How do you think of it? Is it just a job to you and think of it in those terms? Or do you have much more of an attachment to it? Do you think too much about it? Or do you have some other attitude entirely about it?
Your attitude towards what you do for a living
How do you think of it? Is it just a job to you and think of it in those terms? Or do you have much more of an attachment to it? Do you think too much about it? Or do you have some other attitude entirely about it?
Work should be something that you'd do whether you got paid for it or not, but it almost never is that.
Rant:
I already answered in the shoutbox, but figured I might elaborate a bit here. My job/career to me is more or less an excuse to get paid to do things I think are fucking awesome for half my week each week in exchange for long hours, a lot of travel, and a lot of paperwork drudgery in the remainder of the 40-60 hour week. There was one moment that the balance got tipped too far away from awesome into drudgery by either terrible clients, unappreciative managers, getting triple-booked, and/or sleeping on the benches in the Atlanta airport. That's the same moment I filled out and sent in an application for a position that is similar with similar pay but promises roughly similar drudgery but more importance to the cool stuff. If at some point, assuming I get the new position, that the novelty wears off and things slip too far into drudgery again I'll start looking again.
If a job is mostly suck or keeping me away from things that actually matter I'll find new opportunities to do cool stuff and pay for things. If my line of work becomes majority boring crap I'll find a new line of work.
"I would rather be ashes than dust"
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
it´s a big part of your life so you should try to make the most of it otherwise a big part of your life...sucks.
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit
Its just a job. I generally think of my jobs in terms of how much I can tolerate them instead of how much i enjoy them lol :/
I'm only attached insofar as i'm thinking about my level of security and/or potential for advancement. Unless im miserable, in which case it occupies my mind a lot. But I'm not at this time.
I’m not a fussy person with regard to it. I started working when I was 14 years old and was in service/retail jobs for many years before I graduated from college. I used to not know what I wanted to do or care because of this lack of fussiness or really apathy which was perhaps unhealthy. But I eventually found the inspiration to pursue my dream career and I’m doing cool stuff now, but it all came from the same mentality. Be proactive, seek opportunities, keep climbing, and just put in the honest work and do it.
Sorry if that sounds like a stock inspirational poster at your asshole boss or therapist’s office. I also have the ability to eat shit, do the (actually at times literal, even now) shit work, and suck it up to a great extent. I’m a very political person. Those things have also helped me greatly. I’m an introverted extrovert and I look grumpy and unapproachable at first sight but I try my best to be friendly and social in work-related situations, and I make sure I’m still presentable off-hours.
Ideally, I see my job not only as a source of income, but also an avenue to build positive connections, help others and gain validation. To summarize, I take pride in my responsibilities and do my best, and I’m very rational and proactive towards it and my career when I feel inspired. In the past I watched a coworker hose down poop from a plastic cafe chair; now I’m managing things on an international scale.
Last edited by sbbds; 12-04-2018 at 01:06 PM.
i'm not really the right person to answer this. to waste my life on something which i'm not particularly attached to is not something i can actually manage to do in the long run. i never did anything in my life which i didn't like (even if it means i have to suffer for it in other ways) and i have no discipline whatsoever to the point where it scares me sometimes. i'm literally able to quit any job (or anything related) without second thought, even if it means i'll end up dead on the streets.
someday i should face the repercussions for my actions and lifestyle choices, yet i never did. i somehow end up getting random job offers from people i know, based on whatever thing i currently focus on, and then i try to get away from it or not too deeply involved so that i quit any time.
i'm actually not surprised because i usually pick things based on personal interest (but i always have some pragmatic reason for it).
this seems somehow too elusive for people which lack 'global perspective' (who from my perspective are stuck in dead-end jobs which will lead nowhere). like i get criticised for doing useless stuff which doesn't seem beneficial money wise, but it is if you consider the bigger context.
it's weird, it's always so obvious to me yet somehow people rely on a false sense of security and then get surprised that their career path didn't work out (which i often see a long time coming). somehow a lot of people my age i know who had more commitment to work and the security it offers without necessarily the 'passion' for it, now lock themselves up at home and refuse to work because of capitalism or whatever, and i'm likei thought this was obvious.
