I think you need to be good at your job and at least somewhat satisfied with the work you to have decent self worth. And all that flows into your relationships.
The mistake people seem to be making here is assuming that self worth from your job has to equate to high pay and long hours in some corporate drone farm. If elbows enjoys being a caregiver and earns a sustainable living from it, what should she care what I say? By the way, she only said she was a caregiver AFTER implying that she just walks the Earth like Kane from Kung Fu.
And FWIW, I agree about cubicle drones. Which is why I am a consultant. At least I get to travel around to different companies dealing with their issues. I often pity the people I see in those jobs staring out the same window for 40 years. Although that’s a lot less likely these days with automation and outsourcing.
Can you explain what “Free Spirit” means in this context?
As of a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had put my “cubicle drone” days behind me. But alas, employers sometimes mix things up. Now I’m parked in the middle of a cube farm and wearing earplugs.
It isn’t the ideal, but it’s not inherently pitiable. I have still managed to find enjoyment and fun in my work despite being the stereotypical wage slave cubicle drone. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend 8 hours of my day.
I think people really need to stop assuming other people are automatically in pitiable situations. People are amazingly resilient and adaptable. People can find ways to deal with just about anything without it affecting their self-respect, identity, and egos…as long as the people around them give them the space to do so. “I feel sorry for all the people who do X,Y,Z” is just smugness masquerading as sympathy, IMHO.
I frequent a subreddit full of 20-somethings who are working (in their own words) unfulfilling jobs. Some don’t even have jobs at all. Yet many of them are so sure there is NO way they’d ever want to be stuck in a cube farm working for the “Man”. It stinks so much of sour grapes mixed with hipster snobbery. By all means, one should avoid jobs that make him or her suicidal. But you can be proud of what you do or what you have going for you without taking jabs at the other guy.
Indeed. And we are all motivated by different things in the workplace. Money, position, fame, respect, sense of accomplishment, challenge, physical effort, doing good works, etc. Working in a cubicle doesn’t impact all of these.
I was thinking of a couple things. One, I know plenty of people in jobs they don’t like, who have a healthy sense of self - worth. So that can’t be inextricably linked for everyone. I admit it’s a factor for me, not the work I’m doing per se, but how well I do it. I need to feel like I’m giving A+ effort to feel fulfilled at work, and I only give that effort when I’m passionate about what I’m doing. That means I feel miserable at jobs I’m not passionate about.
Two, if this thread has demonstrated anything, self - worth may be derived from any number of things - freedom, creativity, relationships, family, productivity, or maybe social contribution. I do derive a lot of self - worth from the quality of my marriage because in the face of the examples I had growing up, it is really something special. The fact that after 15 years, we’re excited to see each other at the end of every day is an accomplishment because we didn’t repeat our parents’ mistakes. But the writing, the social advocacy, my friendships, hell, even the upkeep of my home… all of that stuff factors in. It’s not all in one basket, and as Ambivalid pointed out earlier, there is a kind of resilience in that.
I’m worried about people who don’t feel fulfilled. I hope they find their thing(s), whatever they are. Not everyone gets to have the job or jobs they most want, but there are so many things in the world to care about besides your job. There’s nothing wrong with caring about your job, I’m just saying, it’s not the only path to happiness.
I thought I made it pretty clear when I stated up front that there are two distinct factions in my family–the responsible college educated security oriented rule followers are Solid Citizens and the entrepreneurial auto-didacts who follow their passions are the Free Spirits. My overarching point is that the Solid Citizens brigade gets a lot more heated when they get a Free Spirit child who doesn’t want to go to college and choose a career and get married but instead prefers to set a course through life that’s one of exploration and discovery–they do a lot of lecturing and disapproval to whip them kids in line. When one of the Free Spirit branch raises a rules conforming security seeking Solid Citizen we, being of that type of nature, just let them go their own way and be comfortable no matter if we think they’re missing out on a lot of fun and some cool experiences.
i think people often think cubicle drone = mindless, meaningless menial work
I develop and defend regulations that protect water quality. The glamorous days when I went out in the field and mucked around in waders collecting water samples are long behind me. Now I work in front of a computer all day and analyze datasets and write a lot. I could do it from home, but I choose to do it in a cubicle so that my boss and my colleagues can see my purty face all day.
