*“is trying to articulate what I’m thinking through writing or typing.”
THAT gets annoying! :smack:
*“is trying to articulate what I’m thinking through writing or typing.”
THAT gets annoying! :smack:
My friends and I had a discussion recently. I think that people who are “less bright” - and in particular have short look ahead depth - are often much more successful in the long run. They don’t overthink things. They don’t go into analysis paralysis. They buy investment property without thinking “what are the eviction laws?” (which is several steps of look ahead depth - and which researching them might be enough to turn many people off from buying rental property to start with). They take each day as each day - without spending a lot of time regretting yesterday or worrying about tomorrow - and that regret/worry often plagues ‘thinkers.’
I think another part of that is that among the blue collar culture, there is a very strong work ethic. You get your fingernails dirty, you go the extra mile, and damn it, you’re proud of it.
There is soul-crushing work out there. High school wasn’t so bad. Working in a fast food restaurant or ice cream store in the mall was ok. You got free food. You’re mostly working with other kids. But some of the light industrial temp jobs I had in college were the worst. Box factory. Pitney Bowes postage meter factory. Mail room collater. Warehouse order picker / packer. These were truly mindless jobs. Even the draftsman job which was relevant to my major was pretty soul crushing. I spent 8 hours a day by myself in an office in a warehouse waiting for someone to hand me a drawing to convert to AutoCad.
But you know what is also soul-crushing? Sitting around my parents house in suburban CT with no cash just watching TV all day or going to the mall to relieve my bordom until classes started up again in the fall.
What was nice though was:
-having money to go out with my friends after work
-not having to work during the school year
-being able to go on spring break and other road trips
-not graduating college with tons of credit card debt
-having some appreciation for how soul-crushing a professional job isn’t
And I didn’t grow up exactly poor either. We weren’t DuPonts or Rockefellers, but my parents still paid for a lot of stuff, including college and cars for my brother and I (although mine was an old Ford Taurus company car and his car cost $100). And truth be told, I’m a pretty lazy guy. And yet, somehow I manage to support myself and make ends meet.
Lisa: There’s that song again. Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that?
Jeff: He gets it from the landlady once a month.
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent]-- Rear Window [/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]
Actually, although many of the replies to this thread and the previous one have been as unhelpful as you describe, many have attempted to offer specific and practical advice. In particular, msmith537 offered useful if blunt advice in [post=11106435]this post[/post]. Others have offered something similar. Your response, however, seems to have been to wallow in the misery of it all and then complain about how wet you’re getting. Opening up this thread was both counterproductive and disingenuous. It isn’t as if people are going to treat you any better in this forum–quite the contrary, the visible restraint shown by many posters in the previous thread is quite absent here–and the attempt to misdirect the criticism of you by attempting to turn the conversation to a philosophical debate on the value of the work ethic is sophomoric and dishonest, albeit the only person you are really cheating is yourself by not coming to terms with your issues.
You may acknowledge that you have problems–depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, et cetera–but instead of viewing those as challenges to overcome you wear them like a sandwich board in seeming expectation that other people will pity you for your troubles. This is counterproductive whatever the response is; obviously, many people will refuse to offer you pity for your “trust fund baby troubles”, but worse are the people who do genuinely pity you, for in order to pity one must look down upon, and thus reinforce the sense of poor self-worth. The people who are chiding you to get up off your ass and make an effort to do something with your life are at least showing you the respect that assumes that you are capable and intelligent.
You’ll no doubt view this post as full of invective and lacking in sympathy, and nothing I can do will change your interpretation. But consider this: I’ve been severely depressed, demotivated, stuck in dead-end jobs, et cetera. Unlike you, I have almost never had anyone to rely upon as a financial fallback. I’ve been fortunate to have made a few friends who supported me emotionally through the darkest times but never let me wallow about unremittingly with categorical acceptance. Aside from these friends, the work ethic that you so deride is the thing that kept me going; the need to get up, go to a job (however much I disliked it) and make a living, if only to keep me in books, liquor, and therapy. The motivation to get up and do something at least breaks the inertia and reinforcing of self-pity that goes nowhere.
Or you can lay about, live off your family, and whine about how awful having to work would actually be if you tried to go out and do it. If that makes you happy and you have the means for it, then go be a shiftless layabout. But your fundamental complaint seems to be that this doesn’t make you happy, and yet, you are unwilling (not unable) to take any manifest steps to change it. There is no set of words or even actions someone else will take that will change this; you have to stand up and do something. Or not. It’s your choice; not your family’s, your therapist’s, or that of random people on a message board.
