Fork In The Road
I wrote this on Wednesday Morning …
As you’ve probably gathered returning to work this week has been a less than thrilling experience for me. I’ve always loved my job, and I still do, but not with the same vigour and enthusiasm that I have in the past. I can’t seem to find it within myself to make the effort in the way that I once did. I get up and get there on time, both yesterday and today I was at different client sites 30 minutes before they opened the doors. In fact I’m writing this on my laptop in the carpark. And I do my job, even if it is just going through the motions uninspired and with little gratification.
If I told you what I do for a living (though I’m not going to do that 🙂 ) you’d say “Oh, right, you spend all day doing X, Y and Z”. You’d think that the majority of my work is about the execution of what my clients want. But you’d be wrong. The majority of my day is finding out what the clients need and making that happen in the context of their current business and working practices. So the most important part of my work is communication and an ability to create and innovate.
And now I’m fed up to the back teeth of inventing for other people.
If I were prepared to give up our home and move to somewhere smaller and in a less pleasant area I would be able to quit work for a couple of years and strike out on my own. But I’m not, I can’t. In all likelihood we’d never be able to live in such a beautiful place again and I am very attached to this house and its location.
“Oh poor thing!”, I hear you say, “At least you’ve got a home.” And you’d be right, but we’ve worked bloody hard for this place and the sensible, logical, practical part of my brain tells me I should keep coming in to work every morning and earning money to pay the mortgage. We’re lucky to have what we’ve got but we earned it.
When I get home much of my creativity has been soaked up by the day’s activities. I’m starting to resent it. I’ve felt like this before, and may even have blogged about it before. What’s different now is the acuteness of the urge to change things, the intense feeling of gloom that descends over me when I contemplate the working day. No, that’s not it perhaps it’s better described as the feeling that my job is robbing me of the chance to do what I now want to do.
So what do I want to do? Create. Partly to write more, but there are as many starving writers as starving actors, I don’t deceive myself about that. Work for myself too, on projects that I choose, if only life were so simple. I’m not a great author, competent maybe, but I can’t see myself on the best seller list.
If I could go freelance, earn some money at my current profession and have the time to express myself I would be a happier man.
In essence it’s not the working hard that I’m worried about, it’s not being in control of who gets the best of my skills that is at issue.
The New Year is making me assess where I’m going and there may be some difficult and painful decisions ahead. Sadly I suspect that, for the boring, sensible reasons I mentioned above, I’ll be plodding along on this dreadful treadmill same time next year.
But you never know…
Show Suze some love X Click below 🙂 .
My advice would be to not continue to plod in that same job but to investigate the possibilities of going freelance, my be by even asking your present employer if there would be any chance, you never know until you ask.
Why should you give up your dreams, no one should have to do that there must be another way it’s just a matter of find a new route to follow, your writing is very interesting so don’t stop what your good at and like doing.
whatever painful and hard decisions eeds to be taken, you will take them marveously !
I know that you have it in you ! You are a fighter and an extreme optimist that challenges the worlds stages.
So, 2007 is yr year to rock !
Here’s hoping the “But you never know …” becomes reality one day, maybe not very soon, but at least before it’s too late.
I think this is a little more than the winter blues! The game is to stay on the same treadmill until the perfect opportunity is served to you. Don’t compromise your present security. There are so many services you can post your profile on, and receive daily emails of what’s available out there. Believe me there’s a lot!
Once your sitting across from someone negotiating, you have the power to shape it into what your looking for. As Dickie says you may even be able to work something out with your present employer. But I would wait for a second opportunity to arise, before doing that.
Yes, this is a little different than last year, ’cause I remember your post.
Don’t let it get to you. Keep at it, keep your eyes open. Sooner or later, the opportunity will arise. Just follow your instincts.
This is very familiar.
It is amazing how long one will tolerate an unfulfilling career or even a partially satisfying one, just to bring home the nuggets that feed the fires of our existence. The trap being we always spend what we make and leaving that trap requires an upgrade or transition to something of equal measure. Heartache ensues when we become disillusioned with our jobs and passion points to something that places all that you have worked for at risk. I know this feeling well and I wish you all the best luck on whatever resolution you arrive at.
I do know that waiting for external factors to help make the decision easier, sometimes happens but I try not to count on that intervention.
Cheers,
Py
Plodding along, doing what I must to pay the bills is also currently where I am at. After years of really honestly being able to say “I love my job” (rare circumstance, from what I know of) Like you, my creative side, is exhausted by the days end. That creative side, is something I would prefer to use on my behalf. Resenting where it is consumed is something your post just made stop and say ” AH HAH ” Spot on to how I feel. I just hadn’t defined it yet.
Running the same treadmill.. And contemplating the same thoughts.
Sending a cyber hug to you.
