I am not my job.
My job wishes that I was, I see it all the time. Heck, they even make us memorize these things called ‘core values’ which are:
Service Before Self
Excellence In All We Do
Integrity first, ok that’s fine. It’s like a knight’s code. I won’t point the finger elsewhere and will take the blame for my fuckups. So, ok sure.
Excellence in all we do. Hmm, you got me on some of that bud. Let me slightly modify that to fit - excellence in all I do. There it is, much better.
Service before self. Woa! Gonna have to call bullshit on this one. I am not putting my job before myself. It is just the path I chose to get to my future. It isn’t me.
You see, I am my own person and I do things that I want to do. They want people to continuously be in school taking classes to get new certs and to be the treasurer of the booster club and other crap like that. Nope. You haven’t brainwashed me.
I do enough to just enough to jump each hurdle they throw into my path. I wear exactly the required 15 pieces of flair.
In their eyes I am a marginal employee, a failure maybe. They can't understand why I don't do the things they want everyone to do. They even made it clear, sort of like a checklist. "Just do these things we wrote down here and you can get a good chance to get advanced."
I don't do it and it baffles them. You know what I do with that time they I don't devote to their list? I do things and I learn things that I want to do or learn. I better myself in the way I want to, or I spend more time with my family. It's just not their way. I don’t expect to ever be promoted again because of it either.
They give me the simple things to do, probably to show me how little I am worth to them. I don’t care. I get paid the same either way.
It actually helps me out since I can get it done pretty fast and that gives me time to do the things I want to. In my current situation that means writing new posts. Last year it meant bringing in an extra $25k from some side hustles, to prove to myself that I could do it. The year before that was me putting in tons of sweat equity into the house I had just purchased.
They try to make me feel bad, but it is me who feels bad for them.
They are the type of people who can't imagine not having to work. What would they do with themselves?
What they are saying is "What would I do if I had freedom?" /shudders
Are their lives so empty that they can't think of a better way to spend their time?
They are their job. They can’t imagine doing something for themselves, something that hasn’t been directed for them to accomplish. People say that to get promoted here you need to ‘check all the boxes’.
I am too much of my own person to fit in those tiny little things.
It’s not just in my job, its society.
We hear it from when we are just little kids “What do you want to be when you grow up?” An innocent question. But it sets the tone.
I bet you have been somewhere where you have to mingle with people you don’t know and soon after a conversation starts the question comes out “So, what do you do?” It’s the grown up version of the kid question. It’s all rather automatic, isn’t it. I don’t blame them for it either. I know why they say it.
They want to know what I trade some of my time for in exchange for money. So I tell them what they want to hear and normally get a “Thank you for your service,” which I never know how to answer. So I usually say something like “thanks.” (anyone from the United States that has been in the military feels the same way when that statement is uttered)
They ask that question because, for so many people, their job is their identity. So they think the same about you.
They don’t care what your job is, how could they? I don’t even give two shits about what my job. I give just the one shit, enough to keep it for a while longer.
For them it is a nice way to box you up and stick a person on a shelf in their brain. That way later on they can go “That’s John, he is a programmer.” Nice and clean, stacked away and labelled.
I get it. If you aren't labeled and in a box that means you are just freely running around in there. They can't have someone running around in the room full of stacked boxes, they could cause the whole thing to fall over!
Somebody like that probably has labelled themselves too. They take their job as their source of identity.
The problem with this labeling is that this limits our freedom. You can’t have freedom while you are living inside a box. Don't get put into a box.
Happiness
We understand, somewhat, what a job is. What I mean is we don’t know every aspect of a job, but we have a notion of what a paramedic, taxi driver, or teacher does. The thing is people become unhappy when they fail at what they have identified themselves to be. They think themselves a failure and become sad.
If I said I am a blogger, and then my posts do not get the rewards and attention I feel they deserve then I would think myself a failure. Or, some might go pointing fingers and blame ‘the system’ for not rewarding them properly.
If instead a person was to just write but not identify as a blogger, than just by writing something they have succeeded. By doing this you make failure, and so unhappiness, unlikely.
Whatever you are not, you are free from. When you do not allow yourself to be put into a box, you are free from all boxes. Without the burden ‘to be’ it, you are free to do it as you wish.
You are not your job. It doesn’t define you unless you allow it to. So don’t allow it to and be free.
Because freedom is happiness.
I write, but I am not a writer.
I’m in the military, but I am not a soldier.
I remodel houses, but I am not a contractor.
I’m a hustler, but I don’t hustle.
Don’t be a paramedic, but save lives.
Don’t be a taxi driver, but bring people to where they need to be.
Don’t be a teacher, but do teach.
Be anything you want, but don’t let anything be you.
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