I was doing some random searching, and stumbled across this thread. Man o man, Legomancer and those who agree with him articulate my sentiments about work perfectly. I just don’t care. When I got out of college, I did not want to climb the corporate ladder, or land a glamorous job that allowed me to travel the world having exciting adventures. I didn’t want a job that consumed my life. What I view as my “real” life is my life outside of work. All I wanted was a job that paid me well enough to pay for a place to lay my head at night, put food in my mouth, insure my car, and have a little spending money with which to enjoy my free time–-while requiring me to work no more than 40 hours per week at fairly straightforward tasks. I wanted a job only so that I could do what I wanted during evenings, weekends, holidays, and vacation time. I did not want a career-oriented job. I wanted to read books, watch movies, practice the piano, go running, try my hand at writing something for publication, etc., and a job was a way to pay for my ability to do those things. Those things, and not my job, were to be my real life. (If anyone’s interested in some light reading ;), I have posted in the past on my attitude about work and the problem with my current job . )
I’m a systems analyst in the IT branch of a large corporation that’s supposedly famous for being good to work for. I make decent money. I loathe it. It involves ongoing project work that lasts for months at a time, requiring that I put a lot of myself into it in order to do a good job, which I’m not doing (even though I somehow managed to get a good performance rating for last year-–beats me.). It puts a lot of pressure on me. I don’t usually work overtime, but I have had to stay late once in a while, and as I progress in this job, such occurrences will only increase in frequency, as I can see by looking at my elder cow-orkers. A few weeks ago, I was in my project manager’s cube discussing my workload, and as I was getting up to leave, he snuck in this gem at the end of one of his sentences: “‘cause I know you’ve been goofing off lately, going away [I had recently used *1 day* of vacation to take a 3-day ski weekend], you’re probably not even working weekends.” He said it jokingly, but still-–to he** with you, pal! God forbid I should use a vacation day, and not work weekends! (He, and many others at his level, do work on weekends. Certainly not full days, probably not even half days, but they will at least check their e-mail, touch up a presentation, etc.) Furthermore, it looks like I’m not going to be able to take the vacation I had wanted to take. My dad asked me to go backpacking with him in May. It would be a 6-day trip, and we’d take advantage of Memorial Day weekend so that I’d only have to use 3 vacation days. It was really nice of my dad to suggest the idea, since he knows I’ve always wanted to go backpacking in the spring instead of in the dog days of summer when we’ve gone in the past, and it would have been a good idea for me since I don’t spend much time with my dad. But this week, my project manager has started a spiel about some ridiculously complex and huge new project, on which I and several others would play integral roles, which he wants the first version of in production by the end of May. Given what he’s describing, I can’t see getting it done by the end of August. There’s just no way I can request vacation time in May now. This incident is a milestone in that this job is now interfering with my “real life” to a greater degree than it ever has before-–I can’t use my vacation time when I want. It feels like all I do is work; a few meager hours in the evenings and on the weekends aren’t enough to truly live.
My mom is a home health aide. She barely makes enough to live on her own. When she needed to buy a new car recently, she had to ask her brother for help. Her job is to bathe, dress, wipe the butts of, and otherwise tend to elderly and infirm people. But she loves it-–loves her cow-orkers, the hospital she works for, her patients, and the friends she’s made–-and, most importantly (in my view of things anyway), her job is simply to do whatever needs to be done to whatever patients she’s been assigned that day, collect her check, and go home. She goes in at 7, but she’s usually home by 3:30. She has to work one weekend a month, but when she does she gets two days off during the week to make up for it. She spends her spare time happily cooking, watching movies, and reading mystery novels.
In the thread I linked to above, Legomancer said that he’s able to treat his job as “just a job,” something he does in order to earn money to live and enjoy the rest of his life. And I have seen several others on this board post about having jobs where their main responsibility is simply to be there and fill the shift. I’ve recently begun thinking, what if there is a way out? What if I could easily get such a job, and I don’t even know it? I view myself mainly as an “arts and humanities person”–-I was a music major, and have always loved reading and writing-–rather than a “business and technology person,” and it’s just killing me to have a job that attempts to squeeze me into this mold that doesn’t fit. I’d love it if I could get a job as a night watchman or something similar, and I were actually able to sit there and read, or write my own Great American Novel, while “working.” Not that I’m begging for a job where I don’t have to do anything; a job where I actually had to work the whole time–-I’m thinking some sort of lab technician–would be OK too, as long as it was fairly low-stress and low-pressure. The clincher: the job would need to pay well enough for me to support myself and live at least slightly below my means. Moving back in with Mom or Dad is not an option, and I couldn’t stand the insecurity of living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I do want to do something with my life, someday. I would like to eventually have a family. I have considered high-stress professions like teaching and medicine. But I can’t see myself getting there without having some time to rest and think. It’s as though I’m running somewhere on foot, running nonstop, with no chance to take a breather, and I wish to the Lord I could stop for just a minute, sit down, and think, but I can’t because someone is behind me at all times, pushing me to keep running. My life since I started this job has been one big blur, and the longer I stay the further I’m going to get sucked in. I’m expected to want to climb the ladder. After two recent staff promotions, I’m now at the lowest salary grade (one notch above college recruit) of anyone in my entire “team” of about 25 people. I’m supposed to push hard this year so I can get promoted too. F that! I can tell I’ve already lost some of the literary skill I once had that made me think I’d like to try writing, because I never get a chance to exercise it. I would like, for just two or three years, while deciding what I really want to do, to have a low-pressure job that gives me time to think. A job that doesn’t require me to be someone I’m not. A job that I can treat, in Legomancer’s words, as “just a job.”
Any advice?
