I knew I'd saved the email for this unread post for a reason. I'm pretty deep in the woo-woo, so I believe that finding time to read today was divinely orchestrated so I'd receive the message at the precise moment I needed to hear it the most.
Thanks, Haley, for always being so incredibly thoughtful and curious in your responses.
Reading this question, I had the eerie feeling that I could be reading something I had written a few years ago.
I went to university because I felt like I should. It was a struggle, but I got a degree in something relatively interesting (modern history) and promptly realised I had no clue how to turn that into a career, or if I even wanted to.
This marked the beginning of a phase of my life that lasted around 6 years, from when I was 24 to 30. This phase was characterised by intense feelings of dissatisfaction, emptiness and existential dread. I was always searching for more. I yearned to find my ‘purpose’ and was utterly fixated on finding the ‘right career’ for me. By the end of that 6 year period, I was so burnt out that I started experiencing depression and anxiety due to stress.
I spent the first 5 years of that phase bouncing from job to job, most of which lasted 6-12 months. I'd start out with all guns blazing, 'This is IT! My career is *finally* about to start for real', three months later the rose tinted glasses would begin to fade, and by six months I'd start searching for a new role. Rinse and repeat.
This finally cumulated with me getting what looked like the perfect job on paper, only to have it all fall to pieces in the same pattern. Only this time was so much worse because I had convinced myself that this was THE ONE, and it was most definitely not. Of all the jobs I had over that time, that was the only one that I left on bad terms.
Burnt out, anxious, and feeling totally lost, I decided it was time to take some drastic measures. I ended my 4 year relationship, quit my job, and moved to New Zealand to become a park ranger (my version of ‘move to Scotland and herds sheep’). I left everything familiar behind – aside from my pattern of pinning my identity to my career.
And guess what? Yet again, the job wasn’t 'it'.
But this time, something was different.
By moving away, I had already made a massive change to my life. It hadn't been as hard or scary as I thought it would, even though the job wasn't what I hoped it would be. I had already taken a big 'risk', and that made it easier to take other risks. I had moved into a share house in NZ and met a lovely French man who was about to go cycle around the world. I thought “what the hell, I’ll go along”. So I did. I felt like I had nothing to lose. If I hated it, then I would go back and get another job or study or something. If it was great, then I’d have an inexpensive way to travel the world. Either way, I knew it would be an interesting experience.
In the end, we cycled for six months, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done both physically and mentally. But it was so, so, so worth it.
We’d cycled 5-8hrs a day, usually between 50-70kms, carrying 40+ kgs of stuff, and most of that time I was alone with my thoughts. I was brought face to face with my feelings of inadequacy, and realised that my intense need to find purpose in my career was masking something much deeper.
Because I had so much time to think, I was able to trace the lines of this pattern through my life, all the way back to being a little kid with learning difficulties who felt like she had to prove that she was worthy. I realised that my entire life was built upon the belief that I was not enough, and I had to ‘do' something in order to earn it.
Career, job titles, status, etc., had taken on so much importance in my life because I had been using them as a measure to judge myself by, rather than asking why I was judging myself in the first place. They were external solutions to an internal dilemma, which is why they never actually brought me any lasting satisfaction. I was ascribing a quasi-sacred meaning to all those things, and that could only bring me suffering and disappointment.
Realising that was like realising you’ve been looking through a window, when you thought you were standing outside. There was a specific moment, cycling up a mountain in Taiwan, when the glass broke for me. It marked a clear turning point in my life.
A few months later, I got offered a job working remotely as a content writer. I had no illusions that this job was ‘it’. I knew it would not define my purpose, my identity, my self-worth. It was just a job. The only question I asked myself was, ‘does this interest me?’ And the answer was yes. So I took it, albeit it with very clear boundaries about what I would give to it (a little of my time, effort, and energy), and what I would not (my self-worth, my identity, my soul).
And as it turned out, it was and is a very interesting and enjoyable job, and it suits me very well. I’m still content with it coming up to four years later, which is a record for me. The role has evolved, I have a job title that sounds fancy at parties, but I don’t define myself by it. I appreciate everything it can give me – and what it doesn’t. The same goes for my relationship with the Frenchman (now husband). Both these aspects of my life (career and relationship) are rewarding and enriching, but they do not make me more than or less than or anything than.