Stranger
Yes, there’s something to be said for thinkers who keep it simple or “simple thinkers”. I liken it to when a couple is having an argument, and asks for your opinion on how to resolve it. You can see past all the drama and the bullshit they’ve been screaming at each other for the past few days and see the real problem, with a simple solution. Being “naive” can be a good thing.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but I wanted to post this story because hopefully it’ll explain why I love my job, and work so hard at it…
I work for a charity that supports people with learning disabilities. At our staff conference today, we heard from a woman who’d spent the past 19 years trying to get useful, meaningful care and support for her autistic son. She’d done this entirely on her own, with no support from friends and family - the only time she left her mother to babysit, she came home to find her locked in the son’s room, crying. In those 19 years, on top of everything else she’d had to deal with, their house burnt down, and they ended up staying in their “temporary” accommodation for four years - in which her then 14 year old son and 16 year old daughter had to share a bedroom. She also qualified as a nurse. Oh, and got diagnosed with incureable leukemia.
Thanks mainly to her, but also to organisations like the one I work for, her son is now happy and healthy, and working in a job he loves. He also gets a certain amount of support from a young man who lives on their street, who until he got started working with her son was laid so low with depression he never left his room, so they have, in effect, helped each other to lead the lives they want to.
That’s why I do my job. To make it easy for people like that woman and her son to get the support they need to lead the lives they want to lead.
“There is no failure, there is only learning.”
The thing about viewing your shortcomings as opportunities for growth is that the future all of a sudden looks brighter. The downside is that you can no longer get that rush of caring that pity provides. And a lot of people are addicted to that. Indeed, they know little else, and often subconsciously sabotage their lives to get another hit of it.
In other words, you’re a sellout corporate drone who only wants to maintain the status quo. Gotcha.
Actually one of my best memories was working in one of these factories as a summer temp. I was at the Carpi sweater company. They were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. They let me ask questions, they showed me how they keep the books, run the machines, do the billing, everything. I got to see how everything was done, and I made some spending money.
Did I just get whoooshed?
I’m quite the apathetic, no-motivation type person myself. Imagine having energy but no desire to do anything with it. Very often, I’ll be sitting in front of my computer and listening to coworkers jibber jabber about work, family, TV, etc., and I’ll wonder if they really care about stuff so much or if they’re just putting on an act. I’ll draw up to-do lists and then stare blankly at the items, wishing the world would explode just to illustrate how inconsequential they are. When people want to talk to me, inwardly I scream “What NOW!?” All I want to do is lose myself in a daydream and never come out.
And yet I can’t. Because I have to pay bills. I have to pay rent. I have to buy food. My parents could support me, and I know they love me enough that they would in heart beat. But I love them too much to burden them, at least now that I can actually take care of myself. And I love myself too much to lose my freedom. If I don’t have a “work ethic”, I can’t have that. I can’t be “me” if I’m not independent.
So yeah, I’m a sell-out. From 9 to 5, I put on the happy worker act. I set up my Excel spreadsheets with numbers I don’t care about, talk to coworkers about inane topics I don’t care about, email people I don’t care about, and hide all of my quirks and eccentricities so that no one will think I’m nuts and fire me from a job I don’t really care about. But then when 5:00 comes, I drop the act and go back to being “me”. And before I know it, it’s the weekend and I have two days of pure, blissful “me-dom”. Wash, rinse, repeat. That’s life.
In a perfect world, I could be me all the time. In a perfect world, Sprite would flow out of the taps and the streets would be paved in skittles. We don’t live in a perfect world. All we can do is create a perfect world in our heads and retreat to it during our coffee breaks and on the long walk home from work, with the autistic stylings of Philip Glass piped in through the earbuds.
You’re lucky that your folks can accomodate you and that you’re satisfied with a life of being cared for. But don’t hate on those of us who’d rather be tame and free than be wild and caged. One day, when I’ve saved enough to retire, I’ll get to be as wild as I want AND I’ll be free. What will you have, Doug? Will you ever get to experience both?
Dougie is rich. You are deluded. Have fun living life “off the hook” when you’re 65. Me and Doug will be waking up promptly at eleven. Bloodies to follow at quarter past. In the words of the Ace of Base, “It’s a beautiful life, oh-oooh-oh-oh, it’s a beautiful liiiiiiiiiiiife.”
The thing about the ‘work ethic’ is that working hard, performing well, meeting a challenge, offers a sense of accomplishment to many.
Sure, we dream of winning the lottery and telling the boss he’s an ass. Take this job and shove it.
But there are intangible emotional rewards in working as a team, building bonds with coworkers, having a hard schedule and making it work out. Getting a big pile of impossible tasks dumped on your desk by some asshat boss and getting it all fixed and making him look good.
Challenges met. Camraderie with other people in the same situation.
The work ethic provides emotional stability and a sense of personal self worth. I think that’s what you are missing about it, and the thing that is missing in your life.
Heh. If I won the lottery, I would have the guts to work full-time, as backwards as that sounds. I wouldn’t have to worry about screwing up big time, and it having a lasting affect on my future. I’ve literally failed at so much, I’m afraid to even try. And my boss can tell you how frustrating it is teaching me new things. Though my bank account doesn’t, (and simply can’t in these hard times), reflect it, I am a bit of a money hoarder. I wouldn’t mind a simple life, with a simple job. I’m not lazy, just scared quite honestly.
