I have been feeling a bit down lately because I can’t think of anything I really want to do. I expect that this is a problem for a lot of people, but what do I know. I kind of feel like Ron Livingston’s character in Office Space. If I had a million bucks, I’d do nothing (and two chicks at the same time). Recently, I have sneaking around interviewing for another job (I am a software developer). The experience (which was admittedly limited) left me feeling like I have peaked professionally. I did get a verbal offer from a consulting firm looking for warm bodies which was rescinded a couple of hours after I had given my notice. Luckily they took me back. Two things stand out: one was an application that asked me about my leadership experience and the other was an on-site whiteboard problem where I was asked to model a cash register in a checkout lane. I don’t really have any experience as a leader. I think I can articulate what I think a good leader is, but I am too lazy and too uncertain to be a leader. I see other people take it upon themselves to work on new things when they don’t have any assigned tasks. I wind up reading too much Straight Dope. Regarding the whiteboarding problem, I feel like that company rejected me because I didn’t have a strong command of basic OOAD (which wasn’t taught when I was in school, but which I have had plenty of time to learn).
I am frequently envious of people who know what they want to do and will seek out a position that lets them do that. I just want to make money, or rather have more money than my wife can spend. That is probably OK, but I don’t feel like a really have something to offer. How does one become passionate about something?
If doing nothing seems to be your thing, then become passionate about that. Learn to revel in laziness and indolence. Stay up every night until 02:00 or 03:00 reading the Dope. Sleep each morning until 11:00 or even past noon. Become an accomplished loafer.
Trust me, it grows on you, once you start getting good at it. Leave all your interests and desires melt away into the ether. Become One with the Great Void of spiritual emptiness – once you begin to get all into it, you’ll find it soothingly anaesthetizing and sedating. Recline on the sofa, clear your mind, close your eyes and enter the Void. Abandon all enthusiasm, ye who enter here.
After a while, it becomes second nature and all will seem normal to you.
BTW, there’s a chapter in Catch-22 about this. It describes the activities of Major Major Major Major’s father (IIRC) in the good old days on the farm, when the government subsidized them to not grow anything. The chapter discussed in great detail all the daily chores that they were careful to NOT do, and all the effort they went to in order to NOT get anything done. You might find it instructive.
I’m kind of in the same boat. Well, I’m not employed but I get a check and I have no rent to pay. I used to be content to watch TV all day and surf the net. Now I’m into boxing and also take an Art class. I want to study other martial arts and learn some marketable skills in Art related subjects like Adobe or Wordpress, etc, maybe a little digital filming and editing. But it is hard because those are all just “hobbies”, as much as I like them they are pretty self reflexive activities. And to think of taking my camera and going out and competing with professional film crews is a bit daunting.
But, I have the luxury of time and so I intend to use it.
I have to remember, actually remember and apply the knowledge that I am very fortunate to live in a modern safe country. A friend of mine says we Americans are spoiled, we live like Kings and all we want to do is complain.
I agree with the person above, if you don’t have much ambition, stop fighting that. Maybe one day you’ll change and get some ambition but I don’t think you are going to produce it now. The struggle you are having, it seems, is trying to commit where there is no internal commitment. I’d make the best of my life, if I were you, and revisit this topic in 6 months or 12 months. Some times after you step away from something and come back to it later the answers are already waiting for you…
Your job does not need to be the most meaningful thing in your life. For most people, a job is a means to an end - paying the bills, and doing things that bring you pleasure. And that’s perfectly OK.
Organisations always assume that people want to move up the career ladder and the word ‘leadership’ gets bandied about so much that I’m not quite sure what it means any more.
[I’ve made it perfectly clear at my current workplace that I’m quite happy where I am and I have no desire to move to a higher level position. Fortunately for me, my manager is perfectly happy with that.]
Every time a new management position opens up at work, people tell me I should apply for it. Or they assume that I’ve already applied for it. And I tell them heck no! I like working 9-to-5 and not thinking about work in the in-between time! I like low stress. I live not living in board meetings and pantyhose.
It’s not the life for me, and I don’t care any more that I’m not ambitious. As long as my bills get paid and I have a little cash to do what I want to do, it’s all good.
With me I don’t think it’s so much a lack of ambition as it is burnout. For somebody who never, ever thought she’d experience such, it’s been mind-blowing because it goes against every single thing I’ve brought to the workplace.
Of course you find your lack of ambition depressing. You work in software development.
It’s like this. Anyone who has worked in anything having to do with software or IT has been bombarded with stories of dot com millionares and Mark Zuckerbergs building the next billion dollar software company in their dorm room or garage. So it gets to be you start thinking that you are some sort of slacker loser if you aren’t out there creating your own company or VP of technology someplace by age 26.
So your choices are you go work for some consulting firm with a “rank and yank” “up or out” culture where they expect everyone to work 100 hours a week as if they were the CEO himself until their business model collapses or you get counselled out for actually taking a day off three months ago. Or you go to work in the bowels of some giant corporation supporting back office apps for the finance or accounting department where 90% of your time will be surfing the net and filling out status reports.
I don’t think either path is particularly inspiring. But that’s the path that I see 90% of people in IT get trapped into.