So, from a very young age you get asked: ‘what do you want to do when you grow up? What kind of job would you like?’, which to me always felt like my job should be my number one priority. You focus your entire school period on getting the right education and all in order to land the job you want.
The problem is, some people don’t know what they want. Some people change interests over the years. Some people don’t feel the need to have one type of job for the rest of their lives.
Lately I’m stuck in a debate with myself. All my life I wanted to help people and to build a better society. Naturally, with the kind of indoctrination I had, I started looking for this in a job. But now with my party and volunteer work, I get to help a lot of people and oftentimes in really effective ways. I’m taking on a hard study right now and I don’t know if I want to continue. I could also just work and keep doing what I do with the party and volunteering. It would also allow me to have more free time in the next couple of years, which I wouldn’t mind at all.
This brought me to an internal question: why do I see a job as the only way to have a meaningful life? Why not find a job I could do, get money and have a more meaningful life outside of my job? But I haven’t yet found an answer to my question unfortunately.
How do you guys see my problem? Do you think a job is really important in having a meaningful life?
Find a job that allows you to make a decent wage without being too annoying. If you allow work to be your passion it will swallow up the rest of your life. Or if you want a small easy job with low pay so you don’t feel pressed to keep it, first ensure you have a strong social network that can support you, otherwise you’ll be in too bad of a situation to focus on organizing.
I watched a music documentary (maybe about pearl jam?), and there was an interview with Neil Young, where he talks about one of the best things he learned as he grew older, was learning to say no, and take a step back. There came a point at which all the entanglements got in the way of the art of living. He wanted to give himself the space to make his life creative, and open again. IE life should be a work of art, and it needs space to breath, and be creative.
Work should never (if possible) get in the way of that. If an easier or even monotonous job is what we need to have good mental health, then we should do that for our long-term mental health.
It seems like your mind is giving yourself a similar check for your hard study program; its telling you to re-evaluate and make sure that this isn’t too much to pick up.
Overall you seem in a really good place, and have something both in your job, and outside it, that are helping your community, and good for your mental health at the same time.
It seems like your mind is giving yourself a similar check for your hard study program; its telling you to re-evaluate and make sure that this isn’t too much to pick up.
This seems to be the case. It also sounds exactly like something I would say to a client would they come to me with similar problems. The problem of looking at an okay job with some perspective and decent pay, with a good amount of free time, versus getting an extra degree and having more possibilities. It seems like the work/party work is going to win against the extra degree right now, as I can always start the degree in a couple of years. I’ve got time.
I also like the Neil Young thing you said. Life usually takes place outside of work and other duties and we need to remember that it’s the most important part of your life (mostly). I gave myself the resolution to think about my private life and to give it more meaning, and this question is one I am struggling with right now.
All in all I’m glad that this is my dilemma right now: comfortable life with lots of free time or getting an extra degree.
Thank you for your feedback comrade. Seeing your name and pfp always makes me excited for the new Dune movie this year.
I think having work of some sort, especially bigger projects, is part of how we as humans find meaning in our lives. That’s not to say that coerced wage labour needs to be that work, far from it. Community organizing is work, helping people is work, improving the world around you is work. Those are the sort of things we find meaning in. Wage labour, especially as a means to pay the bills we are forced to pay, is often just a distraction from the truly meaningful parts of life.
I have quite the constant internal struggle myself about the same thing. I work because I must, but I also haven’t quite learned how to leave work at work and find the time and more importantly energy to do the things I really want to do, nor have I learned to not resent the job and the employer so much. I have a job because I have to, yet I also work at doing other things because I want to.
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*Edited: I think career=meaning is a capitalist construct, to make you work more.
fo sho
Having the mental capacity available is really important