The one thing I’ve learned since entering the workforce at 17, in a variety of jobs ranging from being a kitchen hand, to what I’m doing now (the ‘clean’ corporate job), is that there are two types of people: those who are ambitious and those who aren’t (those who are content to work in the same role all their life). Creativity does feature, but it’s not exclusively tied to ambition, there are many people who are ambitious, and climb the ladder, but many often rely on the creativity of others to climb that ladder (corporate, etc, any field).
To be successful in a creative area also involves taking calculated risks, but not putting every egg in the safety basket: in writing, this entails sending out work to be evaluated by strangers who will either accept or reject the work, and bouncing back from any rejection (and a person does need to bounce back) relates to reducing the safety threshold or mentality to a degree (but not to the point of absurdity, or to the point where a person is lying in hospital malnourished. The starving ‘anything‘ today is a cliché). There’s really no safety in anything, be it a steady job or a steady income. An income can be earned just about anywhere where people are qualified in a profession, as well as for those who aren’t formally qualified. Security is important to an extent, but if it eclipses a person’s creative passion by bogging them down, it can become a prison too.
You may be able to look at taking smaller steps freelancing. I once worked with a graphic artist who worked the steady job by day, and also had her own private freelance business just to keep her finger on the pulse of design (in relation to publishing). She wasn’t putting together covers for best sellers, she was designing brochures and things like that, at one point, one of her designs (for a children’s book brochure) became admired by many at the Frankfurt Book Fair of that year, it didn’t gain her immediate fame, she returned home, it’s the small step to the next step, all forming that giant leap and the cover got her noticed, so that her designing future in the industry she enjoyed, looked more promising.
In regard to writing, there are many writers out there, and many are considered great for different reasons, by different people. Writing is much like customer service (which is why a writer has to think of themselves first, before their readers), an area where a writer won’t please everyone; even Dan Brown – despite his considerable royalties – didn’t please everyone, and in some circles he isn’t considered a writing great, those considered writing greats are actually those who have sold less units in a lifetime. Great novels, apart from those that sell millions of copies, are also those who are few and far between like To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee’s only book, some think it’s Truman Capote’s work) and Perfume (Patrick Susskind’s only novel that’s still in print), so greatness tends to fluctuate. There’s no finite definition.
The three key words you’ve noted, the one’s that are important are: communication, innovation and creation. They work together, and these are the skills that sometimes matter more (especially communication), and will most likely remain in the picture when you freelance in the future and that’s all find and well, however there’s also the importance of communicating with oneself objectively and intuitively where personal dreams/passions/ambitions are concerned.
Ana, you’re amazing!
For some reason, the expression: The grass is always greener on the other side
comes to mind.
Ana said what I was going to say: in order to strike out on your own, you need to start slow, on the side, and find new clients while you keep the money coming in from the main job. When you accumulate enough outside work to maintain your current standard of living, go for it! You have an advantage over Americans in that you don’t have to worry about health insurance!
Taking matters into your own hands will improve your outlook on life. Trust me!
WOW! Your page has all kinds of things on it, and I cant find your tits anymore! Maybe you can leave nipple marks in the snow so I can find you!
Hope all is wall Suze!
I’m hoping 2007 will be an eventful year at least, maybe even a year for climbing out of the rut I feel myself in. The grass does always look greaner on the other side, but it’s different gras and that can make all the difference.
Well…all I can say is that I hope you find what you are looking for. If you do decide to take a leap, I think it is better to do it sooner rather than later. I always found a reason not to chase my dream, until my being fired made it a much more attractive possibility. I wish I had done it twenty years ago.
Hi there Alex. This sounds exactly like me 10 years ago. I started a part-time business doing something that was completely different to my main job. I got more and more disillusioned with the main job but the part-time business didn’t generate anything like the income to replace my salary and at the time I couldn’t see how it ever could. Eventually I went freelance doing the same as my main job but for myself. I’d planned that the part-time business would stay part time.
What I discovered, though, is that I was fed up with what I was doing as my main job. The initial excitement at working for myself soon wore off and I was just as fed up as I was before. I ended up putting all my energy into what was the part-time business and, thankfully, it took off.
It was a big risk at the time giving up the salaried job – at the time we had two small children – but it was worth it.
One thing, though. I didn’t rush into it. It took me about 2 or 3 years to finally make the decision to leave my job and I spent that time setting things up financially so that if the worst happened and we had no income for a year or so we could manage.
Anyway, I hope things work out for you eventually.
hugs… i think this mood is pervasive all over…. you are not alone. You are fabulous in any regard. Good luck for what ever you choose.
Mr Fab, I hope so too
Ed, we all have our own roads to walk. I think mine is becoming clearer to me now.
Mrs Zig, thanks for the hugs, back attcha. I’ve got Suze with me, that means that whatever I choose to do I’ll always have her support and that means a lot.