the limits. If I'm too tired, it becomes a safety issue and I need to know when to say I can't do this today.But this is the way I like it. Crazy days, a lot of things to do, so much that I fall asleep without any troubles, and when I'm off, I'm off. It's not only that, but during my free days, I feel excited to sit down and write. It doesn't make me feel like I should be outside or that I'm not doing enough. It feels good to be inside and know I get fresh air once I'm back to work. This also gives me back in ways nothing else has - seeing the smiles and hearing the talks in different languages is what tells me immediately if I did a good job. I get to take the most wanted holiday photos and share the excitement in the snowy woods when seeing the auroras and much more. Simply I feel like it's a privilege, not a job.

Has this become my passion then? Not really, I don't need to be passionate and hang the meaning of my life around the job I do. But I do put my heart into this because I want to do my job well no matter what I do. To me, passion turns easily into an unhealthy obsession and if I get paid to obsess, well, that's a road to a mental health disaster. After leaving the office, this is the first time in a long time that I have healthy mental boundaries with work. Having crazy long days can sound like something else but honestly, I haven't had this good balance in years - and that is the combination of colleagues, flatmates, shift planning, job description, teamwork, relationships with people, what I can do my free days, environment, knowing it's only for few months, and the challenges Lapland provides. Going to work feels good to the point that after a winter hike alone in the woods it's not "ugh, it's time to go back... nooooooooooooooo!" but rather "ok, time to go back, I don't mind".

One huge factor for that kind of good-bad day balance is that when going out into nature, the rush disappears. This is something new for me and something I wish to take with me into my later jobs too because it's a huge thing. Not rushing is the desired normal state because it's also one of the biggest safety factors. It doesn't mean that we are slow or ineffective, slow or lazy, but if there's not enough time the chances are that you'll forget something or make a bad decision that compromises safety. In the office, this is rarely considered how much pressure affects our thinking and the decisions we make. In this job, you realize it clearly. I spend my new year in a tunnel lifting up 350kg snowmobile because of a rushed miscommunication and a bad decision. As a result of rush and not thinking clearly one of our colleagues fell down with a snowmobile. Luckily nothing serious happened, but it was a lesson of how little it takes to turn into something dangerous, Only one nagging thought in the back of your mind can cloud the judgment so badly that after you wonder what the heck you were thinking.

I feel like "do what you're passionate about" and "MEANING" are the big buzzwords of the current time. There are few things generally considered meaningful ways to live or generally promoted things that hold any kind of meaning in society: career, work, and becoming a parent - and anything else you simply have to try to rationalize or explain to make people understand why it's important for the world. We have to endlessly explain why we are important to get recognition and appreciation - and always there's someone, a group of people, or a societal structure that tries to tell us otherwise. There's the pressure to be connected to some bigger goal in some loud and visible way.

The pressure to devote ourselves to it, not a take single miss-step, and follow almost religiously "that girl" or some other ideal to reach impossible standards. Chasing that rarely gives us back what we're looking for: meaningful life (in my experience) is built on enjoying what you do, feeling more happy than sad, experiencing all emotions, and having people to share the journey with. It's built on the kind of journey that is yours and yours only. First, it's your job to learn to appreciate what you do, only after you can hold on to the appreciation other people give you. Matching your inner desires with the bigger solutions to the problems the world has and trying to find how you fit into the picture is not an easy job. But that's the job we all have no matter what other jobs we do. Meaning can be found as a volunteer, from a career, from hobbies... anything. It's a shame that generally speaking the way we define valuable people and work to be appreciated is pretty narrow. It seems that we're hooked on tabloid narratives like "from rags to riches", "from burnout to absolute freedom", and "from nobody to the most passionate and devoted world savior". We need better stories than these to find what we're looking for.

Often in these stories, meaning is just a big plump of something that just feels right but no one can explain how the "it just feels right" feels in the long run. For me, it's the 29/30 happy days that consist of smiling people, challenges won, appreciation, and trust. But it's also about learning skills I value and using them. I get to use all the languages I know and this gives me a reason to learn more. I'm constantly learning more about nature because some people ask questions I never even thought of. I've also learned to take the most desired holiday photos in Lapland - it's every time one of those moments when you see the people struggling to take a photo where you have the aurora in the background and where you can see the faces of people. Succeeding in that makes me so proud of myself every time. It's no magic, but because I've only recently learned how to photograph the northern lights at all, it's a huge deal for me. Seeing what it means to the people only makes it so much more meaningful to me.

Did I know I would like this so much? Nope. If something, I was hesitant. I was scared that I would be bored out of my mind explaining the same things to different people, visiting the same places or that I would end up hating going with tourists for a couple of hours and then taking the next group. The same fears I had identified to be a problem with office jobs took another form in my mind for this one. However, it didn't keep me from trying "As long as it's just for a few months, I can do it". But soon I found myself thinking of coming back for next winter. This might be a permanently temporary job I might want to come back to. Time will tell and meanwhile, I have a list of random jobs I want to try and skills I want to acquire (see the 2023 list here). This is the kind of a piece in my life I can allow to affect my feelings and I don't have to try to distance myself from the feelings I bring home from work, compartmentalize them into a work box, or even pay attention to more than I normally do. It's these factors that make it feel right, a light load to handle, and I appreciate this as a part of my life.

So, I won't say that I'd never go back to the office. It's all about the right job description, how it makes me feel, who are the people I see daily, and what else I want out of life. It's about the way to do the job, what is the goal, and whether can I value it equally with other things in my life. Too often it tries to rule everything. Despite my doubts, these have been almost two months, and I'm still enjoying this - and thinking to myself that this is how working should feel. Becoming a wilderness guide won't give this feeling to everyone but I hope that everyone finds something similar and that we find better career stories to share.