What if you can’t find a job you love?
There’s an interesting discussion at GetRichSlowly about how to find a job you love. It’s a good read, and I don’t want to steal their thunder, so I’ll just say the two things I have to add.
Find a good company. The most wonderful job in the world can be hell if you’re working for crazy or nasty people. And a fairly crappy job can seem kind of wonderful if you have a company that values you and treats you with respect and fairness. Even if they don’t pay enough – seriously, who you have to work with and for matters.
In my case, I realized early on there was no job I wanted. I wanted to write fiction for a living, which is not something you get a degree in and then get recruited into a nice fiction-writing firm with a stock bonus plan. It also doesn’t pay well at all, unless you become a best-seller. If you’re like me, there are two ways to handle this:
- Accept a job that’s kind of like what you wanted. For example, I could’ve gone to school and become a journalist – it’s not fiction, but it’s writing for a living. The reason I didn’t is that if I spent all day writing for other people, I didn’t think I’d have the creative energy left over to write for myself. And I really wanted to write for myself.
- Get a day job. Look for something that pays the bills, is low stress and doesn’t require overtime. Then spend time outside your job doing the work you love until you convince someone to pay you for that work. Remember to love the work you do for yourself rather than focusing on the fact that you can’t do it full-time, or you’ll end up overworked and frustrated.
It’s also important to realize that you may just plain guess wrong when you’re 20 and deciding on a major. You may put in all the work to become a lawyer, but find the market for lawyers is just too competitive and you can’t do the sort of work you want. Or you may love the work you do for twenty years and suddenly wake up one day and realize you’re suffocating and you’d rather own a bait and tackle shop. Or your family may pressure you to go into engineering for job security when you’d be much happier as a graphic artist, even if the money’s tight.
When you’re young, there’s so much horrible pressure to decide once and for all how you’re going to spend the next forty-some freakin’ years of your life, and all I can say to that is: relax. You cannot possibly predict where you’re going to be in 20 years or how you’re going to feel about it.
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Great article. I truly agree- I thought I loved my field of study and by the second year into my degree, I knew I was in the wrong course. I forced myself to get the degree, come out and with working experience earned from part time jobs during holidays, I got into the service industry. My advice for those who realise they are on the wrong course- study anyway and get the paper qualification, then come out and look for what you love.
I really liked this article. I’ve been stressing myself crazy that I cannot find a decent “job”. Reading this article reminded me of why and how I got to where I am now. It’s amazing at 44 what you know now is soooo different than at 24 when you are trying to please God and everyone.
As humbling as working for a major home improvement retailer is for me now, I guess I should be thankful for the employment and continue on my journey for what I truly love doing. With that, I am reminded of a story I heard a priest give during sermon that I am reminded of time to time. When he was a young accountant prior to going into the priesthood, he found himself speaking with an older gentleman from Europe. The man had asked him what he did, and the young man replied “I am an accountant.” When he asked the older man what he did, he replied with responses such as I am a father, husband, reader, writer, fisherman, student, etc… He was surprised how the man defined himself not by his “job” but defining himself of who he actually was.
Let’s face it. Haven’t we all been surprised by a fellow co-worker by what they do outside of work? I guess my point is that we get so caught up in defining our lives by what we do for a living, and not defining our lives by what do for one another and more importantly for ourselves. Maybe if we work on the latter, everything else will fall into place.