Often when people ask me "where do you work," they are polite enough to leave off the end of the question. What they really want to say with a snicker is, "where do you work this week?" This little jab is hard to defend against, after all it's true I had 6...yes, 6 jobs this year alone?! It shocks me to hear it, but lets set the record straight by laying all the cards on the table.
Dec 2013: Left Camp Timberline and the Island of Oahu.
Jan 2014: Desperate to work I got a job as a night stocker at Safeway. Broke my wrist a week later and had to quit, though without the injury I'm not sure I would have lasted much longer. I hated that job.... I thought it would be nice to have literally zero responsibility and not have to think, but now that I can look back on it, I realize that's also the definition of prison life....
Feb 2014: Started working at Home Depot. Spent my days selling appliances; not the worst gig ever, but it still made me realize how important it is to have challenge in somehting you do for most of your day.
June 2014: Had a cool opportunity to go up to Alaska for the summer. Kat was in China, our lease was up and my friend Kaitlin invited me up to do..."something". That something ended up being the most unique job I think I have ever had: for two months I worked on a Halibut charter boat.
September 2014: A friend offered me a job at his dive shop. The official title for the position was dry suit repair tech, unofficially named "glue sniffer". I glued things to other things...I think. That whole time is kinda' fuzzy.
September 2014: Got a second job at Lazy Boy Brewery slinging suds.
October 2014: After less than a week at Lazy Boy, I was offered a job at PC Management. It is a property management company based out of Bellevue. This job offers growth potential, good pay and full benefits. It's a pretty sweet gig; some days are better than others, but over all I can't complain too much.
What conclusions to draw from that massive list of jobs? I don't know... I freely admit I am a bit of a pessimist and am often not happy in what ever situation I am currently in, no matter how awesome it is. I do have an amazing ability to see the downside of any situation. ;) So maybe this new job is actually perfect, maybe I'm not in love with it because I am physically unable to ever be satisfied with the thing I am doing or maybe it's just another ok job in a massive list of ok jobs. This brings me to the question I often ponder; how to choose a career?
I find that there are two equally correct and totally opposite ways to look at career selection. One argument says that your job should provide money, not satisfaction. Happiness doesn't come from a job it comes from the value you create in your life. Mike Rowe says it really well here. The other contrary thought is that you should find your passion and figure out a way for that to pay the bills, i.e. "love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life."
I have trouble with both these ideas. On the one hand, if I don't find some sort of satisfaction in something I am doing 8 hours a day 5 days a week that is a sad sad state of affairs. Working for the weekend feels like a 20 year prison sentence. On the other hand, I still haven't found a job that will pay me ridiculous amounts of money to travel the world eating amazing food. People pay people to do things for a reason...usually because the work is too icky, hard or boring for them to want to do it themselves. My current job, it pays the bills and leaves me enough time to continue working on projects, which is still important to me. Am I satisfied? no, will I ever be? I don't think so, but what's so wrong about always wanting to strive for something better, or to learn something new? I can do this job for now, not for ever but for now it fits my life.
Speaking of projects, I am feeling good about what I've been working on and if I don't love my work, so what. That job has fed, clothed and housed me plus funded all sorts of adventures:
Home made mozzarella....check
Finished the carbon fiber bike fender
Hand made sword? why not!