i'll never ever want to end up feeling stuck or feel apathetic towards my job choices to the point of giving up. i actually do everything which makes my CV to look alright & improvise a lot.
once i did work (for a month) just for the money, but the actual reason being that i felt miserable at that time and decided to prove to myself that it is necessary some sort of responsibility (or something like that). in the end, i got so sick and exhausted from it and developed a weird skin disease for 6 months which was covering my whole body due to low immune system. it looked so horrible. like from a horror movie.
i can fall into very low spirits where i get anxious about my future, because i actually experienced the feeling of being burnt out and not being able to rely on my natural adaptibility and the drive to find something which sparks my interest enough that i can focus on it for a while until i find something i can settle in for the long run.
so, yes, the possibility that i find a fixed career path which will sustain my interest in the long run might not exist and in the end i'll end up extremely miserable. until then i continue just doing what i'm doing now. (which i'm not that into, but i see the long time benefit).
my main priorities now are a actually a steady income and a health insurance. lol. now, this comes as a surprise to many who know me, as well. but it's just a different angle to approach the same thing which is the most important to me. i have the same outcome in mind, just a different focus on how to approach it. at the moment, i need as much money as i can get, haha. then i can shift & modify things again.
i might end up miserable and unhappy or poor and dying on the streets, i'm not really optimistic at this point, but until then everything is working out alright, i guess.
a "working hard or hardly working" will fill me with disgust, a well-set machine will make my world
I like getting money. Best thing about money is not caring about money. Second up, me knowing well-enough I made something better bc my effort/s. In factories, this can be easy. I cook food and do light auto repairs for same reasons. Third up's the vibe of the place. I don't need much. Would love for warmer temps and lighting in factories, current one's cool bc motion sensors turn on lights when stuff is moving, and the lights turn off if there's no motion. Cozier and more chilled vibe.
The more cash I make, and the more I can see the aftereffects of my actions, the more I'll like doing whatever I'm doing. Forced camaraderie at workplaces is horrible for me. Night shifts have been excellent bc there's nearly NONE of that, and I see the sun rise every day.
p . . . a . . . n . . . d . . . o . . . r . . . a
trad metalz | (more coming)
This is interesting because it seems like some people in this thread are the polar opposite of me in this. Potential new questionnaire question...?
I need to be doing something interesting or meaningful to derive enjoyment from it. I've done physical jobs, and I appreciate the fact that you get to see the results of your labor, but on a long-term scale there needs to be some kind of intellectual component. I've spoken before about programming, which I find interesting, but research is my real passion. This is what occupies a lot of my work time lately. I'm extraordinarily fortunate that I'm able to do this (alhamdulillah).
It's rare when what you do is more than just a job, - a status in the socium and way to get the income for you and family.
Partly it's a way of social contacts, which people need.
Partly the way to feel you do important for others.
Depends on what I did.
I'd prefer something important for all, to improve peoples life. To leave useful after my life for others. Alike popular Socionics dating service, mb selfimprovement trainings, new psychotheraupic method. What other ones also could to use, to copy me. But it's above my qualification (would need psychology study, bussiness also), skills to deal with people, no enough of emotional inspiration at now, no of the needed capital, etc complications which look as too huge. Or mb to do other important for the humanity. Then that was more than said above and what almost all have, what is boring and not much decent for a human to spend the life so. The most of people probably are satisfied by such life, anyway. No one will remember them after 100 years and nothing will be left significant after them as persons too, just faceless links in biology kind.
Ambivalence.
The people that make the real money make it by renting real estate and capitalizing off smart investments. Or loaning money to people that need it. Basically, a lot of passive income that makes people rich is by preying on the needs of the poor. And when you have more money than most, you have an unfair amount of buying power because everyone pays the same price for food and shelter. See if you're poor, your rent and food is priced relative to all the other poor people around you. But if you are rich, you get a great deal. Actually, that's really the way most people get rich is by exploiting the poor for passive income.
