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(Please note that this part is not about money; that’s the next one. While money is certainly related to, and a result of, one’s career and work, I think they’re actually two very distinct subjects, requiring different approaches.)
Current Status:
I have a job, as a systems administrator / programmer in a small company near Lisbon. The salary is not too bad (for Portugal, that is), but, of course, I wish it was better. The work isn’t usually very hard (though it can be immensely boring from time to time), and I even have something I love to have at work: some free time.
However, the work doesn’t fascinate me.
And, thinking back, I don’t think any work, any job, has ever done so.
Now, many people here would say that I’m “talking crazy”; that work is work, that a job is a job, it’s something you do for the money, and that’s all. You’re not supposed to enjoy it. You sacrifice 8-10 hours a day in exchange for money. Some, here, might even add that one is lucky to have any job, in today’s economy.
Of course, I don’t agree with that. It’s possible to love your work, to love the job you have. It’s possible to have your career and your main hobby coincide. It’s possible to get paid for something you’d gladly do for free, because you love it.
I just haven’t found what mine is yet. I’ve been fascinated with computers (and video games, but that’s another story) since I was a child, and I’ve found that I’ve always been able to intuitively learn a lot about them, even in the 8-bit days; therefore, that’s what I took in high school and college (I didn’t finish the latter; another long story), and that’s what I’ve worked in for all my life; mostly as a Linux sysadmin, but also in operations, programming, and even (eeek!) helpdesk. Since childhood, I always saw my going into computer stuff as a given – and nowadays, I wonder if that was a mistake.
I’ve tried something else, in 2006: blogging for money. The result? I can do it, but it’s not “fun”; it’s not something I love, either. Or, more precisely, there are things I love to write about, but they don’t give me any money; the ones that pay (e.g. blogging about gadgets, technology, and so on), don’t fascinate me enough to spontaneously write about them. It’s still “work”. And I’m too honest (and perhaps lazy) to write regularly about something just for the money.
Then again, maybe I really am one of those people to whom there is no “work that doesn’t feel like work”.
Bottom line: I don’t love my work, nor do I see, in front of me, another work I’d love. Now, granted, I haven’t tried most of them, and there may be something out there that I’d love so much that I’d do even without being paid for it… but I simply don’t see it.
Goals:
Mostly, to discover something I really love doing, while getting paid for it. It’s not computer stuff – at least the computer stuff I’ve tried so far. It must be something else.
Maybe the added clarity I hope to gain from this blog will help me find out.
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