Now, instead of forcing myself to do things with a specific aim or goal in mind, I have begun to relish the act of learning and creating and doing for their own sakes, like I did when I was a child. This led me to start writing a novel, which has become a huge source of meaning and purpose in my life. I notice that I can slip into the same patterns of ascribing meaning to my creative writing as I previously did for work, but I consciously try to remind myself that it, too, does not define me. When I start to fixate on the outcomes or intention of my writing, I remind myself that I write because I love to write, not because being a writer will make me more worthy as a human being. It won't.
When I decided to cycle, I thought it would mean something, but gradually I realised that it didn't. I didn’t need to have a grand plan, or intended outcome or goal. As a result, the choices along the way ceased to really matter, outside of their surface value. Everyday, I would ask myself, is this interesting? Do I want to do this? And if the answer was yes, I kept riding. In the end, we set out intending to cycle for a year and only ended up doing half of that. But so what? It wasn’t a defeat, it wasn’t a ‘failure’; a new opportunity came up, and we said yes – and then another and another and another until we come to now, living in a French Chateau 6 months of the year and traveling around the rest. Even this is temporary and transient and changeable and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. And that’s exactly how it should be.
To wrap this up, I would just say that sometimes the grass is greener somewhere else, but not where you expect it to be. For me, the grass wasn’t greener as a park ranger in NZ, but it was in taking a risk and saying yes to something totally crazy because it opened the door to self-exploration that I never would have been able to do if I had stayed home, stuck in my routines and self-defeating rituals. That allowed me to step back and see what was really going on, that I was running on a hamster wheel, and then gradually go about de-programming some of the behavioural and psychological habits that had got me there in the first place. Cycling was my ‘medium’, but it could have been hiking or sheep herding or grape picking or anything that got me out of my (dis)comfort zone. The path you choose doesn't matter – it's how you walk it (or, in my case, ride it) that matters.
Sending my love and best wishes to you, the letter writer, and anyone else whose out there in the same position. Thank you to Haley for creating a space for us to share and connect and think deeply, you're doing something really special here. XX
Here’s a practical thing I completely lucked into that maybe others could try to find: an old college professor was transitioning into career coaching and asked me to do a practice call. It took literally ten minutes, she asked me a ton of questions, I was in a job I HATED (strategy consulting and my placement was the IRS omg lol). At the end of the ten minutes she said you can do any job but it has to have these three things: autonomy, flexibility and growth potential/ability to rise fast. And her quick analysis has guided every work change I’ve made. My husbands however are more likely: stability, mission-based, predictability (diagnosed by me lol).
Having those themes has given me a lot of freedom and with every job change it feels like I’ve gotten closer to a “fit.” Not a dream job. I still work too much and stress about it, but progress :)
i read this book 10+ years ago called refuse to choose, about the idea of not being “one thing,” having one career your whole life, etc. the part that stuck with me most is that a couple hundred years ago we would’ve been called a renaissance (wo)man, having so many interests and ideas and careers. i have had a million different jobs/careers (life of a not independently wealthy artist lol) and the only regret i have is not consistently saving for retirement. obviously a corporate job with benefits makes that much easier, but i sort of feel like if you satisfy the need to take care of future you while also satisfying your present curiosities, you can ride out whatever wave you’re on presently. i read an arthur brooks article about the hedonistic treadmill, ie we can’t get no satisfaction. i think we will always be searching. i wonder what makes our souls so restless.
Anne Lamott and the headlights! Thank you for reminding me of that beautiful analogy.
To this I cannot speak in general advice, but I can in personal anecdote: I graduated with a Master's in Writing for Children and stumbled into childcare work, which I ended up absolutely loving. I worked as a preschool teacher for eight years, dove into early childhood ed research, attended conferences, the whole shebang. However, the system is broken, and all roads for a preschool teacher lead to burnout. (I always tell people: The problem was never, ever the children. It was everything else.) Early 2023, I requested leave to go to Florida and spend time with my dad while he was on hospice. He passed five days after my arrival, but I still spent a month there, rang my boss, and told her I quit. I couldn't imagine returning to work, staring into the sweet faces of those children, and managing to hold myself together.
This meant flying back to the Bay Area unemployed and with NO PLAN. But here comes the best part: I had stayed in touch over the years with one of my former students and his family, from the age of three until now (he just turned eleven). I attended all his birthday parties and visited at their house often. When the dad reached out to me to see how I was faring, I filled him in and he responded with, "I have an idea." It turns out his wife, mother of my former student and Executive Director at a legal aid non-profit, needed a new assistant.
