Aaah, nice weekend. Farmer’s markets, driving with the iPod plugged in, and I finally found a fishing reel worth buying that cost less than $20.

But tomorrow I have to start the job hunt again, for real. Not quite the grind of actually going to work, but it must be treated with similar seriousness (and lots of coffee).

I am reminded again and again of a Doonesbury cartoon from years back where Mark Slackmeyer’s dad asks him what sort of a job he might pursue after college. Well, says Mark, it would have to be goal oriented, but not too high-pressure. My colleagues would be supportive, not competitive. And of course, we’d strictly adhere to our core moral principles when seeking out new work and clients.

“In other words,” his dad responds, “you have no intention of getting a job at all.”

I also remember a chance encounter at a small college in an even smaller Midwestern town many years ago. I happened to walk past a father and son touring the place. Dad was “dressed down” in a sweater but he still had the lacquered-in-place hair and bearing of an executive. The son was walking half a pace being him, looking at the ground. All I heard was one line, from the dad: “Of course when I was a kid, it was different. You went wherever they accepted you.” Yes, I thought, and took whatever job they offered you, and sweated blood to make money doing it no matter what it was.

It is to my ever-loving good fortune that my dad was not like that. He was a business guy, true, but he never accepted what was offered by higher-ups. He made his own way. He was a deal-maker, a negotiator, a master of getting people to cut to the chase. He built a $30 million company out of nothing by knowing how to look across a table at someone in a way that made bullshit impossible.

And he made it clear to me when I was very young that, unlike the offspring of some of his colleagues, there was no place for me in his company when I came of age. Why? Because he loved his work, he really, truly did. And he knew that I would not. Let the dullard children of others collect an empty paycheck based on their last name, he said to me, not quite in so many words but pretty close. You go out and do what you want, the thing that you do better than anyone else.

I’ve had a lot of success. I’ve done some amazing things. But in recent years I found myself drifting into that corporate-cog model. It was hard to let go, much harder than I imagined it would be. It took getting laid off for me to be done.

But at least I’m awake. And tomorrow it’s coffee and resumes and phone calls.

And then maybe some fishing if I make a lot of progress. It’s so nice out this week.