Ugh. Work. You all know the feeling. Awakening to the sound of a blaring alarm and cracking your eyelids to a semi-darkened room with the realization that yet again you have to drag yourself back to that ungrateful job. As of late I've been feeling the pinch a little too much.
Where did my motivation go? Am I depressed? Is there something wrong with me medically? Likely not. What has happened is that you, like so many of us, have awakened to the fact that you just don't like the job you have. There's something about it that brings out the worst in you, or makes it almost unbearable. It could be the mindlessness of it, or maybe an annoying co-worker. You've lost your lust for what you thought would be an exciting career, or at least a really fun job. I have to wonder if our problems are rooted in that one word itself. Job.
Anytime something turns into work it usually sucks the life right out of it. After all your hobbies are fun right? And a hobby can be something that you thoroughly enjoy, devoting a lot of time and energy to the pursuit of a self oriented goal. Building that next model rocket, or designing your killer robot. Even experimenting in the kitchen with a new recipe. Somewhere out there someone who is not a geneticist finds genetics fascinating, and reads things about it. Now let's take those rocketeering-killer-robot-building-kitchen-counter-geneticists and tell them that they can do all this full time with actual resources. 'Wow!' they'll say. 'Now I'll be able to really learn about my passions!' Not so fast. There's a caveat as with all things, and the caveat is this: We want results from your hobby. Your pay cheque is now built upon your ability to show us that you've got what it takes, and by pay cheque we mean survival. You can explore all you want, but anything you produce is ours. Now just after writing that I felt my own soul sag just a little. There's two things at play here. The first being the fact that yes you must earn a living because nothing is free. However everyone in this world would like to not have the stress of an axe hanging over them waiting to drop at any given moment. Let's face it in these uncertain economic times most people run the risk of a job loss, or at least their risk has increased. The money you require to 'live' can be taken away at any given point, so it's almost better to learn to live with very little in the first place. Second is the idea of 'Intellectual Property'. This is a big one with me. I am under the firm belief that my work is my own. Yes my employer gave me the resources to be able to achieve my goals, but I did the work, came up with the ideas, and without me my goals may have never been realized for the benefit of the company. But what if I come up with a really great idea that's just beyond the scope of my job, and I act on it during my lunch breaks, or take a few minutes on a company computer to type up something on a word processing program. Does the company have the right to claim ownership of my work then. Possibly from what I understand. Wonderful. So that idea just stifles any want to excel, because now I can't get ahead, and to realize anything above and beyond my job, I have to work at home. Suddenly there's no leisure time. Crap. Life sucks. I think I'll go home and just sit on my ass, numb my brain with television, and wait for bed time to creep up on me. Now I think about tomorrow and how much that is going to suck now as well. Money and lack of freedom have brought me to my knees. I don't want to explore anymore, I just want to cry into my beer at the end of the day.
The job has sucked the zeal out of you. You might as well just pack it in and wait for retirement.
I hate this feeling. I love the feeling of inspiration, which I occasionally get from seeing a good movie, or making a new contact on my radio, even watching a decent documentary. It's probably why I love Discovery Channel so much. The world is a fascinating and vibrant place, full of wonder and enjoyment. But it seems that upon entering adulthood when responsibility and accountability kick in the zest for life diminishes slightly. Life becomes a job, based on your results. Fear of failure is more common than you think, which is why people are reluctant to try anything. Could you imagine someone walking up to you saying "Don't worry about it. You're taken care of. Go and see what's over that horizon." That thought lifts my spirit. I would be grabbing at every opportunity, learning as much as I could, because that's what life is partly about: learning. It's how we go forward as a species, and as a society, but kind of hard to do when you're stuck working a factory assembly line all day, or punching out computer code that you don't care about.
Being 'free' to explore life is something that only the rich can do, and they seem to squander it from where I'm standing. There's so much to learn, and so many things to see and do. For now I guess I'll have to be content with waiting for the end.
Freeman
Where did my motivation go? Am I depressed? Is there something wrong with me medically? Likely not. What has happened is that you, like so many of us, have awakened to the fact that you just don't like the job you have. There's something about it that brings out the worst in you, or makes it almost unbearable. It could be the mindlessness of it, or maybe an annoying co-worker. You've lost your lust for what you thought would be an exciting career, or at least a really fun job. I have to wonder if our problems are rooted in that one word itself. Job.
Anytime something turns into work it usually sucks the life right out of it. After all your hobbies are fun right? And a hobby can be something that you thoroughly enjoy, devoting a lot of time and energy to the pursuit of a self oriented goal. Building that next model rocket, or designing your killer robot. Even experimenting in the kitchen with a new recipe. Somewhere out there someone who is not a geneticist finds genetics fascinating, and reads things about it. Now let's take those rocketeering-killer-robot-building-kitchen-counter-geneticists and tell them that they can do all this full time with actual resources. 'Wow!' they'll say. 'Now I'll be able to really learn about my passions!' Not so fast. There's a caveat as with all things, and the caveat is this: We want results from your hobby. Your pay cheque is now built upon your ability to show us that you've got what it takes, and by pay cheque we mean survival. You can explore all you want, but anything you produce is ours. Now just after writing that I felt my own soul sag just a little. There's two things at play here. The first being the fact that yes you must earn a living because nothing is free. However everyone in this world would like to not have the stress of an axe hanging over them waiting to drop at any given moment. Let's face it in these uncertain economic times most people run the risk of a job loss, or at least their risk has increased. The money you require to 'live' can be taken away at any given point, so it's almost better to learn to live with very little in the first place. Second is the idea of 'Intellectual Property'. This is a big one with me. I am under the firm belief that my work is my own. Yes my employer gave me the resources to be able to achieve my goals, but I did the work, came up with the ideas, and without me my goals may have never been realized for the benefit of the company. But what if I come up with a really great idea that's just beyond the scope of my job, and I act on it during my lunch breaks, or take a few minutes on a company computer to type up something on a word processing program. Does the company have the right to claim ownership of my work then. Possibly from what I understand. Wonderful. So that idea just stifles any want to excel, because now I can't get ahead, and to realize anything above and beyond my job, I have to work at home. Suddenly there's no leisure time. Crap. Life sucks. I think I'll go home and just sit on my ass, numb my brain with television, and wait for bed time to creep up on me. Now I think about tomorrow and how much that is going to suck now as well. Money and lack of freedom have brought me to my knees. I don't want to explore anymore, I just want to cry into my beer at the end of the day.
The job has sucked the zeal out of you. You might as well just pack it in and wait for retirement.
I hate this feeling. I love the feeling of inspiration, which I occasionally get from seeing a good movie, or making a new contact on my radio, even watching a decent documentary. It's probably why I love Discovery Channel so much. The world is a fascinating and vibrant place, full of wonder and enjoyment. But it seems that upon entering adulthood when responsibility and accountability kick in the zest for life diminishes slightly. Life becomes a job, based on your results. Fear of failure is more common than you think, which is why people are reluctant to try anything. Could you imagine someone walking up to you saying "Don't worry about it. You're taken care of. Go and see what's over that horizon." That thought lifts my spirit. I would be grabbing at every opportunity, learning as much as I could, because that's what life is partly about: learning. It's how we go forward as a species, and as a society, but kind of hard to do when you're stuck working a factory assembly line all day, or punching out computer code that you don't care about.
Being 'free' to explore life is something that only the rich can do, and they seem to squander it from where I'm standing. There's so much to learn, and so many things to see and do. For now I guess I'll have to be content with waiting for the end.
Freeman
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