Is this job my passion? No. I am taking paralegal classes to learn more about the field, but does this mean I will be a paralegal? Maybe! Did eight years of working with preschool-aged children prep me for working with attorneys? Absolutely (snark intended). Does working in the legal field (something in my youth I swore I would NEVER do) help me stay connected to my late father, who was an attorney? In some ways, yes. And I no longer suffer burnout.
This is a total novella but I suppose my point is, nothing is permanent, and if you try to stick to one path it lessens the likelihood of you surprising yourself or finding open doors you didn't even know where there. Cultivate relationships. You will be OK, dear questioner.
Haley, your response is so good, it made me *finally* “upgrade to paid” and these comments are just the cherry on top. What a beautiful, thoughtful community to have found 💫
1- there was a unsettling feeling during my first job out of school right around the time a school term would have ended. We spend our whole lives doing school, and then it ends and we get a break to reset, and then start again. Except now I didn't get a pause and reset, work just kept going. It was at this time I really felt like the reader, considering going to grad school, looking for how to leave the country, work on a farm, etc. I ended up not doing any of those things and pushing through. It just felt like I really needed to do something different because my whole entire life I had. Even though the letter writer is out of school, it sounds like she hasn't made it over the hump that was instilled in us early on. Push through!
2- a job should do a few things: pay our bills, let us put away for retirement, not be every hour of the day (aka allows for a meaningful personal life), let us live a comfortable life and afford to do a few fun things/experiences, not be a hell hole with awful people who treat you badly, have some predictability/dependability. If you can find work like this, you can live your passions in the off hours, take classes that interest you (writing, art, science, maths!), go to live shows, see other parts of the world, find your fellow weirdos. A job doesn't need to do all that, it just is a way to afford your life!
I work at a job I love, feel called to, and am deeply fulfilled by. BUT I work 70-80 hours a week, and I am frequently emotionally devastated at work. My job affects my relationships, my health, my wellbeing. I have found myself fantasizing about exactly the job the letter writer has - easy, well paid, boring.
I think something at the heart of this is that millennials were taught that you should love your job. I think that is ultimately a weird neoliberal fallacy. You don’t need to love your job - it is a means to support the things in your life you do love.
And the grass is always greener - i “followed my dreams” to become a public defender. I love what I do. I am also physically and emotionally exhausted most of the time and sometimes dread going to work just like anyone else.
This resonated with me. I am a scientist, work too much, have job insecurity and I'm not paid very well. I keep fantasising about a corporate job. It's also a struggle to follow your dreams...
I have felt like this reader many times throughout my life. Two things have helped me.
Re-reading the Eileen Myles poem Peanut Butter. The whole poem frees me of the expectations I subconsciously stack up about my life, and specifically this line:
I am
absolutely in opposition
to all kinds of
goals. I have
no desire to know
where this, anything
is getting me.
Secondly, cultivating interests and hobbies outside of work. I am a very keen gardener and often think I should give up my corp job and become a gardener, but when I feel like this I try and remind myself that being paid to do something doesn't inherently add more value to the activity and actually would most likely reduce my enjoyment. So I continue with my corp job for stability (often underestimated) and volunteer as often as I can. I think this fulfils me just as much as if I'd pursued it as a 'career'.
i wholeheartedly second everything. stability + fulfilling hobbies = peace and happiness. i think this is the secret sauce. the unfortunate thing is that stable jobs are often so taxing that you don’t have the bandwidth to do your hobbies. sigh.
Love this advice. Working as a junior doctor has seen me (and still sees me) riddled with sunk cost fallacy. I always had semi-specific goals of “get into med school” or “become a doctor” but inevitably life would expand out before me as I sat in the “arrival” of my goal and I’d feel unfulfilled. Narrowing a career choice down to find a specialty is the current convention or gold standard in medicine, but I’ve always been a bit of a free spirit as well, and now as a 4th year doctor I still find myself dipping my toes into various areas of medicine, then shuddering at the prospect of locking myself into one thing forever. Like you so beautifully articulate, what matters more is who you are in your job, than the job itself. The hardest thing for me has been realising that the dreams I’ve made (“I’ll be the best female surgeon this world has ever seen!!!”) are both possible, but not likely to generate a life of vitality. I’m constantly having identity crises as my colleagues seem to “just know” (I hate that term) and get on with things. Lately, having more curiosity and openness with aligning my values to a space I can apply my work and training, as opposed to hammering myself into the space of perceived ultimate success, has been really healing. And having many interests outside medicine, something that I once felt was at odds with life as a doctor, has actually helped me take my foot off the pedal and be steered to places I could not have predicted or controlled. I too have been frustrated by the multiple pivots I’ve made, but I now see it could have been no other way for me, I simply have to know when I’m desperately curious and deeply suffocated by specific work situations. I’ve learned there is no “arriving” anywhere, which is maybe what the deep ache I feel is about. Seeing this as part of life helps me settle into the moments, however brief they may be.
