I love being the person behind the scenes, being able to design and create something that will bring a smile to someone’s face.

—KIM, florist, Best Buds Flower Company

EVEN THOUGH I now had a sponsor, I still had to make sure I stayed on budget. To keep costs down, I decided to post a note on my website and on Craigslist to try to find a ride with someone headed to Edmonton. Later that same afternoon, Olivia, an animated Italian in her early twenties, sent me an email.

Hey Sean, I saw an article about you when you were on Urban Rush. I can totally relate. I recently graduated and have spent the past 6 months probably thinking about a lot of the same things you are. Anyway, I can give you a ride, though I’m planning on leaving tomorrow.

Road trips are fun. Even last-minute road trips with strangers to unfamiliar cities, with no idea of where you’ll sleep upon arriving. We were five hours into the thirteen-hour drive from Vancouver to Edmonton, where I’d be a florist with Best Buds Flower Company. Olivia spent the first hour trying to decide if I was a serial killer, though after a few corny jokes, she’d concluded I was harmless.

Hitting the road felt like the true start to the project. I’d left the simple comforts of home, and from now on, I’d have to live out of a suitcase and find a new place to crash each week. But I was excited about the challenge. For some reason I felt like the project needed to be a bit difficult to be worthwhile.

I’d left my hometown of Port Moody many times before, but this time was different. I felt like I was really setting out on a journey. I think it was the whole searching thing that brought it out. We’re told that if we want to find something, we must search for it. To search for it, we must go on a journey.

So, a journey it was.

I turned to Olivia and asked, “Have the past six months given you any clearer direction about what you want to do?”

“Yes and no.” She adjusted the volume on the stereo. “I ended up returning to what I wanted to be when I grew up as a kid—which is a journalist—preferably an international reporter. But it takes a long time to get there. I’m doing an internship right now and have applied to some grad schools.” She paused a moment. “I don’t know, I sometimes wonder how spoiled I am to be able to think about this kind of stuff, because most of my family never had the opportunity—they just had to make money somehow.”

“I know what you mean.” I gazed out the window and watched the landscape speed by. I felt a bit spoiled myself. After all, I was on my way to try out life as a florist. In Edmonton.

Before Olivia picked me up that morning, I’d posted my cellphone number on the website in hopes of finding a place to stay before I arrived in Edmonton. Three hours outside of the city, my cellphone rang. It was my friend Mike. “Hey, Sean, I checked with my girlfriend, and she said that it’s cool if you crash at her place while you’re in town.”

I’d met Mike a year earlier in a language program in Quebec. I knew he’d gone to school in Edmonton, but I didn’t know he still had a girlfriend there. I was glad to find out he did. “That’s huge, Mike. Thanks so much!” I said.

I’d never been one to make plans far in advance, but I could tell that this year would put my easygoing, things-will-work-out-even-if-I-leave-it-to-the-last-minute mentality to the test.

I hung up and looked down at my first-ever cellphone in awe—so that’s what cellphones are for, I thought. I couldn’t understand how I’d managed to live without one for so long.

I only hoped that my newfound mastery of cellphones could also translate into helping with my inexperience in the floral industry.

When I pushed open the front door of the shop on Monday morning, a bell attached to its metal frame announced my presence. It was bright. Each wall was painted in a solid color—three different earthy greens and one maroon. Arrangements of flowers sat on tiered displays lining the shop floor, and a walk-in glass cooler housed more flowers. A couple of workers busily cut and arranged flowers on the two tables in the back as I approached the front counter. Kim, the owner, was one of them. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and had curly dark hair and big blue eyes. She walked over with a pleasant smile on her face and handed me a piece of paper. “You’re a popular guy, Sean. First day on the job and people are already asking for you,” she said.

I glanced down at the paper. It was a list of names and numbers of various TV and radio producers who had called the shop looking to interview me. It turned out that word about my project had begun to spread over the Internet, and the media was picking up the story.

“I’m sorry, Kim. I don’t know why they’d call here—my email and cell number are on the website.”

“No trouble at all,” she assured me, and introduced me to the other staff members.