I have a lot of sympathy for the OP. I think society would be better off if there weren’t so many families where both spouses work outside the home over 30 hours a week. We really do have overproduction, there are explicable reasons why (that go back to our theories of property & entitlement), & it is causing a non-sustainable hydrocarbon usage situation.
As technology advances, rather than try to crank up production, why not cut back hours, or even use Social Credit to let some people opt of a labor force to which they are redundant anyway?
That’s sort of noble & self-sacrificing; therefore economically irrational.
I grew up in a family where a lot of things were valued above paid employment. I learned a few things. Yeah, money and ambition aren’t everything, and for me, there are a bunch of things I value more highly. On the other hand, having absolutely no financial security and too much pride to take a short-term shit job to feed your family may also be a poor ordering of priorities.
As a result of two foreclosures against my parents, one when I was ten, the other when I was fifteen, a car or two being repossessed, one winter when we ate a lot of turnips because that’s what one of the local farmers gave us, and a constant struggle to make ends meet, I now value an ability to earn a good income above some of the intangibles my parents valued.
I have the freedom to pursue my artistic endeavours, I can afford good food and to take in experiences that were just beyond our finances when I was a kid. All that wouldn’t be a fair trade for my SOUL if I were grinding away for seventy hours a week in a job I hated.
But you know what? Some days my job sucks, other days it’s pretty good. There are office politics, but I’ve been fortunate enough not to be victimized by them. I get to do something that I believe makes a difference - partly because I fell on my feet, partly through my own choices about where I work. I work in a field where most people have an advanced degree, but I get by with my little BA.
You don’t have to prioritize ‘working for a living’ over absolutely everything to a: do a good job, and b: do ok for yourself. Yes, I recognize that I’m extremely fortunate to be in the position I’m in, and some of that is because my parents at least valued learning, so I’ll always be able to pass in the white collar world. But some of it is because my husband and I took some risks, and I worked my butt off in a field where I might not have been expected to succeed, and temperamentally, except for the telemarketing stint (sigh… horrors…) I have always been able to find something to love about my job.
The upshot of all this is my husband can afford to work part time, from home, and I’m eight years into a career I never thought I’d have, because after watching my parents, I thought we just didn’t have it in us to handle the full-time, working grind. I almost scared myself out of it, but once I got into the workforce, it turned out not to be anywhere near as daunting as it looked from the outside.
I think it’s kind of hard to generalize about working life without having experienced it. I can only really talk about the sorts of fields I’ve worked in. I know the working life is a lot more of a grind in other sectors. I don’t think grinding away for the most money is necessarily a good way to spend a life. On the other hand, I think working your ass off to support your children is pretty damn honorable. I am reluctant to judge a general ‘work ethic’ without looking at the more complex motivations and wide range of experiences in the working world.
The way I see it, a good work ethic helps you do the things you want to do in life so you don’t get stuck in some shit job with an asshat boss. The guy who busts his ass in high school, goes off to a good college and studies hard in a relevant major he enjoys has a lot more choices and opportunities than the guy who floats through school taking the easiest courses thinking “oh I’ll find something.” Sure you can get trapped in a workaholic career and lifestyle if you focus just on money. But it’s a lot easier to say “hmmm…I think I don’t want to be a high powered attorney or investment banker anymore” than it is to say “hmmm…I need more money but I’ve been kind of a fuckup up until now and no one will hire me.”
It’s shockingly simple, but then I guess I’m one of those damned “personal responsibility” assholes you mentioned in the OP. It’s rare that you see that used as a slur, but hey, it’s nice to see something new, right?
You set your alarm for 7. When it goes off, you wake up. Maybe you hit the snooze once or twice. You get in the shower. You get dressed. You put your nametag on. You grab something to eat, you feed the animals, you get in your car, and you drive to work. Once you get there, you do the shit that needs doing, and you do it as well as you can, because you take pride in yourself, in your job, and in your accomplishments. If it’s a good day, it flies by. If it’s a bad day, you suck it up and you do it anyway, because it’s your job. If I don’t do my job, other people can’t do theirs. People can’t get their answers from the library. There won’t be any periodicals for them to read. The kids won’t get workshops on research skills. And I wouldn’t have a nice house to live in. (Yes, I could live off my parents if I wanted to. If I wanted to be a leech my whole life, that would make me a selfish person. And yes, when I had my depressive break and almost flunked out of college, I moved back in with them for a while. I eventually moved back out.) Then, at 5:30, I get in my car, go home, and live the rest of my life - my “real” life, if you will.
It isn’t hard. It’s a habit you get into, just like how when you first try to get up in the early morning to run it’s hard to, and then you get in the habit. The reason you don’t just stay in bed instead isn’t that society will “peck you to death”, it’s that you contribute to society. You do your part, you hold up your end.
Geez, don’t you ever look at the Down’s Syndrome kid at Burger King, the guy with the huge smile, and think, “well, shit, that guy got out of bed this morning, how hard can it possibly be?”