A Job I Hate

You know those days where you show up for work, slightly tired from the previous day, and find out you have no work to do for the day because of circumstances involving meetings and shortage of projects?  That was my day on Tuesday.  There’s nothing worse than having to show up for a 8 – 5 job and know you will probably be twiddling thumbs for most of the day, especially if you can think of more than a hundred other things you would rather be doing with that time. 

It’s even worse when you hate your job.  Yes folks, I hate my job.  I don’t suppose I've mentioned this before, but if I did I apologize.  I've always wanted a job that wasn't part of the rat race, didn't force me into a set amount of hours (a “9-5 job”) and didn't force me to answer to a boss.  It kind of narrows down your choice of employment quite dramatically, unfortunately. To add to the troubles most “career advisers”, if you could even call them that, are highly centered on getting people into corporate jobs.  That means if you wanted to find a job that matches the above criteria you will have to do some serious research, which no-one tells you about; not your school, not your parents, and certainly not the career advisers.  Or become an entrepreneur and do your own thing.

The problem with becoming an entrepreneur is that you not only need to know what you love, but you need to know how to make what you love something useful to someone else that will make them fork out enough money for it that you can at least get a decent wage without scrounging for the bare necessities, or perhaps even better than just decent.  In addition the adage that “You need to spend money to make money” is extremely apt with entrepreneurship: You will probably be spending a lot of money before you will be making any, incurring debt you don’t really want, and eventually making someone else the boss, in this case an investor or the Bank.  Also, there is no course on this earth that can truly teach you entrepreneurship, and there is no hard and fast plan that you can follow to make a success of what you are trying to do or accomplish.

In short, what I’m getting to is this: that I don’t just want a job for the sake of surviving. I want a job where I feel like I’m actually growing, that has meaning for me personally and allows me to do the things I want to do, not just the things I need to do.  I want to live, not survive.  I want to be able to say my job feels like freedom, not a dungeon or cage where I am barked at the whole time, where I don’t feel like a monkey being asked to churn butter for someone else.  And that is the sad fact of the job I’m in now: It’s a cage where I am busy building someone else’s dreams while mine is pushed to the side with the hope that, one day, I’ll be able to get back to those dreams.  Sad fact is that, with the salary I’m taking home now the chance that I’ll ever be able to build my own dreams while being in the employ of another is zero.  And even if, by some miracle, I do end up making enough money, I’ll be too old to either build my dreams or make them into the potential they could be.

Instead the money will be given to my offspring (if any, I’m single with no future prospects) or someone else, and my legacy will be nothing but another worker that was under the thumbs of others whose dreams are not worth a single moment, hoping to accomplish something meaningful only to find that time ran out and life came to an end too quickly.

Here’s the real kicker: I’m not as interested as I used to be in making my own dreams a reality, as making Jesus’ dreams a reality, but there is the tiny hope that perhaps some of my dreams can come true while making His come to full fruition.  The problem is I don’t’ see this happening where I am right now.  Not in the job I am, doing the things I do now, in a career I don’t really want to follow or care about.

And if you hate your career there is no way that, at the end of the day when you finally have the time, that you will start looking up and doing research on improving yourself in your career.  Even with nothing to do at work I still don’t have the slightest inkling or energy to even consider it an option.  The question is a simple one: Why try to improve yourself in a career you don’t care about and don’t love but hate?  There is no incentive.  You might say to me: “But if you improve in the career you hate you may get promoted and then you can make enough money to break free from it and pursue your dreams.”  The problem is that a vast majority of the time that doesn't happen.  You end up in a higher position, catch more flak, and end up hating your days even more. 

All I have to do is look at my situation at work.  One of my work colleagues, who got his job after I arrived (I am about 3-4 months ahead of him in terms of length of employment at my work), was promoted to manager over us after our previous manager went looking for greener pastures.  From what I can gather he used to love his job, being far better at it than me, and always seemed to enjoy it.  Now however, when I look up I can see the frustration and tiredness in his eyes.  The winds of a higher position are eating away the love for the job he has.  Many times I've heard him say he wished he could go home even if it was only 11 AM in the morning.  I've even recently heard him say he is looking for another job, and becoming manager was the worst decision he made.  He catches a lot of flak from management and Business, and, I’ll be honest, the fact that I’m not very good at my job isn't helping matters.

Despite all of this I’m at least in the process of looking for another career.  It’s taking its time though, and I had hoped to at least know by now where to go.  Alas, not yet.  Luckily there is some hope.  Last night, while at the Alpha course, I got into a short discussion with one of the helpers.  The man is a career adviser of sort, not the type I mentioned earlier, but more into trying to find peoples' passions.  I told him what I was doing and how I was going about finding a career that I would love.  He gave me a few tips and said I was mostly on the right track, but that I need to follow my heart, and that the things I usually like doing, where the hours just slip by, may need to be more of a focus than just my skills.

Follow my heart…I’m really going to have to think about this.