See? I told you I’d get back to you.
1. What is the quality of experience I want to have as I earn a living?
2. What gifts do I want to give to life as I toil at challenging tasks that are interesting to me?
3. What capacities do I want to develop in myself while doing my work?
One question at a time, one post at a time.
What is the quality of experience I want to have as I earn a living?
This is the hardest question to answer. How do you qualify quality? Number of hours you work at something? What gets done in those hours? How much money you make? What kind of projects you work on? Who you work for? Who you don’t work for? It’s a highly subjective question.
Let’s start with the basic priorities of what I want in a job, and go through those.
Creativity
I want to be able to play with the problem or objective, look at it from different angles, analyze it, take it apart and put it back together. Brainstorm in a group, brainstorm by myself. My favorite assignments in school, ever, were those from Advertising class, where we took a campaign or slogan or advertisement and took it apart to analyze, critique, and possibly correct it.
If my job consists of doing the same thing, over and over again, with no input from my brain, no chance to be fun or different or creative at all, I might as well be a robot. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have that much problem with a job like that—I’d just settle into a groove and let my mind wander and let the hours go by. But I’d also stagnate, and I wouldn’t have fun. I know everyone says they wants a fun job…but is that such a bad thing to want? To not just be happy about work, but be excited about it, be gleeful about it?
I want a job where I take my work with me wherever I go—in a good way. Not because I can’t let things “stay at the office” or because there’s a looming deadline that’s stressing me out, but because the problem is so interesting, so fun to think about, that I just want to keep turning it over in my head and finding new ways to go about it.
Freedom
This priority may actually be the most important. It also got me laughed at at work. Someone asked me what I wanted to do “later” (as in after college), and I said I wanted to work from home. They laughed at me. Not in a straight-on mean way, but in a condescending “That is too funny, you’re joking, right?” way. I’m still a little bitter about it, especially it’s just not as outrageous as an idea as it used to be.
In this world, working from is growing less unusual, and less impossible. The technology that exists is astounding—you can conference from home via phone, conference call, instant messenger, or video chat. You can access work files from home, updating them from home within seconds so your coworkers can run with your changes, either from the office or from their own home. Anyone can buy a combination printer, scanner, copier and fax and have all those capabilities in their office at home, without even taking up that much space. Wifi is becoming more abundant and cellular signals more widely available, while laptops and even printers are growing smaller, so you can access files and work on projects from home, from Starbucks, from the park, from your hotel, from almost anywhere. You can go down to Staples or Kinkos and get your brochures, presentations, or booklets printed out and put together in record time.
The physical office is becoming less and less necessary as time goes by, technology improves, and priorities change.
You know why I want to work from home? It’s not because I hate driving, it’s not because I don’t like people, it’s not because the idea of a cubicle makes me sick. None of those things are true. I want to work from home because I plan on having a home that I love, that is comfortable and beautiful and home. I find the idea that we have to spend so many hours away from our homes in order to afford our homes positively absurd. I plan on working hard, on saving and scrimping and budgeting, on busting my butt in order to have a house that is as close to my dream home as is fiscally possible. And after working so hard for it, I want to spend time in it. Because dammit, that’s the point.
So. I want freedom to do work at my own pace, in my own space. To go at projects or problems in the manner that works best for me, whatever that means. I don’t want someone breathing down my neck, I don’t want insane deadlines that only insane people can meet (normal deadlines are okay, even if I’m not normal), I don’t want to be forced to work with people I can’t stand, who I just don’t jive with. I want to be able to start work when I’m actually awake, not when I have to be at the office, and work until I’m done, not until the office closes up for the day.
I don’t mean I want to sleep until noon, read e-mails and idly type up some bullshit in my pajamas from the kitchen table, ignore the directions or ideas from my superiors or coworkers and do whatever the hell I feel like instead, or wait until 3 a.m. before a major presentation to rush and get everything done. I would get “dressed on purpose” every morning, get up and officially start the day at a reasonable time, have a home office that was dedicated to work and not play, do what I was directed to do and get things done on time.
My own space, my own pace, my own hours, my own way of going about my job. Give me all of these, and I will be a very loyal employee. I will work my ass off for you, I will respect rules and directions and deadlines, I will put in however long it takes to get the problem solved or the project done. I just want the freedom to do my job as is best for me.
Salary
I wish this didn’t have to be a priority, that I could just have a job I love without worrying or caring if it makes enough to cover the bills. Don’t we all wish for that? So, when looking for a job, one of the possible deal breakers will be salary, and if it’s enough to cover rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, gas, etc. That is, until I sell a dozen novels and become a millionaire who can do whatever she damn well pleases.
So, what is the quality of experience I want to have as I earn a living? I want a job that involves being creative, that lets me work from home (or anywhere else), that pays well enough to cover the bills. That’s the best I can come to answering that question, I think. A quality of experience that lets me do what I love, in a place I love, while making enough to have the things I love.
Answer to question two coming soon!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
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Interesting thoughts - I'm still waiting to find that job that with make me feel enthused, although I haven't given up on it!
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