#145: Not caring about your job: freedom or misery?

+ the spectre of the writer-influencer and "paired-off" friends

Good morning!

Dear Baby hath returned. Today I’ll be answering questions about 1) whether it’s better to have a stressful job you care about or a stress-free job you don’t 2) my thoughts on influencing and social media as it pertains to building a writing career (and how I think about those things in relation to my own) and 3) what to do about the problem of friends pairing off and their plus-ones becoming a permanent fixture at social gatherings. Regarding the second topic, about writing and influencing, I get questions like that a lot—this one was inspired by this recent NYTimes piece about post-influencing—and I’ve tended to avoid them, but today I finally went in. I don’t really believe in the writer-influencer, and it was nice to get some of those thoughts off my chest!

On this week’s podcast, Danny and I will be answering questions about parsing the difference between actually liking someone and enjoying the attention they give you, the competitive weirdness of pursuing the same niche career as someone close to you, the potential danger of having a threesome with your husband and the one that got away (!), how to deal with resentment of the newly sober, and what to do if suddenly your eight-year partner’s personality is…annoying you. That last one had us reeling. Episode out Tuesday at 9am. To those who have told me my voicemail is down: I know and I’m sorry! The engineers are on it. For now, direct your written questions here.

On the appeal of braindead jobs

“I am in my early 30s, married, and planning a move across the country later this year. I currently work in a field that requires an advanced degree and credentials to practice. When I move, I want to let it all go. But, more than that, I want to let ANY ‘traditional’ job go...I think. I'm so unhappy in my current field, but find myself only taking baby steps to pivot away from it—like moving to another corporate-type job or into a different sector of the nonprofit world. It's so hard for me to think outside the box and step away from what feels familiar. The other thing is that I don't really know at all what I want to do. So it's not like I'd be giving up my field to pursue my true passion as an artist or whatever. Am I allowed to do this? Is this idiotic? Am I idealizing having a job with minimal mental/emotional strain because I'm burned out, but will find myself braindead after a month? I think this is generally related to capitalism and how we value ourselves based on our jobs—I know I should let that concept go. But I worry that existing outside the scheme of ‘ambition’ and ‘career’ will actually leave me unfulfilled. And then am I sabotaging my ability to have a career by taking this detour? Oy vey. Help!”

These are all totally valid questions. Although I’m curious what you mean by letting go of “traditional” jobs. Do you mean giving up the abstract notion of careerism? Or perhaps more simply, giving up salaried work? You mention wanting a job with minimal mental strain—does that mean pursuing an easy/boring desk job outside your studied field, or does it mean becoming a barista? I would have different advice depending on how you answer those questions, but regardless, you got my wheels turning for a few different reasons, particularly your line about idealizing potentially “braindead” jobs.

I think we’re in a transitional place, as a culture, regarding our preoccupations with work. Anti-careerism has been a focus for a while now among the young left, and while that’s been a healthy and necessary shift away from the hustle culture/girlboss era, I do think we’ve overcorrected a bit. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just the reality of the cultural dialectic. But I suspect we’re nearing the end of the romanticization of the clock-in-clock-out lifestyle, whereby it’s considered an act of self-care to not care about your job and to never do more than you’re asked. To be clear, these new norms are potent under the purview of the labor movement—to refuse to give more to your employer than it gives to you is a valid way to highlight exploitative policies. An employer and its employees are not actually “a big family.” This should continue to be highlighted. From a mental health perspective though, not caring about your work, which you most likely spend the majority of your waking hours doing, is actually pretty depressing, and I suspect a lot of people are learning this in real-time.

I was thinking about this last week while watching a basketball game with some friends. For the first 30 minutes, I technically watched but wasn’t actually paying attention or investing in the drama. After realizing how boring and unpleasant this was, I decided to try caring instead. I learned about the players and the stakes, asked questions about the parts I didn’t understand. Unsurprisingly, this changed everything, and quickly. By the second half of the game, I was hooting and hollering, making alliances with and enemies out of my friends, and generally feeling more present and awake. The time flew by. That night reminded me of how much more enjoyable it is to genuinely invest in whatever you’re doing, even if it’s not immediately appealing to you. This is especially true when it comes to work. It may sound easier to give nothing—to promise to keep your face pointed at the screen, and nothing more, to do “braindead” work—but I actually think it’s a lot harder. This isn’t a bid against work that others might deem unglamorous or boring (most jobs can be interesting to the right people), it’s a bid against apathy generally. I don’t think checking out for long stretches of time is good for the human spirit.

Keeping this in mind as you make your next move might be helpful. If your current field is making you unhappy, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a break from it to experiment with lower-stakes, lower-paid, or less conventional jobs, especially if you can afford it. You can always change your mind and go back. I think we too often imagine that our thirties are a time to lock everything into place. But most older people warn us against that kind of thinking. Try to keep perspective: If you change things up now, you could have several years of a new path under your belt by your early forties, which is still young. And even if it weren’t—even if you were 65 contemplating a big change—I’d still urge you to stop asking if you’re “allowed” to reimagine yourself.

Regardless of what you choose, I’d warn you against glamorizing work that asks nothing of you. As hard as it is to care about something and find it disappointing, I think it’s much more spiritually draining to not care about anything at all.

On being a writer without a social following

“Dear Haley, I’m so curious about your thoughts on influencing and social media, particularly the ways it has paradoxically enabled you to opt out, since you have an established IG following that followed you to Substack. I’m curious what you’d suggest for writers aspiring to a set-up like yours whereby you don’t have to wait for sanctioned publications to validate you and have built a creative ecosystem for yourself that’s steady and structured. I read this article too and would be curious to hear your thoughts.”