You should watch “Goodfellas”, because, anyone who has seen this movie knows: WORKING IS FOR CHUMPS!
I think the root of your problem is that you have no purpose for being. Self-esteem comes from contribution, whether it’s working as a “chump” to put a roof over your own head, or helping sick kids in Africa.
Find a purpose in life, and happiness will follow.
I disagree with the bolded part. That may well be true in many cases but not all.
Your last bit, find a purpose, I sort of agree with. Again, everyone is different. Not everyone has a purpose, some use religion as a cover to give them meaning.
I’d argue that it’s not so much having a purpose that’s important but being settled in your mind with who you are and what you do. Plenty of people can go into a job, park brain at door when walking in and collect it on way out and get their emotional fulfillment from what they do in their own time. For some, work is an end in itself for others it’s a means to get money to fund the end.
My husband is quite keen to spend some time in the US, but I have said that the only way I will move there is if we are in a financial position where I don’t need to work. The US working culture does not appeal to me at all.
Would part-time work be an option for you? That would give you a level of structure, but also a level of freedom to pursue your other interests.
I would say that your current work environment, working with antagonistic people, sounds horrible. I suspect that if your current working environment was better, you wouldn’t be having this angst around the whole concept of work. Not only is your soul being sucked every minute that you are in the office, but you’re probably spending a fair amount of your free time dwelling on it too. That’s not healthy.
I agree with you. When somebody has the privileged position of treating work like it’s some kind of optional entertaining pastime I couldn’t care less whether they are happy.
I’ve never deluded myself about a career. I worked all my life because I had to support my family. Most times I was happy, many times I was close to miserable. A chump is somebody who has the ability and need to work but doesn’t.
It’s for the “little people”, like me, who don’t have sugar daddies. It’s not for self-actualizing free spirits like you. I’m sorry you had to lower yourself to working in an office. I hope it never happens again.
And many people work to live - they don’t live to work.
You don’t hear them talk about it because its not the thing you say…we want to be perceived as having “rewarding careering” not be cube monkeys. But most of us are cube monkeys, and we work our 40 hours a week - and we really only work our 40 hours although we might make it look like we work more, and we exchange this for a roof and clothes and feeding our kids.
And frankly, compared to my great great grandfather, who arrived on a boat from Germany with his shoes to go farm a piece of land in Minnesota in 1870 so that he would have a roof, clothes and feed his kids - we cube monkeys don’t have it bad.
If you have the luxury of not needing to work to live - figure out what you want from a job…and it might still be money in which case you are probably making a significant exchange of soul. But there are other ways to create structured time, feel useful, connect with people, or whatever you want - and some of them will pay a little. None of them will be perfect. Many of them will have more than one coworker you can’t stand, or a policy that is stupid. But if you know why you are there, its easier to reconcile yourself to office politics or whatever.
Thank you for saying this! No one in the history of the world has ever expressed a dislike for working before. It’s so refreshing to hear! And it’s especially enlightening to learn that I’m a moron because I need to work so that I’m not living on the street or sponging off my parents. I never knew until today.
Seriously. I just finished school and one of my classes showed a survey where they said how most people really like working. It made me feel even more like an alien, cuz I don’t. Oh, I do need to fill up my days with something, I can’t sit home all day, but 40-50 hours a week is just ridiculous.
I am trying to find a so-called “rewarding career”. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job, but I do resent just giving up a third of my life as if that’s OK. I can’t do what I love, you tell me how an English degree or a degree in dance would get me anything. So I settled for third best and went with technology. Now I just need to find a job!
BUT, to have nice things, we have to work. So I work.
I am trying to teach my eleven year old that there is enormous pride in doing stuff you don’t want to do but you have to do and just doing it without complaint. You support yourself and your family spending a few hour everyday doing less than exciting things. In turn, you get to hold your head up high that you can keep a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food on your table without help from anyone else.
No one’s going to applaud when I clean the kitty litter boxes but I do it anyway. In the meantime, no one’s stopping anyone else from engaging in rewarding and enjoyable hobbies in their free time. My husband cooks and designs games. I write.
I believe that is called adulthood and I believe it should be everyone’s goal.
It is amusing to me how strong an insult people seem to be taking “chump” to be…
You realize that it is an insult, right? And that by calling everyone who has a job a chump, our OP has insulted nearly every person on this board. And since you need a job to live (unless someone else is supporting you), the insult is actually… “I think everyone who isn’t rich is stupid.”
Stay classy.
I am not alone. Cool. I have never really enjoyed any job I’ve had and think that it’s simply cause I hate working. It could be my dream job but as soon as it becomes routine and something I HAVE to do I start to hate it.
Work is simply something to support my life and to support those things that I like to do. My day begins the second I leave work at 4:30.
Just read this thing that you said over and over until you’re struck by a thought.
My daughter is working in Germany now, and just got offered a job in the same industry in Vegas. (Reasonably high level.) Good 401K. Besides that - 10 days of vacation versus 42. Health insurance, but reasonably crappy, especially as compared to Germany. In Germany you get a year maternity leave and people take it, here, not so much. And yeah, I have 4 1/2 weeks vacation stored up. If I don’t check my email during my vacation I’ll be swamped when I get back.
That’s why I like cruises - it is effectively impossible to check email, and I can tell people so.
I’ve been working just over 34 years. I love my job - I have tons of freedom, I get to program what I want to do, I get to read the Dope, I have lots of internal customers, and my pittance is enough for all the bread and water I want.
On the other hand, I have to commute between 1 1/2 and 2 hours a day on awful roads, I have to get up early for me, and I have a long list of things at home I’d rather be doing. I’m reasonably good at unstructured time - I just don’t have enough of it.
My wife has a better solution. After the kids were born she slowly ramped up writing, from home, so that she makes a decent amount of money and has a lot of freedom. If she wants to work on her novel she can turn down jobs. And her commute is about 20 feet. You should think about something like that.
This is a more healthy and realistic attitude towards work to me.