I have to confess that I have pretty much always found working to be a bothersome drag.
I know some people really enjoy their work, and I've been told by so-called "work purpose coaches" that when you have the right thing to do it doesn't feel like work.
I suppose the dilemma I sometimes turn over in my mind is the one that I have the right thing to do - that I really enjoy doing - I just haven't been able to make an actual living at it.
Growing up with older parents the paradigm I was usually served up when I was young was that work wasn't necessarily something you got to enjoy. In fact, it was a time-honored tradition to dislike your work... It was simply something you did because you were obligated to do so and it was your duty to do so. So you suited up and showed up and did your work and didn't complain.
Somehow, I guess I got sucked into the more modern movement in which we believe that work is supposed to be something meaningful, something that makes us feel like we're contributing something of value to the world. I suppose it's entirely possible that is totally delusional!
I've always enjoyed writing, as those who follow these pages in a regular basis well know. On the other hand, I've never really been able to make a living from writing.
Well, that's not actually entirely true, because I did work in the IT industry for a while as a technical writer. I sold myself on the idea that "at least I would still be writing" but it didn't take me more than a couple of years to discover that there's really nothing inspirational about creating technical manuals, user manuals and online help systems. Besides, it wasn't my thoughts I was writing, just somebody else's thoughts.
But if I must take a critical look at my work life in the 40-something years I've been an adult human being on this planet, all I can ever come up with is that work has felt like a sense of obligation and given half a chance I'd just as well do nothing at all!
In many ways, I think our attitude towards work and towards the things we are "expected to do in life" have a lot to do with our core personalities.
I never had a very active sort of personality, I was far more of a "sit still and contemplate the universe" type of person, even when I was a kid. In fact, it used to worry my mother that I wasn't running around like a crazy thing being a kid, but instead I would hole up in my room with my books and sometimes just do nothing at all.
There's something slightly paradoxical about saying that because I'm interested in a great many things, in fact I'm interested in too many different things, and yet most of the time I have very little interest in doing things at all.
And no, it's not a case of being depressed either!
Perhaps what has mostly eluded me is this expectation that work is supposed to be meaningful in some way. Typically, the only way I've been able to declare that my work is "meaningful" is that somebody hands me money at the end of having done it! And that really was never very meaningful, as a result of which I became self-employed.
And I guess that's really a trade-off. On one hand I get to do what I want, and the other I can't afford my life. Welcome to the 21st century!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your weekend!
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Created at 2024-04-07 02:32 PDT
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