Advice

You May Have a Job – But Do You Have a Life?

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You have a great job.  A fantastic job.  You love what you do.  You love what you make.  You hate to leave work – and probably don't really leave as much as people may think.

If you're a progeek (such as myself) of course that's kind of a holy career grail – the job you love that embodies all your interests.

However you may have the ideal job – but do you have a life?

This of course is often a massively loaded question for us progeeks and profans – our goal is to turn our hobbies into our careers.  We may not have a life to some people as we're geeks and otaku, but we often have quite a diverse and interesting life – and turning what we love into jobs would seem to make our lives even more, well, lifelike.

That can be wrong.  We get it wrong on scale.

A job is what we do to earn a living and do something we (hopefully) consider important in our society and community.

A career is the path of our jobs, of our professional development.  It's a the arc, the progress, we make in manifesting what we like to do and care about.

A life is the entire big picture, how everything comes together.  It is our past and our future, it is what we care about and do.  It is, in short, who we are.  "Having a life" means having something that matters to us, that has context and meaning, a past and a future.

You can have a "life" and be an introvert off writing code or books or what have you – if that truly is part of an overall, fulfilling life.  You can be a genius on a job you love – but with no arc to your career and no sense of the bigger picture, it's really shallow and meaningless.  The stereotypical nerd off writing amazing code with few friends may indeed be more happy than someone beloved, famous, and facing a meaningless life.

Having a life is one where what we do, who we know, our careers, and our job come together to make something meaningful to us, something that's part of the even bigger picture – of what and who we care about, and of what matters to us.  It's the history of our development and growth as people, where we know why we do what we do and how we'll get where we want to go.

So you may have a job.  But don't mistake it for a life.

– Steven Savage

Why You Shouldn’t Measure By Negative Role Models

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Do you have someone you look to and say "I don't want to be like that?"

If you do that, and my guess is most people do, you're in danger of trapping yourself.

Negative Role Models, as I call them, are insidious traps – and easy ones to fall into.  How many of us could easily list mistakes we don't want to make we've seen others make, or sadly, people who embody what we don't want to be?  How many of us have actually learned good lessons by learning from other people's mistakes.

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Frustration Friday: A Personal Message To Two Certain Kinds of People

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Psst.  Hey.  Come here.  I need to talk to you two.

OK first, I need to talk to you, the person whose trying to encourage people to get a job.  Let's you and me talk.

OK.  Now that I got your attention, let's talk about your situation. You've got people in your life that have to get a job or a better job.  Maybe they're friends or family or roommates, but yeah, I get it – they have to get off their butts and find something.

Now I know what you're doing – you've got a strategy.  You ask them regularly how they're doing and let them know what they're doing wrong.  You remind them constantly that they need to have a job or get a better one.  You helpfully remind them that the economy stinks to high heaven.  Of course, your big strategy is to tell them how much they've failed so they get the idea.

I got a piece of advice for you.

STOP BEING SUCH A PAIN IN THE NECK.

Seriously, do you think you're helping people by hovering over them, berating them, reminding them of mistakes?  Do you think they actually think you're on their side?  Do you think that, maybe, just maybe you're distracting them and making them feel bad as opposed to being a source of aid and inspiration.

Honestly.  Get off their backs, you're not helping.

OK, now, you, the person looking for work.  Ignore that guy I was just talking to and come here.

Now, I know what your situation is like.  I've seen it before.  I've been there.  You need a job or need a new job or a new career.  You're pretty aware of it.

I also know what you're doing.  You're really not sure what to do, it's hard to figure it out, so maybe you'll deal with it eventually.  Maybe you figure you'll wait for things to get better.  You also don't want to overburden yourself with designing new resumes or taking classes – unemployment is stressful.  Finally, let's face it, you don't want to change – change is hard.

I also have a piece of advice for you.

GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND GET TO WORK.

Look, I'm sympathetic, but seriously, times are tough and every day wasted is a day lost.  You need a plan, you need a goal, and you need to get to work.  Fast.  A lot.  The world economy is re-aligning and you could end up crushed under it.

Don't go getting angsty or lazy either.  Emo whining and passively waiting aren't going to solve your problems.  You will get ground to dust by the wheel of change if you don't get moving, and frankly some of us are tired of trying to drag you out of the way.

Now.  That's done, let's talk to both of you.  Pushy Get-a-Job-Person?  Shiftless Looking-For-A-Job-Sort-Of-Person?

You two are both giant pains because sane people have to deal with fixing your idiocy.  We're the ones that comfort people that have been exhausted and frustrated by supposedly supportive people constantly harping on them because they haven't found work.  We're the ones that have to make up for those of you too lazy, confused, or aimless to go have a real job at real pay.  We're kind of sick of it.

Worse, know what?  You two cause each other.

The more you harass people over their job situation, the more likely they are to withdraw and give up.  The more you don't get off your backside and look for work, the more people feel they have to harass you into productivity.  The more you two do your thing, the more the rest of us have to suffer, and the more the rest of us might just fall into the traps of Get-A-Job-Annoyer and Not-Really-Trying-Job-Seeker.

So, do us all a favor and get your acts together.

We've got other things to worry about.

– Steven Savage