the means
by rantywoman
I have certainly liked some jobs better than others, but I don’t think I’ll ever love a job. I’m thinking more along these lines now when considering my options on the job market:
“I am a writer, but I love sex more than I love writing,” author Penelope Trunk observed a few years ago. And I am not getting paid for sex…. But I don’t sit up at night thinking, should I do writing or sex? Because career decisions are not decisions about ‘what do I love most?’ Career decisions are about what kind of life do I want to set up for myself.”
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Alain de Botton in “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, attempts to create “a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace, and not, least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us with, alongside love, the principal source of life’s meaning.”
He notes “the strangest thing about the world of work is the widespread expectation that our work should make us happy. For thousands of years, work was viewed as something to be done with as rapidly as possible and escaped in the imagination through alcohol or religion.”
Blame men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin, apparently, for first coming up with this ‘strange’ idea, that work could be a source of happiness. Unfortunately today’s unmet expectation is tomorrow’s resentment.
I’m sure there are people who do love their work (lucky them), but I’m also sure the majority of people only work to live, rather than live to work. However if you truly hate, hate, hate every minute, at a wish the traffic lights would turn red just so it will take a little longer to get to there level, it is probably best to quit. Something you will never ever get back in life is time, no sense wasting it being utterly miserable.
I love de Botton and read that book as well.
I don’t hate my past career, which is why I’m considering returning to it. I didn’t hate my past job, either, but we were terribly understaffed and there were a number of other problems which contributed to my stress levels and were hard on my health. Thus, I had to quit. Hopefully if I go back to the field I can get a less stressful job. Still wish I could work part-time!