And if you're poor you could try college, but it's no guarantee to a high paying job. You might end up with student loans you can't get rid of, a lot of wasted time, and have to work harder to make up for it. Even something like becoming a doctor carries a huge gamble; for example, my eye doctor is incredibly poor. He has over 200 grand worth of student loans, a practice with a huge amount of debt, and has to see so many patients in a year to break even. He says in ten years or so, he will have it all paid off, so it's an investment, but god damn. Apparently dentists have a high suicide rate for this reason, plus the fact that people don't usually like going to the dentist. Society makes it very hard to make money, unless like I said above, you figure out how to exploit the poor.
And what Adam and ashlesha said.
It feels American society is just built on greed and I hate it. Nobody really seems to put quality of life, happiness, and a meaningful existence first. It's all about the $$$. And so ambivalence. If a job gets bad enough that I can't stand the people around me anymore I'll give two weeks notice and quit. And work somewhere else.
It's true that many, and maybe even most rich people get rich(er) by exploiting people.Originally Posted by Dalek Caan
But renting (eg) and fulfilling (not preying on) the needs of others for money is not inherently unfair. And how is it unfair that rich people get more buying power? If they got their money in an ethical way there's nothing wrong with that. Equality of opportunity, not outcome.
Not sure what you mean by that...rent and food are priced according to how much people are willing to pay for it, like anything else.because everyone pays the same price for food and shelter. See if you're poor, your rent and food is priced relative to all the other poor people around you. But if you are rich, you get a great deal.
Last edited by Exodus; 12-09-2018 at 01:18 PM.
Because when you rent things like shelter or sell food that people need, you price it relative to what people can pay (supply and demand) to extort as much money from them. They have no choice after all; they need those things. And when you are rich and there are very few of you, but many poor people that can't pay too much, you're paying the supply and demand for the poor price. If everyone had more money, the price would just go up. Price is a relative things.
Maybe a better example is getting a speeding ticket. Everyone pays the same price. But is that fair? If someone makes more money, shouldn't they be penalized more? Cause if I make a million dollars a year, a $50 speeding tickets means nothing to me, but if I'm making minimum wage, it hurts a lot more.
Basically, I'm saying when it comes to shelter and food, the only fair system is to pay a percentage of your income for these things. So if I make a million dollars a year and food and shelter is 25%, then I pay $250,000, while someone who makes minimum wage pays much less. This of course doesn't mean the other $750,000 couldn't be used for nice cars, houses, vacations, or good food and such, but there needs to be a baseline to protect the poor, otherwise the economic system is way too biased between rich and poor. And by giving the rich more inherent buying power over basic needs and extorting as much as possible from the poor, it's designed to get worse over time.
I was a warrior before I started working for the military anyway..
In a competitive market economy there's also pressure from the companies they're competing with to charge lower prices, and ultimately to charge only what it costs to provide the product/service.
The real problem is monopoly/oligopoly, lobbying, and other non-competitive practices. Barriers to entry are also a problem but not one that can be so easily fixed, depending on the industry.
Sure, that's a better example. But a speeding ticket is actually meant to hurt, otherwise it's not a good deterrent.Maybe a better example is getting a speeding ticket. Everyone pays the same price. But is that fair? If someone makes more money, shouldn't they be penalized more? Cause if I make a million dollars a year, a $50 speeding tickets means nothing to me, but if I'm making minimum wage, it hurts a lot more.
ok, so how do you plan to implement that? If you charge rich people $1000 for a piece of bread, they're just going to send a poor person to go buy it for them. How do you even decide what a fair percentage of income to pay is? It would also make it extremely confusing for consumers and completely nonsensical for producers, since there's no longer any relation between between how much it takes to produce and the cost. There also remains the huge problem of figuring out people's income, and rich people are pretty good at getting around that too, if taxes are any indication.Basically, I'm saying when it comes to shelter and food, the only fair system is to pay a percentage of your income for these things. So if I make a million dollars a year and food and shelter is 25%, then I pay $250,000, while someone who makes minimum wage pays much less. This of course doesn't mean the other $750,000 couldn't be used for nice cars, houses, vacations, or good food and such, but there needs to be a baseline to protect the poor, otherwise the economic system is way too biased between rich and poor. And by giving the rich more inherent buying power over basic needs and extorting as much as possible from the poor, it's designed to get worse over time.