That afternoon I arranged more interviews than bouquets. All of a sudden, it was assumed that I possessed sweeping insight into the psyche of an entire generation. They asked why I started the project, about my promise for passion, my generation, and my previous five one-week jobs. I had to retell the story of my dad’s advice at the dinner table over and over as if it were the first time. It felt weird. A bit like a show. I’d wrap a bouquet, cut stems, or man the register with a camera crew filming. We’d step aside to do an interview, then they’d leave and I’d go back to work. I did about fifteen interviews in the first two days. After a while, it seemed as if my answers to their identical questions had become rehearsed.

I wasn’t sure if Kim was happy about the publicity or if it was a nuisance, but it definitely created a new dynamic. When I was working on set at the television talk show during Week 2, the cameras were part of the job. In the floral industry—not so much. On one hand I was happy for the exposure. Kim’s business got some publicity after she had been kind enough to take the time to teach me her profession. For those who saw or heard the segment, it would open up a dialogue about finding passion at work. Finally, it would help me land some more one-week job offers. But on the other hand, I questioned how it would impact my experience.

All the interest from the media suggested to me that I wasn’t the only twenty-five-year-old who didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up (though I might have been the only one who still employed the expression “when I grow up” as if it was in some distant future).

Whether we’re coming out of school and entering the work world, thinking about a career change after twenty years in the same position, or victim of a layoff due to the changing economy, most of us at some point will look deep inside ourselves for an answer to the question “What should I do with my life?” Ultimately I think we all want to be happy. But what that really means—and how to get there—remains uncertain. I suppose my journey—my pursuit of happiness—represented that search for many people.

By Wednesday, I’d learned a lot about the flower industry. I could arrange and wrap a bouquet and even tell the difference between a Fuji mum, an Asiatic lily, and a Gerber daisy. Most occasions that warrant flowers are happy. The customers are generally happy too, as they know the flowers they purchase will put a smile on someone’s face. This aspect of the job contributed to the positive work environment I experienced—something I’d certainly look for in my career. I imagine it’d be difficult to find a similarly upbeat environment at a call center that deals with customer complaints (even if they too had a cookie jar filled with homemade cookies on the counter).

I had also learned to appreciate the creative aspect of arranging flowers.

Kim handed me a green block of foam and laid an assortment of flowers on the table to choose from. My task was to stick flowers into the foam, piece by piece, until I created a full arrangement. I’d pick up a flower, then turn to Kim. “What if I put this one here? Will that look good?” Kim, working on constructing her arrangement, would casually reply, “Whatever you think, Sean.” Of course this only filled me with anxiety. I always want to make the right choice. There were so many ways these flowers could be arranged, and I took my flower arranging very seriously.

It’s the simple decisions I’ve always had difficulty with. A spontaneous road trip? Why not? Show up in a city with no place to stay? No problem. Backpack through a foreign country where I don’t speak the language? Sure. But, hand me a four-page dinner menu? I hope no one’s in a hurry to eat.

In school, my teachers always claimed they were teaching me skills that would prepare me for the “real world.” That they made a point of distinguishing it from whatever world I was in at the time made this so-called real world a bit intimidating to me. I could never quite make the connection between learning the number of electrons in a sigma bond (that’s two) and preparing for this real world.

As I stared at the sparse block of foam surrounded by an assortment of flowers and foliage, I questioned where those real-world skills were when I needed them.

I organized the various pieces on the table in front of me and plotted out my next steps. I was careful to keep in mind the techniques and patterns that Kim had taught me earlier—“keep it simple, start with the small things like the foliage and twigs, then the biggest flowers that will dominate the arrangement, then the slightly smaller flowers, and lastly back to the foliage to fill it out.” Easy enough.

Then something hit me.

My teachers had taught me real-world skills, and I was currently using them—just indirectly. In school, what I was learning wasn’t nearly as important as the fact that I was being taught how to learn, and therefore how to make better decisions. A lame comparison, yes, but it made me recognize that the skills that had enabled me to be successful in certain areas of my life—namely, school and sports—were in fact the same skills that would provide the framework for success in this real world filled with green foam blocks and a ridiculous number of flower varieties.

After all these years, I finally understood what the after-school specials tried so hard to get through to me: School, in fact, is cool.

When I returned from lunch that afternoon, I noticed that my arrangement had sold. The “Well, how do ya like that?” expression that I immediately shot toward Kim soon morphed into one of puzzlement as I thought, Really? Someone actually bought that?