Once upon a time, I was very optimistic.
Not optimistic in general, but optimistic about my career. Career was my future, my destiny. I imagined my life unfolding neatly before me; graduate high school with amazing grades, work hard and excel in college and earn a fancy degree, and then I’d get a good job. Something that gave me meaning and supported me financially. I’d work hard and do well there, I’d achieve great things and be trusted and respected and keep advancing in my career.
But that didn’t happen.
I excelled in college and earned the fancy degree, but the misfortune of graduating at the height of the infamous Great Recession curtailed those plans for a good job that supported me. No one wanted to hire a fresh-out-of-college kid with a useless pretentious degree. It seemed like everyone was scrambling for a job, any job.
I kept trying though, I just had to work harder. Learn more. Get more skills and become more perfect. I obsessively read career articles and applied for jobs nonstop. I started taking more classes at a local college and thinking about earning another degree. I got a Master’s from a renowned school and an even more pretentious-sounding degree. I did internships. Networked. I did everything.
Still nothing.
Application after application. If I was lucky, an interview. Nothing was enough.
I moved back in with my mom. I didn’t have enough to get by. I kept job hunting and found several part time jobs that I juggled for a few years. Working 3 jobs still wasn’t enough. I struck out into a new field with a long-running internship while I also managed my 3 jobs. I still lived with my mom because of my finances, a fact that I felt very ashamed of. And societal opinions about grown children who lived with their parents made me feel lazy and worthless; an adult in their mid-20s living at home was an entitled leech with no motivation, they needed to work harder.
So I did.
I earned a job at the place where I volunteered at. It was a stepping stone to greater things, I was sure. The reality didn’t really match up; no one told me the hardest thing about work was the people. Working more and working harder doesn’t accomplish anything if the people in power don’t accept to. Bullying doesn’t go away when you leave school.
I endured a couple of years there, working unendurably hard under impossible expectations. The most important lessons I walked away from that place were about handling conflict, succeeding when my hands are tied behind my back, and holding my own against a tide of cruelty.
When I got my next job, I was apprehensive, but optimistic. For the first time in my life, I could support myself financially. I had made it. A good job. A good company. A good work environment with opportunities for me to advance and grow my career.
It started out great. New challenges, new opportunities, chances for growth. I could see a future for myself there. There were some cracks here and there, sure, but those could be fixed, I could live with those imperfections. And after all, it was worth it.
Those cracks became chasms over the next few years. And working harder, compromising more, learning more, trying more in my career didn’t satisfy me. Standing here in 2022, it’s hard to look at my career as some ultimate destiny to pursue.
I don’t dream of work anymore. It’s just a job I need to keep surviving. It’s hard to sit through presentations praising sales goals and extolling all the organization’s accomplishments. It’s even harder to listen to all the “business reasons” for why you’re not a good enough worker. It doesn’t motivate me to work harder anymore. I’ve discovered that trap and don’t want to fall in again.
Work is not your destiny. Career is not the goal.
You are not your work. Your value has nothing to do with your job, your marketable skills, or career accomplishments. There’s been so much talk the past several months about The Great Resignation and experts puzzle over why people are switching jobs, changing careers, leaving their old jobs behind. Their bafflement baffles me. The Pandemic only revealed what was already there, a discontent with the sacrifice of the self on the alter of work, in service of survival. We kept our heads down, trying to just make it.
People don’t want to “make it” anymore. Work is not your destiny.
