How important is this career?

Career- 1a: speed in a course 1b: COURSE, PASSAGE 2: ENCOUNTER, charge 3: a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement esp. in public, professional, or business life.
So there lies the definition...now if only I could figure out what I want to make of it. Is this referring to living your life by a series of passages & encounters...a.k.a...memories? Or is it referring to the assumed "JOB" driven pathway in which our young, generation of women (and men) are pushed to succeed at making our fortunes? How important is a career, and why are we all programmed to believe it is an absolute? Why shouldn't I move to Denver in a blink of an eye to be with Brandon? Why shouldn't I drop it all when I know I am going to spend the rest of my life with him? And yet, why should I make such a rash decision WHEN I know I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him? Why shouldn't I let myself flourish and find a means of support that will only add to the comfort of our lives together? Why should I be so ready to leap into a pool that is completely still and calm...? Why would I want to physically force the ripples???
The distance has become non-existent. Our trust seems unbreakable...at this point in our lives. And yet, there's the urgent feeling inside me to move on whether my gut agrees or not. To keep climbing that "career" ladder. Am I supposed to take the risk of jumping into a pond that may be too deep...take the risk of failing? Or do I keep on the beaten path with a steady hand, steady paycheck, newly paid for home, & familiarity...waiting, which is my pet peeve above all else. The horror of all horrors...WAITING. Not for my life's future, because I've already envisioned that & have found someone with the same vision...but for my "career's" future. I've clueless-ly wandered into an environment that is completely foreign to me...lack of pride for it's position, lack of respect in its division, full of petty snobs who believe their opinion matters, and sexist beasts who believe we are living in the 1950s? This is the career I've walked in to...this is the encounter, the course, the progression & it would take me 15 years to come anywhere near making any obvious head-way. So where to now...down this road of familiarity...or back to the books to find my new encounter, my new passage, my new course of life? Why do we do anything in this world...if only to make ourselves comfortable, successful & complete?