As a fellow future doctor, I’m curious which path you choose! I’ve always felt unnecessarily worried medicine would “become my identity”. It sounds like you’ve bristled against similar vibes that permeate the training process.
it’s so cliche but i have to mention something my therapist said that i can’t get out of my head!!! i’ve been feeling some version of this for the past year and a half as i’ve been applying to law school and during one of my endless rants about feeling unmoored and just wanting stability (re: not knowing what city i’m moving to, what my life will look like there, etc etc) and my therapist was like “it’s helpful to remove feeling settled from your goals.” and i asked if he felt settled (he’s late 40s, has his phd and successful research/teaching career, now in private practice, married with two kids, owns his house etc…) and he said no!!!! i couldn’t believe it! he has always struck me as having the a perfect picture of a settled life!!! it has been great for my curiosity about the future/the unknown/success/career/goals while filtering out the need for certainty in order to be satisfied with the present. i am always about to arrive, but never quite there! and that’s ok!
I knew I'd saved the email for this unread post for a reason. I'm pretty deep in the woo-woo, so I believe that finding time to read today was divinely orchestrated so I'd receive the message at the precise moment I needed to hear it the most.
Thanks, Haley, for always being so incredibly thoughtful and curious in your responses.
Wow this somehow deeply resonated with me despite having an entirely different situation in mind. Thank you Haley and the questioner
Reading this question, I had the eerie feeling that I could be reading something I had written a few years ago.
I went to university because I felt like I should. It was a struggle, but I got a degree in something relatively interesting (modern history) and promptly realised I had no clue how to turn that into a career, or if I even wanted to.
This marked the beginning of a phase of my life that lasted around 6 years, from when I was 24 to 30. This phase was characterised by intense feelings of dissatisfaction, emptiness and existential dread. I was always searching for more. I yearned to find my ‘purpose’ and was utterly fixated on finding the ‘right career’ for me. By the end of that 6 year period, I was so burnt out that I started experiencing depression and anxiety due to stress.
I spent the first 5 years of that phase bouncing from job to job, most of which lasted 6-12 months. I'd start out with all guns blazing, 'This is IT! My career is *finally* about to start for real', three months later the rose tinted glasses would begin to fade, and by six months I'd start searching for a new role. Rinse and repeat.
This finally cumulated with me getting what looked like the perfect job on paper, only to have it all fall to pieces in the same pattern. Only this time was so much worse because I had convinced myself that this was THE ONE, and it was most definitely not. Of all the jobs I had over that time, that was the only one that I left on bad terms.
Burnt out, anxious, and feeling totally lost, I decided it was time to take some drastic measures. I ended my 4 year relationship, quit my job, and moved to New Zealand to become a park ranger (my version of ‘move to Scotland and herds sheep’). I left everything familiar behind – aside from my pattern of pinning my identity to my career.
And guess what? Yet again, the job wasn’t 'it'.
But this time, something was different.
By moving away, I had already made a massive change to my life. It hadn't been as hard or scary as I thought it would, even though the job wasn't what I hoped it would be. I had already taken a big 'risk', and that made it easier to take other risks. I had moved into a share house in NZ and met a lovely French man who was about to go cycle around the world. I thought “what the hell, I’ll go along”. So I did. I felt like I had nothing to lose. If I hated it, then I would go back and get another job or study or something. If it was great, then I’d have an inexpensive way to travel the world. Either way, I knew it would be an interesting experience.
In the end, we cycled for six months, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done both physically and mentally. But it was so, so, so worth it.
We’d cycled 5-8hrs a day, usually between 50-70kms, carrying 40+ kgs of stuff, and most of that time I was alone with my thoughts. I was brought face to face with my feelings of inadequacy, and realised that my intense need to find purpose in my career was masking something much deeper.
