Anyone watching the fallout of SVP bank collapse? Personally, I don’t have the stomach for it. The Hunger Games vibe of the tech startup world is too much for me. I had a front-row seat to this action at my last job, and it’s one of those things you can’t unsee. Jobs are like that, right? If you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you, you’re going to learn a lot. Some of it will be amazing and some of it will be infuriating and most of it will be useful to you.
A few years into this aforementioned job, I found myself bemoaning a bunch of frustrations that were remarkably similar to complaints I’d had about previous jobs. (I’m experiencing hedonic adaptation but don’t know it quite yet.)
One night my parents took me out to dinner and somewhere in the middle of my “they have no fucking clue what they’re doing at the office” rant, I saw my mom and dad make eye contact. Eye contact that said: “OMG, here she goes again.” Immediately, I understood that I factored into my happiness at work in a way I’d not been paying attention to.
I’d been working in completely different industries and winding up in the same disappointed quagmire with each of them. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I was the common denominator here. I found a therapist because I obviously had a problem with work.*
Anyway, in the years since, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, asking, and listening, so let’s cut to what I think are the good parts:
- Life and all its parts are a game. The rules are open to interpretation and your objective is totally up to you.
- Money is part of the game, but you choose how it factors into everything else.
- Alignment with your career/employer choice brings exponential value to your personal well-being.
It’s A Game
Not all games are fun. Depending on what “board” life has dumped you on, the game can be really shitty. The metaphor isn’t suggesting otherwise. It’s to help us understand that there are unspoken rules we’re all playing by and that these rules are generally open to interpretation.
The rules are not natural law. They’re not physics or chemistry. They were someone’s idea of a good plan that we absorbed into our collective consciousness as truth. I’m not saying we should burn it all down. But I am saying it feels good to call a spade a spade.
More importantly, though, the objective of the game you’re in is totally up to you. Personally, I’ve decided not to bust my ass making money for someone I don’t align with. I refuse for my objective to be money for the sake of money and its various synonyms.
Money Is Part Of The Game
But speaking of dollars in pockets, money isn’t bad. Money is a critical factor in your happiness when it comes to meeting needs such as safe housing, access to nutritious food, good healthcare, and reliable transportation. Beyond that list, though, whatever it is for you, money is a lot of fluff and having more of it usually comes with some other kind of bizarre price tag.
Don’t let anyone or any idea convince you that you need more or fancier or that you have to do any of this on your own without help. You’re not fundamentally better at the game of being alive if you cover all your expenses by yourself. I’ve been there and done that and was miserable.
Also, you don’t have to have Netflix or a good phone camera or the best haircut of your life. No one loves you because you pay for that shit. If you enjoy it, great. But these things won’t make you happier. Feeling a sense of agency in your own life will, though. So, make your money work for you and your objectives, not someone else’s.
Finding Alignment
And speaking of someone else’s objectives, let’s acknowledge that it’s cool that we don’t all have to be farmers to eat. We don’t have to be home builders to have a home. It’s cool that we’ve figured out a way to trade in our respective specializations. (Do we appropriately monetize the value of each of those specializations? What a great question.)
I grew up thinking one day the clouds would part, some sort of space ray of light would beam down, and I would know without a doubt that I had found my vocational calling. Fast forward a couple of decades, and I’ve let that particular certainty go. But I can say there’s a different vibe when your values and objectives align with what you’re doing for money and that alignment feels really good—like a “sunbeam in the middle of winter” good.
Alignment doesn’t mean no overtime, but it does mean you understand the need and value of that overtime when it happens. Alignment doesn’t mean you or your boss will never say the wrong thing, but it does mean that you’re motivated to sort it out after it happens. And alignment for you at a job doesn’t mean your coworkers will always feel the same way. That’s okay. We have different objectives.
Anyway, all that to say, I’m of the opinion that it’s possible to have a job that works for you, but the responsibility and effort (at least for the foreseeable future) of making that job a reality? That’s on you to sort out. See the game for what it is; know what you want to get out of it; and then find a career/employer that’s compatible with your personal objectives or find a way of making small changes toward alignment wherever you are now.
If any of this resonates with you, I recommend reading Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee and The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander and pursuing therapy to work through that hedonic adaptation. If nothing else, it’s an interesting exploration.
*For the astrology lovers: I don’t have a single rock in my 10th House–ruled by Pluto. Interpret that however you want to and feel free to let me know what you think because I’m still trying to make sense of it.
