Work work work. We all have to do it in some way shape or form to sustain. Having a career is ingrained in our heads from a very young age as the necessity to living the life. This is proven to be true as everyone has some form or debt to pay whether it be college, a car, medical. Some folks just like luxury… gotta have the new-new cause they rocks the new. But jobs also gives people status. The line of work one chooses puts you in a category. Go ahead, meet someone new… I guarantee that one of the first 3 questions you or they ask is “so what do you do” or “where did you go to school”. Immediately that person unknowingly subconsciously measures themselves against the response because we are all low-key insecure AF.
This drives the rest of the conversation. “Whoa, masters in Literature!?! You must be a great teacher” – only to find out later this person hates children and is an electrical subsystem project manager. This is an example of making assumptions with little info to deal with to ease the anxiety of, “omg I’m having a real conversation right now, act natural”. I believe life experiences prepare us better for these types of conversations more-so than book smarts.
Some people choose to not get degrees and have great jobs. Others get degrees and are paid to further education. Some are loyal and at the same job for years while some bounce around the industry or different sectors finding the best salary/benefits or even location that suits them. Nothing wrong with any of these approaches it’s just different strokes for different folks and however one keeps making it to their days off is on them.
Merely realize that some waiters can make as much money on a weekend as a small-business owner can quarterly and you can see that if we judged everyone the same without the titles this could be a better world. I completely believe that if everyone had to work in a service position at some point in life we’d all have a little more patience & respect as a society. With all that said, titles matter & should be respected… to a degree. We all want our doctors email footer to say M.D. at the end but lets go ahead and temper our expectations of a Yelp Elite’s benefit to society.
Shifting gears – It is in this bloggers opinion that who you work with matters just as much as it is liking it is what you do. If offered the same salary, location & benefits, would you rather work at a huge company and never meet your CEO or work for a small private business where you got to see the CEO everyday? No right or wrong answers here but data suggests that most job seekers will pick growth potential.
Reference the image below. If your career consumes most of your time it almost makes sense to combine your work life & social life if you want to have any social life at all. Today in sports, Stars want to play with their friends. They’d rather deal with the issues of celebrity together than on a media island. In regards to partnership, I know several examples of peers meeting their significant other at the workplace, myself included. These are examples of how significant who you work with keeps you wanting to come back to work everyday. [Later Kd]
Boiling that list in the image down comes to 3 things to choose from: Work Time, You Time, Sleep. Note there are amazing people that make it all work out but for those who think like me, my suggestion is do what makes YOU happy and appreciate who you do that work with… then sleep. Regardless of what we do, since we have to do something, don’t make it seem like it has to be justifiable to anyone else… “it’s just my job” -Said the meter-maid after writing the stock brokers Tesla a ticket.
Then sleep off any downsides.
An AlTRNTative Perspective 