I Will Not Die

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That must have been what I was really ordering when I took my job as a corporate slave-drone. Silly me. I thought I was ordering some job security, a decent wage, and a better occupation than the grunge that came with restaurant management. I took a corporate job because as each day in a restaurant passed, I was getting closer and closer to murdering fellow citizens, both employees under me, and customers. I was just looking for a better stepping stone that could lead me back to financial growth and college. It turns out that I neglected to read the fine print at the bottom of the paperwork I was signing when I hired on:

By becoming an employee with this company, you lose all right to any claims for damages you might incur, both now and in the future, foreseeable and otherwise, related to your quality of life and the capacity of your soul to withstand the devastating impact that becoming a shareholder-serving minion might cause. Furthermore, you implicitly relinquish all future capacity to enjoy the benefits of life that would come from a job that was less closely related to being a pathogen. You belong to us now. Welcome aboard.

Man I wish I had read that.

Work your passion. Right.

I know what my problem is, my problem is that I’m in a career that I fully know is merely a means to an end. Let me bore you briefly with some details of my life, then I’ll show you why most lives are analogous to it. Most are some variation of mine.

As most of you know, I fell madly in love with the prospect of becoming a crazy scientist professor. However, as each year slips by, I am faced with the growing possibility that it might be unreachable. Why so? Because the professor gig is itself, a means to another end. The ultimate end is the prospect of making a contribution to my field of study. At some point, making that contribution will become impossible. Let’s say I never give up, keep pressing forward, do the right thing and follow through with the persistence I preach. Fine then. Maybe I’ll be Grampa Dereck at the graduating ceremony, sixty-five, with false teeth. I made it. However, at that point, I’d have this small fraction of life left where I could focus on serious scholarship, assuming I wasn’t showing signs of senility. Long sessions of tireless writing punctuated by diaper changes. That’s just silly. Long before then, I’d need to just forget about it.

I haven’t made the decision to give up just yet. But tick tock. In the meantime, I’m working a job that is exclusively a hallway to another room. It’s hard to really love it.

The means to the end

In fact, I’d say almost any career, or any activity that is a means to an end, is a lot harder to love passionately than people think it is. Most activities are means to ends:

• Anyone who works with the sole goal of retiring is working the means to an end
• Anyone who is working one job in order to get another job
• Anyone who doesn’t know of a dream job they want to attain
• Even fertilizing my lawn

One thing I commonly read is that if the end you are trying to achieve is that good, then the means should be about as enjoyable as that end. Honestly, I have a hard time swallowing that. I think that could be the case briefly, which is why I put the last one on the list. Sure, I want to have a green lawn. It looks great. In fact, walking around the yard behind my spreader in the afternoon is pretty enjoyable. The difference between that and my job? Time. If it took me eight hours a day, five days a week to get a green lawn, I’d puke.

I knew a guy that loved his job

There was a man at my office who was forced out retired. He was quite possibly the nicest man I had ever met at the company. He was the Senior Vice President of Operations. He really loved our company. I remember on his last day, he sent out a company-wide e-mail talking about his experiences with the company. He went on about how good his life had become as a result of being part of a great organization that was in the position to help so many people around North America. I was shocked. You’d think we were a community-based grassroots quasi-governmental development organization building houses for impoverished children.

But we stock Band-aids. Sure, we sell AEDs (the heart fryers), we do training at schools, but our main business is first aid supplies stocked in cabinets. Ibuprofen, man. And this guy loved it. If I really felt like what I did for the company was that great, I’d probably leap from bed like Tiger every morning. This guy wasn’t working a means to an end, he was already there.

Enjoy life?

In the end, unless you’re that man I knew from my work, I think most people are working some version of a means to an end that exceeds a grass-fertilizing timeframe. Being really satisfied with life is, in my opinion, somewhat tricky. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a train-wreck (well, on Mondays maybe. And Tuesdays. And, well never mind). I tolerate what I’m doing while I’m getting where I want to go, but until I can match happy and living, together, until I can enjoy life, this might have to do. I’m in stasis.

Tons of self-help stuff out there makes it appear that happiness is just a choice, like a light switch. I either wasn’t equipped with one, or a fuse is out. I think I know where that switch is, but I haven’t found it any books or other literature. All that self-help rubbish focuses on the “enjoy” but it forgets, or suppresses the “life.” Life is living, it’s my wife, my kids, my roof, my food. We’ve only got two variables here, “enjoy” and “life. There are only four combinations here, Christ this shouldn’t be all that hard. 2 variables, 4 outcomes. Satisfaction, money.

No Money, Sadness

Let’s say the economy completely crumbles and I end up laid off, working some gig as a waiter. We downsize to a shabby ghetto apartment and I scoop up another job mopping floors during the third shift [shudders] (<–inside joke for the regulars). I wouldn’t exactly be meeting my family’s needs, and I wouldn’t be doing something I was passionate about. This one’s a no brainer.

No Money, Happiness

You bet, I’d love to be kicking it on Walden Pond. Living in some cabin I built with my own hands, off in the woods, reading and thinking 24-7 in perfect solitude with nature. “Sorry honey, sorry kids. You’ve got to fend for yourselves now. I promise I’ll send a card. Daddy loves you.” Not quite.

Money, Sadness

This is kind of where I’m at now. This is probably where most people are too, in one version or another. I’m not living in poverty, my kids don’t go hungry, we’re making it. But I’m going through the motions of something I detest. I’ve even tried for over a year to get another job, hoping that would help. I’ve had zero luck in that. Even if I did get another job, I’d more than likely end up where I am right now. The problem is, there just aren’t that many jobs out there that I could really love. I’m just not that guy from my work. I could try to get there, but I’d have to completely deconstruct the way I identify myself. I’d essentially have to brainwash myself into falling in love with making money for a corporation.

Money, Happiness

This is the holy grail. Love what you do, pay the bills at the same time.

Can I work my passion? Can anyone? Sure. I think. Maybe. It’s going to take time. It’s already taken more time than I ever thought it would. This is getting painful. I’m running out of intrinsic happy juice here.

In the meantime, tick tock goes the microwave I call work, drip drip goes my soul…

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Dereck :: Aug.11.2008 :: Work :: 12 Comments »

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