Because I had so much time to think, I was able to trace the lines of this pattern through my life, all the way back to being a little kid with learning difficulties who felt like she had to prove that she was worthy. I realised that my entire life was built upon the belief that I was not enough, and I had to ‘do' something in order to earn it.
Career, job titles, status, etc., had taken on so much importance in my life because I had been using them as a measure to judge myself by, rather than asking why I was judging myself in the first place. They were external solutions to an internal dilemma, which is why they never actually brought me any lasting satisfaction. I was ascribing a quasi-sacred meaning to all those things, and that could only bring me suffering and disappointment.
Realising that was like realising you’ve been looking through a window, when you thought you were standing outside. There was a specific moment, cycling up a mountain in Taiwan, when the glass broke for me. It marked a clear turning point in my life.
A few months later, I got offered a job working remotely as a content writer. I had no illusions that this job was ‘it’. I knew it would not define my purpose, my identity, my self-worth. It was just a job. The only question I asked myself was, ‘does this interest me?’ And the answer was yes. So I took it, albeit it with very clear boundaries about what I would give to it (a little of my time, effort, and energy), and what I would not (my self-worth, my identity, my soul).
And as it turned out, it was and is a very interesting and enjoyable job, and it suits me very well. I’m still content with it coming up to four years later, which is a record for me. The role has evolved, I have a job title that sounds fancy at parties, but I don’t define myself by it. I appreciate everything it can give me – and what it doesn’t. The same goes for my relationship with the Frenchman (now husband). Both these aspects of my life (career and relationship) are rewarding and enriching, but they do not make me more than or less than or anything than.
Now, instead of forcing myself to do things with a specific aim or goal in mind, I have begun to relish the act of learning and creating and doing for their own sakes, like I did when I was a child. This led me to start writing a novel, which has become a huge source of meaning and purpose in my life. I notice that I can slip into the same patterns of ascribing meaning to my creative writing as I previously did for work, but I consciously try to remind myself that it, too, does not define me. When I start to fixate on the outcomes or intention of my writing, I remind myself that I write because I love to write, not because being a writer will make me more worthy as a human being. It won't.
When I decided to cycle, I thought it would mean something, but gradually I realised that it didn't. I didn’t need to have a grand plan, or intended outcome or goal. As a result, the choices along the way ceased to really matter, outside of their surface value. Everyday, I would ask myself, is this interesting? Do I want to do this? And if the answer was yes, I kept riding. In the end, we set out intending to cycle for a year and only ended up doing half of that. But so what? It wasn’t a defeat, it wasn’t a ‘failure’; a new opportunity came up, and we said yes – and then another and another and another until we come to now, living in a French Chateau 6 months of the year and traveling around the rest. Even this is temporary and transient and changeable and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. And that’s exactly how it should be.
To wrap this up, I would just say that sometimes the grass is greener somewhere else, but not where you expect it to be. For me, the grass wasn’t greener as a park ranger in NZ, but it was in taking a risk and saying yes to something totally crazy because it opened the door to self-exploration that I never would have been able to do if I had stayed home, stuck in my routines and self-defeating rituals. That allowed me to step back and see what was really going on, that I was running on a hamster wheel, and then gradually go about de-programming some of the behavioural and psychological habits that had got me there in the first place. Cycling was my ‘medium’, but it could have been hiking or sheep herding or grape picking or anything that got me out of my (dis)comfort zone. The path you choose doesn't matter – it's how you walk it (or, in my case, ride it) that matters.
Sending my love and best wishes to you, the letter writer, and anyone else whose out there in the same position. Thank you to Haley for creating a space for us to share and connect and think deeply, you're doing something really special here. XX
Please write a book!!
Here’s a practical thing I completely lucked into that maybe others could try to find: an old college professor was transitioning into career coaching and asked me to do a practice call. It took literally ten minutes, she asked me a ton of questions, I was in a job I HATED (strategy consulting and my placement was the IRS omg lol). At the end of the ten minutes she said you can do any job but it has to have these three things: autonomy, flexibility and growth potential/ability to rise fast. And her quick analysis has guided every work change I’ve made. My husbands however are more likely: stability, mission-based, predictability (diagnosed by me lol).