I don’t like being in a cubicle, but I am nobody’s drone. Or at least, I’m no more a “drone” than anyone else who works for a living.
A lot of my coworkers are having a difficult time transitioning from having their own office to having their own cubicle. I can’t help but think this difficulty stems in part from the stigma of being a “cubicle drone”. Even though our job duties and titles haven’t changed, we don’t feel so important anymore. It’s funny that something as simple as a door can be a status symbol. But anything can be used as a status symbol if it is framed as one by enough people.
That’s so true. I am in a cubicle too, and like you I’m doing work that I care about. The problem with a cubicle for me is just phone calls, mostly people being loud when I’m on one. But otherwise? It’s just not an issue.
(Whenever I tell people what I do all day, most of the reactions are either “That’s fascinating!” or “Good lord, better you than me.”)
Yeah, I work in a semi-open cubicle but it never occurred to me to be ashamed of that. I’m highly skilled and I do good work. I’m paid well for my field. I know from experience (trying to find replacements for my role when leaving other jobs) that I’m not easily replaced. I might have preferred my own office, but in retrospect I like being closer to my team. Though it does increase the distraction factor, that’s not always bad.
On the other hand, back in the early days of my career, I worked in a call center. I did not enjoy call center work. I worked intake for a consumer credit counseling nonprofit. Some people love it, but I am easily overstimulated and was uncomfortable with all the noise and time pressure. I nearly quit the first week, but the manager talked me into staying. I grew to excel at it, which eventually led to a field office promotion in New York City. That made it easier to get into grad school and so on and so forth.
I don’t know what the moral is. All cubes are not created equal.
I consider myself a hybrid of these extremes. I think if I were a parent, it would be hard to let my free spirited child go their own way without ever expressing a single word of approval or unsolicited advice. Because while there are shortcomings to following rules and being a boring mundane, they aren’t nearly as risky as not following rules and being a nonconformist. No parent wants to see their kids fail. Nor do they want to be on the hook for the financial tab when those failures are costly.
Free Spirits do plenty of their own lecturing, by the way. Maybe not in your family, but in plenty of others. Once I made the mistake of being honest with a free spirited-family friend by telling him I wasn’t passionate about my job, and he spent the next 30 minutes yelling at me about it. Either I needed to make myself passionate or I needed to find another job. Um, what’s wrong with reeserving passion for after work hours and weekends? And who says that you can’t do exploration and self-discovery within the strictures of a conventional career path?
My mother used to make a big deal out of being an entrepenuer. I remember being in high school and her telling me I should start my own business because there’s nothing worse than working for someone else. Made it seem like being an “employee” rather than an “employer” would mark me as some kind of loser. But she stopped giving me that lecture when she realized that I don’t have the “boss” mentality or temperment. I also think seeing the bottom fall out of the economy made her appreciate why a single person would be attracted to steady, stable employment.
You’re always working for someone. There’s always a boss, a customer, a funder, shareholders, constituents, and another annoyances. In my job, I get to do work while my boss gets to deal with other people.
Oh yes, my mother decided to be a Free Spirit a couple years before I ended our relationship. She moved out to Colorado with her boyfriend and they take off spontaneously and ride his motorcycle all over the country and do adrenaline junkie high risk drives. Every interaction with her was a sermon about how superior her lifestyle was. Nevermind she was living off disability and flaking out on people left and right. She’d plan a visit out of state and show up several days late… Oh, we got sidetracked driving to so and so canyon and couldn’t be bothered to give you a firm date, why are you so rigid and inflexible, I would hate such a life… Oh, you make plans? Haha, what a pointless exercise, we don’t make plans. What, this thing is important to you? Oh, we might show up, I dunno, it depends on the moment. You have to live for the moment, daughter! It’s not my problem you’re so caught up in that professional success bullshit. Then she shits all over my Aunt’s lifestyle since my Aunt doesn’t work outside the home, nevermind what works best for my Aunt and her husband.