The real goal here should be to make sure that it's easier for poor people to provide for their basic needs, not that it's harder for rich people. We already have ways for dealing with that, namely welfare. Basic income could maybe work but it's more speculative. The system you're proposing is just as complicated as taxes/welfare yet contradicts basic principles of economics.
Last edited by Exodus; 12-10-2018 at 08:19 AM.
I want to talk about working style.
I like to do all my work in a concentrated burst. For this reason I really like/need to have time constraints to be able to work efficiently. Self-imposed ones will work just as well but I need to have tangible outcomes that will happen for me to determine those from. It’s next to impossible to get me to focus or get anything that’s “real work” done without setting my constraints.
I always first determine the most pertinent goals and limitations, and design a plan backwards around those.
i don't wanna do things
i wanna not do things
i'm tired of being kept busy all the time, getting absolutely no fiscal reward for it, and then getting told i'm a burden because i have to spend all my time doing what i've been made to do because i know of no alternative, and that i'm somehow too smart to be complaining about not being able to do things far above my mental capacity in limited time just because i got trained like a monkey to do very specific things as a kid
Ditto to all of this except for the effectiveness of self-imposed constraints and working backwards. Self-imposed ones tend to just get pushed off as long as possible, and I tend to identify where I wanna get and try to just bulldoze from step one until I get there.
How do you respond to when there's a lull in the work and you end up sitting around twiddling your thumbs a lot. I seem to get extremely anxious and agitated when things feel like they're just sitting idle.
"I would rather be ashes than dust"
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
My current job is something I do to survive. Rather hate it. Was more idealistic with my former job in that I actually cared about the cause behind it and felt a meaning to it but still didn't find the actual work enjoyable enough so left for something that paid more with less hours.
I think mine is more fundamentally different from yours compared to woof’s. I can see how mine is different from yours because I talk about pushing and working through apathy. I can see how woof’s has an Se feel too, but I don’t think it looks like his sentiments are that different from yours.
My job is a self-consuming balancing act for my sanity
I only get anxious if I’m worried other people will think that I’m doing nothing. LOL. If there’s nothing pressing to do or if I don’t have the energy, usually my brain turns off and I feel sleepy. “Hurry up and wait” is the worst though I can agree with you on that.
Hmm I get you. If I'm on a weekend or PTO or something I can space out for maybe an hour or two and then I need to get to doing something again that feels active. We have seasons in our industry that are extremely slow so we can end up with 2-3 weeks of no client work and I've noticed I start getting really irritable and pacing around like the world is in slow motion and I'm stuck in it. Then client work starts and all that goes away.
"I would rather be ashes than dust"
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
It’s very hard for me to just space out at work sometimes I think. If possible I literally sleep lol. Maybe it has something to do with my version of alertness cycles. Do you sleep easily in public?
On a plane I can sleep easily-ish for maybe 30min - 1hr at a time if I'm already actually tired. Otherwise nope, I start getting paranoid about the others around me. I've also had a stupid amount of practice at sleeping on planes over the last 3 years lol
"I would rather be ashes than dust"
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
I'm very passionate about my work. Regardless of circumstances, I always have a positive mindset. It's actually pretty hard for me to feel down at work. The moment I step in I focus only on doing the job and nothing else. But I have no trouble changing jobs if I feel like I'm getting exploited. I usually need a major change every couple of years. If I don't get a promotion or be allowed to challenge myself I leave and find a better opportunity.
There are few places where efficiency and hard work is not rewarded, like the military. That is the only time I had to change my way of doing things and kept a low profile. I was purposely average and avoided any responsibility. I remember hating the military ever since I was a kid. It's too authoritarian for my liking. I had to do compulsory service for a year. I have respect for the people serving but no respect for the institution itself.
I agree
Same here mostly. For me it's the feeling that people are counting on me coupled with time constraints that makes me work most effectively. My motivation to do work is almost entirely sustained from feeling valuable and appreciated, which is why I get so upset when people talk shit about me, because then all my fucks go out the window.
My career has been something I've wanted since I was a kid. I knew exactly what I wanted to "be when I grew up." Now I am in school for veterinary technology and I couldn't imagine doing anything different. Even if I did not have to work, I would still do this. I could not do something "just for a decent job."