Having those themes has given me a lot of freedom and with every job change it feels like I’ve gotten closer to a “fit.” Not a dream job. I still work too much and stress about it, but progress :)
i read this book 10+ years ago called refuse to choose, about the idea of not being “one thing,” having one career your whole life, etc. the part that stuck with me most is that a couple hundred years ago we would’ve been called a renaissance (wo)man, having so many interests and ideas and careers. i have had a million different jobs/careers (life of a not independently wealthy artist lol) and the only regret i have is not consistently saving for retirement. obviously a corporate job with benefits makes that much easier, but i sort of feel like if you satisfy the need to take care of future you while also satisfying your present curiosities, you can ride out whatever wave you’re on presently. i read an arthur brooks article about the hedonistic treadmill, ie we can’t get no satisfaction. i think we will always be searching. i wonder what makes our souls so restless.
This idea has helped me a lot too. I try to think about my career as an exploration, something that can change to meet my current needs
Anne Lamott and the headlights! Thank you for reminding me of that beautiful analogy.
To this I cannot speak in general advice, but I can in personal anecdote: I graduated with a Master's in Writing for Children and stumbled into childcare work, which I ended up absolutely loving. I worked as a preschool teacher for eight years, dove into early childhood ed research, attended conferences, the whole shebang. However, the system is broken, and all roads for a preschool teacher lead to burnout. (I always tell people: The problem was never, ever the children. It was everything else.) Early 2023, I requested leave to go to Florida and spend time with my dad while he was on hospice. He passed five days after my arrival, but I still spent a month there, rang my boss, and told her I quit. I couldn't imagine returning to work, staring into the sweet faces of those children, and managing to hold myself together.
This meant flying back to the Bay Area unemployed and with NO PLAN. But here comes the best part: I had stayed in touch over the years with one of my former students and his family, from the age of three until now (he just turned eleven). I attended all his birthday parties and visited at their house often. When the dad reached out to me to see how I was faring, I filled him in and he responded with, "I have an idea." It turns out his wife, mother of my former student and Executive Director at a legal aid non-profit, needed a new assistant.
Is this job my passion? No. I am taking paralegal classes to learn more about the field, but does this mean I will be a paralegal? Maybe! Did eight years of working with preschool-aged children prep me for working with attorneys? Absolutely (snark intended). Does working in the legal field (something in my youth I swore I would NEVER do) help me stay connected to my late father, who was an attorney? In some ways, yes. And I no longer suffer burnout.
This is a total novella but I suppose my point is, nothing is permanent, and if you try to stick to one path it lessens the likelihood of you surprising yourself or finding open doors you didn't even know where there. Cultivate relationships. You will be OK, dear questioner.
Haley, your response is so good, it made me *finally* “upgrade to paid” and these comments are just the cherry on top. What a beautiful, thoughtful community to have found 💫
I really needed this!!! (I'm 25)
Who knew a unifying force of maybe baby subscribers was built on dreams of being furniture apprentices ✊🏻 … is this why we love Danny
Hhahaha
In love with your answer Haley and with everyone's comments
I have two thoughts here:
1- there was a unsettling feeling during my first job out of school right around the time a school term would have ended. We spend our whole lives doing school, and then it ends and we get a break to reset, and then start again. Except now I didn't get a pause and reset, work just kept going. It was at this time I really felt like the reader, considering going to grad school, looking for how to leave the country, work on a farm, etc. I ended up not doing any of those things and pushing through. It just felt like I really needed to do something different because my whole entire life I had. Even though the letter writer is out of school, it sounds like she hasn't made it over the hump that was instilled in us early on. Push through!
2- a job should do a few things: pay our bills, let us put away for retirement, not be every hour of the day (aka allows for a meaningful personal life), let us live a comfortable life and afford to do a few fun things/experiences, not be a hell hole with awful people who treat you badly, have some predictability/dependability. If you can find work like this, you can live your passions in the off hours, take classes that interest you (writing, art, science, maths!), go to live shows, see other parts of the world, find your fellow weirdos. A job doesn't need to do all that, it just is a way to afford your life!
this is so interesting.
I work at a job I love, feel called to, and am deeply fulfilled by. BUT I work 70-80 hours a week, and I am frequently emotionally devastated at work. My job affects my relationships, my health, my wellbeing. I have found myself fantasizing about exactly the job the letter writer has - easy, well paid, boring.
I think something at the heart of this is that millennials were taught that you should love your job. I think that is ultimately a weird neoliberal fallacy. You don’t need to love your job - it is a means to support the things in your life you do love.