You know, fuck you, Mom. She spent 50 years mired in profound narcissism and it’s like suddenly she wants people to affirm it’s really the superior way to live. She finally just abandoned herself to selfishness in every conceivable way. She stopped even pretending to give a shit about other people. She can’t be bothered to help me with my childhood trauma because it gives her nightmares and she has to take care of herself first. All she’s ever done is take care of herself first. She’s happy for the first time ever and it’s because she gets to be full-bore 100% selfish.
Not that all Free Spirits are this way. My mother is mentally ill. But that’s a gripe I can relate to.
Right, I got that. What I mean is, what is the Free Spirit’s source of income? Are they pursuing artistic ventures? Tech startups? Working as freelancers?
There’s a whole spectrum of “Free Spirits” between “not working boring job at a big boring company until you cash out your 401k” and “flakey artist crashing on friend’s East Village coach”.
Every one in Intel, CEO on down, works in a cubicle. Hardly mindless work. Much worse are the Dilbert-like places where the bosses have offices and the workers have cubicles. That shows lack of respect for the people doing the real work.
My parents were entrepreneurs (small business) and one huge lesson I got from my childhood is I never wanted to do that. They had no time for me, were constantly stressed, and we lived hand-to-mouth. All they ever talked about, fought about, was work. They slept overnight at work. Eventually they moved closer to work and just left me behind. I was around sixteen then. I decided I would never make work my master. I refused to work more than 40 hours on average unless I had no choice. My husband and I both decided we’d rather have more time than more money.
I’m sure there are people who do it more responsibly, enjoy it, manage just fine. But I was put off for life.
Eh, that doesn’t bother me either. It makes sense for some people to have offices, based on the types of conversations/meetings they need to have. Or even if it’s just a perk, I don’t think perks are inherently bad.
Everyone in my family is self supporting, are not drawing any sort of federal or state assistance and most of the Free Spirits have been self supporting since they were teenagers, whereas the SC types freeload off their parents generally all the way through college. Some of the FS contingent end up going to college, but it’s in support of a defined goal or passion as opposed to the “after high school you go to college, that’s how it’s done” model. Free Spirit does not equate to “irresponsible,” which is kind of what everyone assumes. As a matter of fact, some of the FS contingent are actually independently wealthy or at least make way more than their SC cohorts, but that’s not always evident because the FS contingent tends not to be overtly materialistic or consumer oriented and often appear to be working poor–but those month long trips to Europe aren’t cheap, they’re just what the FS side considers to be a better investment than a 4500SF house or a spendy German car or a country club membership.
Being a Free Spirit does not entail shirking responsibilities, mistreating children or being an asshole regarding other people’s divergent choices. It simply means being self directed and accepting of risk rather than being conforming and risk averse.
On the plus side, with the FS example readily available to study, not a few of he SC types gravitate toward a more FS lifestyle after their families are launched because let’s face it, doing what you want without damaging anyone is a pretty sweet life. It hardly ever goes the other way though. My nephew is an FS born into an SC family and while his parents are remarkably supportive of his divergent life goals the rest of their bunch really isn’t and peppers the poor guy constantly about why he didn’t go to college and when is he going to get married and have kids to “carry on the name.” They simply won’t accept that he’s not GOING to have kids, doesn’t want them, is making a career that suits him without the benefit of higher education (and all the debt that entails) and it wasn’t until he spent some time around my wing of the family that he realized that he just got dropped into the wrong group. Which has made him a lot more stable and happy now that he has family who understand and support him and don’t judge him for being weird. Which he kinda is. Which is why I love him so.
I had hoped it was clear from the context of my rant that I know that’s not a normal Free Spirit thing. It’s more like my Mom was claiming that lifestyle as an excuse for her naturally selfish tendencies. I don’t care what people do with their lives as long as they are nice to people. Well it’s not true that I don’t care. I am happy and excited for people who chase their bliss unless those people are my mother and terrible.