𝒯𝒶𝓊𝓇𝓊𝓈 ☼ | 𝒞𝒶𝓅𝓇𝒾𝒸𝑜𝓇𝓃 ☾ | 𝒮𝒸𝑜𝓇𝓅𝒾𝑜 ↑
~ 𝒮𝓁𝓎𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝒾𝓃 ~
I am a software developer. I love programming a lot, if I didn't have to worry about money I would probably be a game developer. My least favorite things are management tasks and coordinating with other teams, ideally I wish they would just sit me in front of a computer and code for 8 hours a day.
Same. I like knowing that we are all working toward creating something great. I work in a very collaborative environment, I love when everyone is working toward the same goal.
But the culture is mostly toxic and people are always bound to talk about you behind your back. Tbh, I give them something to talk about for the lols. I figure if people are talking about you they must be bitter idiots with no future prospects who'll eventually get their ass kicked out, so amuse them by amusing yourself. Make them waste their time talking about you.
It just occurred to me that I really like (and right now miss) working a lot more independently, where I basically had full control over receiving clients and the product and selling, all of it. People’s feedback on my work is almost always just obtrusive and worthless. People I’ve been working for recently are nice but all ESL and extremely tactless over text. I best liked jobs where my manager wasn’t around most of the time looking over my shoulder. I’m juggling working for several people right now and (amazingly, except for the LSE one, so so much for that stereotype— although, she’s a little bit up my ass as well) they’re all like this and it’s hell. I’m also extremely not passionate about most of what I’ve been doing this past week especially so that’s a big part of it, I think I’ll need to find one full time job soon instead.
It really all comes down to being in control of my time. I get depressed when everything is scheduled by someone else, and being reliant on others is uncomfortable. I just want to be independent and in control. I want to be fully responsible for screwing up my life, not given what I need to survive by someone else as long as I remain loyal. Of course, I also want to be responsible for being competent and well-off, but that's a distant goal lol.
I will change my living standards and goals as much as I need to be independent.
I need to feel neutral with it, and look at it coldly and logically (well as much as I can for an IEI). No attitude at all is the best bet for me.
If I'm too excited about it it, it won't work because no reality can match the perfection of my pure IEI romantic illusions. If I hate/dislike it, it obviously won't work and I will just quit it. I'm not an end-justifies-the-means sort of person, I hate torturing myself just because it's something that pays well and makes me look competent in the eyes of others. But I do understand that with any job I must self-torture somewhat, as I have Te polr lolol.
Okay...I should probably add context. Mostly, I was thinking in reference to in North Dakota where there was an oil boom so many years ago. So what happened is the price of oil went up very high and suddenly the small oil wells that were costly to drill became profitable. So very quickly these oil companies were paying people lots of money to come and produce oil from those derelict wells that had now become essentially gold.
What happened next is that the workers needed temporary places to live, so because they were getting paid so much money, they were willing to spend a lot more on rent in order to live close to where the oil wells were.
The result is that rent skyrocketed and the cost of real estate went up as well. So this is good for everyone that owned property (including those rent out places), but for someone that was renting because they couldn't afford to buy a house, suddenly you either had to move or pay more money, but you weren't making any more money at your job. At least not right away anymore; over time companies that could afford too started paying more, but it's the same with the minimum wage. It doesn't follow inflation, it lags and if/when people decide to raise it, then it normalizes. Being poor is a real disadvantage.
But basically, what I'm getting at is that someone who rents is at risk. I don't think it's ridiculous to implement some kind of protection for people that can't even afford to buy a house. Western economics seems to have this implication that if you don't have enough money, you don't deserve any kind of protection or security from those that do.
Well realistically it would never happen. So I propose no solutions for implementing this. Nobody would allow it in the same way nobody wants to pay for welfare programs. So if you were asking me, I think the only way forward is destruction of the entire system. A complete financial collapse in order to rebuilt it from the ground up. But most people don't like the sound of that either. And it would have to be predicated on the idea that having money isn't necessary for getting basic needs met.ok, so how do you plan to implement that? If you charge rich people $1000 for a piece of bread, they're just going to send a poor person to go buy it for them. How do you even decide what a fair percentage of income to pay is? It would also make it extremely confusing for consumers and completely nonsensical for producers, since there's no longer any relation between between how much it takes to produce and the cost. There also remains the huge problem of figuring out people's income, and rich people are pretty good at getting around that too, if taxes are any indication.