And the grass is always greener - i “followed my dreams” to become a public defender. I love what I do. I am also physically and emotionally exhausted most of the time and sometimes dread going to work just like anyone else.
I also love the tree passage from the Bell Jar in when thinking about this feeling: https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/s/g8vLkg4v5W
This resonated with me. I am a scientist, work too much, have job insecurity and I'm not paid very well. I keep fantasising about a corporate job. It's also a struggle to follow your dreams...
I have felt like this reader many times throughout my life. Two things have helped me.
Re-reading the Eileen Myles poem Peanut Butter. The whole poem frees me of the expectations I subconsciously stack up about my life, and specifically this line:
I am
absolutely in opposition
to all kinds of
goals. I have
no desire to know
where this, anything
is getting me.
Secondly, cultivating interests and hobbies outside of work. I am a very keen gardener and often think I should give up my corp job and become a gardener, but when I feel like this I try and remind myself that being paid to do something doesn't inherently add more value to the activity and actually would most likely reduce my enjoyment. So I continue with my corp job for stability (often underestimated) and volunteer as often as I can. I think this fulfils me just as much as if I'd pursued it as a 'career'.
i wholeheartedly second everything. stability + fulfilling hobbies = peace and happiness. i think this is the secret sauce. the unfortunate thing is that stable jobs are often so taxing that you don’t have the bandwidth to do your hobbies. sigh.
Love this advice. Working as a junior doctor has seen me (and still sees me) riddled with sunk cost fallacy. I always had semi-specific goals of “get into med school” or “become a doctor” but inevitably life would expand out before me as I sat in the “arrival” of my goal and I’d feel unfulfilled. Narrowing a career choice down to find a specialty is the current convention or gold standard in medicine, but I’ve always been a bit of a free spirit as well, and now as a 4th year doctor I still find myself dipping my toes into various areas of medicine, then shuddering at the prospect of locking myself into one thing forever. Like you so beautifully articulate, what matters more is who you are in your job, than the job itself. The hardest thing for me has been realising that the dreams I’ve made (“I’ll be the best female surgeon this world has ever seen!!!”) are both possible, but not likely to generate a life of vitality. I’m constantly having identity crises as my colleagues seem to “just know” (I hate that term) and get on with things. Lately, having more curiosity and openness with aligning my values to a space I can apply my work and training, as opposed to hammering myself into the space of perceived ultimate success, has been really healing. And having many interests outside medicine, something that I once felt was at odds with life as a doctor, has actually helped me take my foot off the pedal and be steered to places I could not have predicted or controlled. I too have been frustrated by the multiple pivots I’ve made, but I now see it could have been no other way for me, I simply have to know when I’m desperately curious and deeply suffocated by specific work situations. I’ve learned there is no “arriving” anywhere, which is maybe what the deep ache I feel is about. Seeing this as part of life helps me settle into the moments, however brief they may be.
As a fellow future doctor, I’m curious which path you choose! I’ve always felt unnecessarily worried medicine would “become my identity”. It sounds like you’ve bristled against similar vibes that permeate the training process.
I wrote alllll about it here! https://open.substack.com/pub/amusebooth/p/the-future-enters-us-long-before?r=te03m&utm_medium=ios
it’s so cliche but i have to mention something my therapist said that i can’t get out of my head!!! i’ve been feeling some version of this for the past year and a half as i’ve been applying to law school and during one of my endless rants about feeling unmoored and just wanting stability (re: not knowing what city i’m moving to, what my life will look like there, etc etc) and my therapist was like “it’s helpful to remove feeling settled from your goals.” and i asked if he felt settled (he’s late 40s, has his phd and successful research/teaching career, now in private practice, married with two kids, owns his house etc…) and he said no!!!! i couldn’t believe it! he has always struck me as having the a perfect picture of a settled life!!! it has been great for my curiosity about the future/the unknown/success/career/goals while filtering out the need for certainty in order to be satisfied with the present. i am always about to arrive, but never quite there! and that’s ok!
I love how simply they've articulated what I think I just rambled about in my own silly comment here LOL.
"It is helpful to remove feeling settled from your goals."
Yes, that's it. I just appreciate moments of quiet and peace, however fleeting, whenever they arrive and try not to cling to them.
so good <3 the artist's way is an incredible tool for doing this kind of generative, healing work - it's a cliche for a reason!