a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by humanodon
humanodon  ·  3868 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The 'Busy' Trap

    It's a scary thought to think about how your life could be different if you waited it out or if you did something different.

Absolutely. This is where I am right now and honestly, it's not a comfortable place to be. But, I spoke to a guy a while age who advised me to think about what I want to do rather than taking any old job that comes along. The reason being, that it's easy to get stuck doing something that you never cared much for in the first place, but was an immediate source of income. And after thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense to me. Fortunately, I am able to take this path, though many others might not be.

Sure, I fill the days with temp work and things I want to work on, but none of it is simply to keep busy. Instead, I'm trying to get deeper into things that interest me and that has guided me to what my current goals are. Anyway, if nothing works out the way that guy suggested, I can always fuck off into the world again, which is how I ended up doing something I didn't want to spend my life doing in the first place. But who knows? Maybe things would turn out differently if I went shooting off in another direction a second time.

I think that there is a lot of meaningful work that can be done, but the problem is that it's often not well-compensated or may be dangerous or outside of where one resides and has important relationships. Meaningful work also tends to be very hard work, which I'm ok with. Hopefully thing will turn out better this year.





ButterflyEffect  ·  3867 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's the exact path that I want to take. It's something that has led me to many an argument, as I know a lot of people that say "a job is a job, you should be happy to have one". No. I shouldn't be if it's not a job I'm not happy working. Less pay for a more interesting and/or fulfilling job is an easy trade off to make, or an entirely different job.

There's so many possibilities that if something isn't working, it's probably work the risk to try something else (assuming family, significant others, money, etc don't pose an issue). Very hard work is typically very fulfilling work.

supersy  ·  3867 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm in the same boat. I've been a web developer for the past 5 years and was getting pretty fed up. I recently changed jobs because I assumed it was my employer that was causing me to become fed up but to be honest I think it's the job itself.

I've very lucky (or am I?) that I live with my parents (being of Indian origin that's the norm) and I'm pretty frugal so have saved up a lot of money. I'm really thinking of going back to college to do something like barbering.

humanodon  ·  3867 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Best of luck, man. I'm not expert at transitioning, but thus far I've learned that networking is really, really important, as is bouncing ideas off of people who are involved in things you might be interested in doing.