The real goal here should be to make sure that it's easier for poor people to provide for their basic needs, not that it's harder for rich people. We already have ways for dealing with that, namely welfare. Basic income could maybe work but it's more speculative. The system you're proposing is just as complicated as taxes/welfare yet contradicts basic principles of economics.
I love my work and the people I work with == less stress; happy life
I don't have much attachment to my work though. I'm only like, love what I'm doing plus I'm getting paid for what I love to do.
Probably a bit too early to say yet, as I still have to graduate from the uni and actually experience how it goes, but I would say... I like it? The question mark is there for the fact that translating things kind of feels something natural to me, especially if I like the song/video/whatever the text was about, I automatically find myself thinking about how would I get around some trickier parts while translating, as well as have a tendency to try make things sound more "casual" without realizing as I translate (something I need to look out for- since most things I translated outside the classes are stuff like songs I liked, anime/manga I enjoy, recently Danganronpa's Turkish fan translation group thingy, added to generally sounding a lot less casual/natural to others even when not intending to, it is something I tend to overemphasize while trying to translate as it is an area I feel lacking in) but from whatever we translated in classes so far... I still do enjoy it, really?
I mean, when it is on something I don't find as interesting, I just mostly power through it and try to make it more fun for myself by skirting around whatever formality I can drop in the text for more casual vibe, but if it is a text that requires more formal approach, then I can roll with it for a while until it gets boring. The class I find most interesting is unsurprisingly the translation theories class, which is taught by an ESE teacher with some strong Enneagram 3 elements to her (as she is also juggling being the associate dean and is pretty involved in the social progression/feminism related discussions/research in the field, for someone claiming to have came here to chill out from burning herself out on bigger city life while chasing after success) and I find that the part I enjoy most about whole translation business is picking apart why I or others come to picking specific words for translating specific things, especially in literary context, as well as how to get over more troubling parts (and translation critique- something I picked up thanks to having seen some "official" translations of Japanese series I like where you can tell the translator didn't know the context well enough to even know more frequent terms to translate them consistently at some instances, let alone more subtle things).
Which is why I am considering going for academia/getting an MA-PhD in the future as I think rather than having more monotone repetative translation work as reality of the field is described as you mostly do technical translations or more by-the-mold ones like that in general, given how it is fairly hard to survive off on literary translation added to the fact that despite finding it fun to mull over, I am not that great at things involving literary but also would really wouldn't want to have to translate pages upon pages of stuff I find boring, I would rather write some paper on whatever I like and happen to analyze/find things I would enjoy to pick apart and would do so even if it was not my job, just with a polished language and added citations.
That would most likely involve teaching at uni at some point as usually just writing papers isn't enough as well, but eh, I like explaining things to others if I feel like I know enough on the topic to talk about it, so I can probably wing it one way or another, and if not, we will see. So long as sense of self challenge and interest is there, without too much of a hostile work space or in general things ending up with public humiliation to a degree I just want to crawl in a hole and die, I feel like I can handle it, is the feeling.
Fair enough. That kind of situation does seem destructive to society, but I haven't thought much about what the best way to resolve it is.
Then maybe you should start thinking about systems that could actually be implementedWell realistically it would never happen. So I propose no solutions for implementing this. Nobody would allow it in the same way nobody wants to pay for welfare programs. So if you were asking me, I think the only way forward is destruction of the entire system. A complete financial collapse in order to rebuilt it from the ground up. But most people don't like the sound of that either. And it would have to be predicated on the idea that having money isn't necessary for getting basic needs met.Even financial collapse doesn't guarantee that you could do something like this.
I have yet to find anything worth a while, that I can perceive being something I want to pursue. So I have been basically just going in it for the money. I am not above doing something I hate, if it has the salary.
There is this old Japanese concept I find interesting, called the Ikigai, and it is suppose to help you discover your purpose in life.
1*qNNzYd3SE1Z09d_IaJOdGA.jpeg
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