This isn’t a criticism, it’s an honest observation: it’s really hard for me to reconcile “I really need to be respected for my work and do something worthwhile” with “I refuse to work for more than 40 hours a week”. All the people I know–including myself–who take a lot of pride in their work, who feel like their work matters, work more than 40 hours a week, usually a lot more. It’s not about wanting time more than money–it’s about wanting the vital work that needs to be done to get done, and wanting that more than wanting more time. There’s just always so much that needs doing, so much with real consequences if it doesn’t get done, so much that would do so much good if only someone would get it started, so much that is going well but needs to be maintained. Because my work is important, because it is where I get my self-worth, I can’t see dedicating a mere 40 hours a week to it.
I sometimes say that I have my job, teaching, and my hobby, teaching, and the one pays the bills so that I can do the other. I can’t wrap my head around separating job and hobby unless “work” was a really lame job.
I envy people in your situation sometimes. I think it must be nice to have such passion and get such fulfillment from your work. And even better, to have colleaugues to talk to who are also passionate and engaged in their work.
I just punch a clock, 40 hours a week - actually averages significantly less than that if you consider all the vacation and holiday days. It’s kind of dull, but stable. We’re all just cogs in the machinery - nothing else. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s what I wanted since I was a little kid; I used to see my dad slaving away weekend after weekend never having any time off, he was in the publish or perish phase of his career at the time. As I’ve gotten older though, the free time had less and less value - everyone is working or has kids and I’ve seen almost every documentary movie you could imagine. So what’s left but the day to day grind broken up by days off you try to fill with hobbies you’ll never be that good at and acquaintences you hardly ever see.
My part-time job does not allow me to work more than 20 hours a week. It’s sufficient for my workload. I am extremely efficient at writing grants. In all honesty, they get full-time productivity out of my 20 hours. I’ve raised over $1,000,000 in my relatively short career so I feel I’ve done important, meaningful work. My goal right now is to find sustainable funding for a new, expanded program that used to operate under a different funding stream and is now its own thing. So far, in 8 months, that’s 60% funded with new money. I also increased revenue for one program by over 50% in one year. At my old job, I resolved an operating budget deficit by 83% in one year. I also have spearheaded and implemented donor database projects at two different nonprofits. I walked into chaos and created order. Those jobs were no more than 40 hours either. This is real work. The fact that I only do it part time, or 40 hours in the past, doesn’t make it less meaningful to me. As long as I put my best, most excellent work into those hours, the number of them doesn’t matter so much to me.
More time and effort goes into my fiction which I don’t treat like a hobby, it’s work I’m hoping to eventually get paid for. I write fiction daily, sometimes for hours. I do crits for a local group every other week, that’s more hours. I read craft books, that’s more hours. Sometimes the combined total of both jobs is more than 40 hours but if it is, it’s because I’m in a state of flow and really enjoying myself. I’ve clocked 80 hours of fiction before (I track everything I do online through RescueTime) but it’s not typical. I had jobs that sometimes required extra time, that’s fine. I’ve had really high pressure fast paced jobs that I loved. This job is really low key and I also love it. I refuse to work in some office 60 hours a week every week. If I ever spend that much time it will be out of creative pursuit, not a salaried position. I’ve quit jobs that misrepresented the time required of me. My true passion is fiction and is a major professional priority. I am mere months away from hitting up agents for the first time.
I am well aware how lucky I am to be able to do what I love without breaking my back. Having children will complicate all of that, but I can’t really know in what way until it happens. I have no idea when the baby will come (adoption waiting list), it could be tonight or three years from now. For now, I’m fulfilled.
Today was the most stressful work day I’ve ever had working there, and I still went home thinking about how much I love my job.
Some of the FS contingent end up going to college, but it’s in support of a defined goal or passion as opposed to the “after high school you go to college, that’s how it’s done” model. Free Spirit does not equate to “irresponsible,” which is kind of what everyone assumes. As a matter of fact, some of the FS contingent are actually independently wealthy or at least make way more than their SC cohorts, but that’s not always evident because the FS contingent tends not to be overtly materialistic or consumer oriented and often appear to be working poor–but those month long trips to Europe aren’t cheap, they’re just what the FS side considers to be a better investment than a 4500SF house or a spendy German car or a country club membership.