Coddiwompling: Meandering with Purpose

As I concluded my last post, I left readers with a word that I think best describes my thinking about vocation, calling, and career—coddiwompling. Coddiwompling is an English slang term loosely defined as meandering in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination. In this post, the final one in my series, I will use this term to explore the circuitous vocational journey that many of us find ourselves on and its implications for our students.

I have come to appreciate the inherent unpredictability of my vocational journey during my career, shaped by experiences in academia and the corporate world. Born at the peak of the baby boom, I entered a competitive job market alongside a large cohort of peers. I vaguely recall learning about career paths, expecting a linear progression with abundant, ever-increasing opportunities. Instead, what unfolded was a series of winding paths, unexpected detours, and self-discovery, which has led me to a career that I could not have envisioned more than 40 years ago.

Life, much like a career, is best understood as a journey rather than a destination. No GPS or map can fully capture the richness of the paths we travel, as Jeff R. Brown also acknowledges in his essay, “Unplugging the GPS: Rethinking Undergraduate Professional Degree Programs.” Even as he argues students should keep the bigger picture in mind and use actual maps to guide their progress, I want to preserve the value of coddiwompling. It illustrates that while we may have a general direction in mind, the journey itself is full of unexpected detours and moments of serendipity.

Consider using a navigation app when you set out on a trip. While the app may provide a suggested route, it can also guide you onto less-traveled streets, routes which you might never have found on your own. In many ways, our lives mirror this experience. Even when we chart a clear path, life circumstances often have a way of introducing us to new opportunities and experiences that enrich our journey.

Insights from the world of consulting are useful here. The McKinsey Three Horizon Model—first introduced in The Alchemy of Growth, can be applied to careers and offers a framework for our students that balances short-term needs with long-term growth. Horizon 1 focuses on strengthening current skills in existing roles. Horizon 2 involves exploring new opportunities—such as lateral moves or skill diversification—to enhance career growth and development. Horizon 3 emphasizes long-term career reinvention, including acquiring new expertise or transitioning into a new industry or profession to capitalize on emerging opportunities. In each of those horizons, we need to encourage our students to look for signposts much like rock cairns that mark pathways on trails. Interpreting internal and external clues, they can choose which direction to pursue, much like hikers discerning piles of stones created by previous wayfarers, pointing the way to a destination. We can follow a path to the horizon, at which point the next step in our journey will become clear.

Sometimes, we approach these horizons after suffering vocational setbacks or failures. In Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, Bonnie Miller-McLemore explores these experiences through the frameworks of broken or fractured callings, examples of what she characterizes as the “double-edged nature of calling.” As she reflects on her own experience and those of colleagues and friends, she realizes that they had initially followed callings that seemed right at first but later led them into unexpected roadblocks or dead ends. She contends, however, that fractured callings can lead us to a place that we may not have reached or considered otherwise. Sometimes failure is the only way that we learn, and a mended calling might be all the stronger, like a broken bone that has healed.

When careers are derailed, whether through job loss or other unexpected setbacks, the myth of the idealized career breaks down, revealing its inherent fragility. These disruptions are not anomalies but inevitable realities in an unpredictable world. Rather than viewing them as personal failures, we (and our students) must recognize them as opportunities for growth. According to the late Randy Pausch, who is memorialized in his book The Last Lecture, “failure is not just acceptable, it is often essential.” In this way, broken callings can lead us to a place that we may not have otherwise ventured to. Failure can open us to better future opportunities.

For example, consider a recent case of a newly graduated English major who was thrilled to land her first copywriting job with a major corporation. Excited to apply her love of writing in a corporate communication department, she was momentarily derailed when she was replaced by artificial intelligence after only 18 months on the job. This unexpected detour initially set her adrift, but she realized that even if this career path was broken, her vocation was not. Even though she is still sorting things out, she is considering volunteering to teach writing at a youth center, which will enable her to continue pursuing her passion for writing.

Coddiwompling teaches us to balance commitment with the openness to explore new avenues. The journey throughout life can feel chaotic and unpredictable. I, too, experience moments of disorientation more often than I care to admit, whether it is losing my car in a parking lot or finding that the directions to my next opportunity are unclear. Nevertheless, it is in these moments of uncertainty that we can grow, adapt, and discover new paths. Embracing the concept of coddiwompling means accepting that, while we may never have a perfect plan, each step we take and each detour we encounter contributes to our overall experience.

The practice of coddiwompling—traveling purposefully toward a vague destination—can serve as a metaphor for our students’ vocations and careers. It serves as a reminder that while paths may be uncertain and winding, every step taken brings us somewhere new and exciting. In embracing the unpredictable adventure of life, we discover that our careers are not predetermined scripts but ever-changing narratives, continually being written. In the words of the poet Antonio Machado, as he writes in “Traveler, Your Footprints”:

Traveler, your footprints

are the only road, nothing else.

Traveler, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.

As you walk, you make your own road,

and when you look back

you see the path

you will never travel again.

Traveler, there is no road;

only a ship’s wake on the sea.

This poetic sentiment aligns with the more pragmatic McKinsey Horizons model. Our students (and we as well) need to learn to follow that path as far as they can see, and then the next step will become clear.

By embracing the give and take between our inner callings and practical career demands, we acknowledge that our professional lives are not merely about climbing upward or achieving status; they are about becoming the best version of ourselves. Whether our journey is marked by serendipitous encounters, deliberate linear planning, horizon-based planning, broken callings, or the unexpected turns of coddiwompling, we need to remember that every experience brings us and our students closer to fulfilling our purpose and living a truly good life.

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David Youland is associate professor of business at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. A native of Minnesota, he has also lived in Iowa, Tennessee, and currently resides in Wichita, Kansas.  Before joining Southwestern College in 2018, he worked for 35 years in marketing and innovation roles with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 firms to smaller corporations listed on NASDAQ.  During that time, he also held adjunct faculty roles at St. Cloud State University, William Penn University, Central College, and King University. He is a noted thought leader and consultant specializing in organic revenue growth and the author of Driving Organic Business Growth: Actionable Strategies for Smart Innovation and editor of Readings in Qualitative Market Research: Insights for Managers.