A job is a curious thing. Most of us who spent the time to go to school and learn a specific discipline are expecting to make a living at a respectable career. This means that your job is meant to be the place where you grow and develop your skills. It is desirable to stay with one company over the course of several years, working your way up in different positions, growing your skill set while exploring your employer and thereby developing a trustworthy bond that will be rewarded by more upward mobility and financial opportunity. What most of us find instead is a job.
Job
-noun
1. a piece of work, esp. a specific task done as part of the routine of one’s occupation for an agreed price: She gave him the job of mowing the lawn.
Occupation
-noun
1. A person’s usual or principal work or business, esp as a means of earning a living; vocation: Her occupation was dentistry.
Work
-noun
1. Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
Toil
-noun
1. hard and continuous work; exhausting labor or effort.
2. a laborious task.
3. archaic. Battle; strife; struggle
-verb (used with object)
4 to engage in hard and continuous work; labor arduously: to toil in the fields.
5. to move or travel with difficulty, weariness, or pain
All definitions are according to dictionary.com, a fairly reputable source in regard to what it provides. What you will notice is that a job is your primary occupation ie your principal work ie the thing that you struggle with and brings you the most pain for the majority of your time. (Oh no!!) Who would want one of those? O wait, there is the compensation to consider. That’s right the number one reason people toil is to get money. But clearly at some point, the compensation no longer covers the cost of the pain and then people quit. At least, one would hope that one would quit, as that would be the logical response to stop the pain.
Unfortunately most people ignore that perfectly normal threshold for discomfort and toil on. The job is done with the expectation that there is no other option or worse yet, that it will all yield great returns in the end because your boss, in all their glorious, wealthy magnanimity will “make good” on your investment of labor. Sounds like a master slave relationship to me. In fact, according to Ezra Pound this is the very definition of slavery. “A Slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.” For more on the slave mentality in the U.S., check out this article by Butler Shaffer, “ The Slave Mentality”. http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer82.html
Career
-noun
1. an occupation or profession, esp one requiring special training followed as one’s lifework: He sought a career as a lawyer.
2. a person’s progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking: His career as a soldier ended with the armistice.
Again, most of us are looking for a career but settle for a job. Fair enough, the majority of the workforce has been horribly misled into signing a deal with a force that we affectionately refer to as “ the man”. We want to devote our lives to a mission we find worthy and instead end up slaving away for someone else’s best interests in order to improve the elusive bottom line.
The problem with careers lies in that “special training” term which in real life is nothing more than real world experience. Unfortunately, the only way to get real world experience is to get a job (something to toil at for a while) to “get your feet wet” and then by the grace of God in a year or two you will have a resume someone will want to look at. This still means you start at the bottom of a hopeful career path, so essentially you will continue to toil, but now with the hope of it becoming/somehow transforming into something you can be proud to call your life’s work (a career). It is then that you will have something on which you can actually have a visible impact, to the extent that you can claim it as rightfully yours.
POP QUIZ
Q. What do you call the arrangement by which a laborer voluntarily toils for a contractor in exchange for the opportunity for a better life?
A. Indentured servitude.
If you missed this question, I suggest you do some self-study before you continue reading.
Getting a job means selling yourself to the highest bidder in exchange for a path to a decent livelihood, or true professional credence. This is great when you are relatively complacent and do not mind being the office wench or the slave for the man. But what happens, when you open your eyes and realize, “hey this sucks and I am not getting any closer to my goal” or “I am better than this.”
I do not think these realizations are so alarming. Most people hate their jobs and are disgruntled, underpaid, over worked, underappreciated, micromanaged and uber annoyed by their co-workers. The average workplace is terrific fodder for standup comics, cartoonists and bloggers everywhere. For example:
http://blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/?p=1327
Life’s too short to spend 1/3 of it doing something you can’t stand.
So what holds people to this toil and labor? What keeps them from leaving that personal/professional dungeon of potential? Money. It’s always money isn’t it? Not money itself, but the things that money provides- sustenance and survival. It’s a very human instinct to want to survive. A basic instinct. But in the case of employment, I think our tendency to grin and bear it requires some attention. It’s not natural to live in pain. Why not buck that queasy feeling in your stomach and get your life back? Change your environment. Make it work for you not the other way round. And if you can’t make it work for you, then leave.
Motivational speakers tell you all you need is faith/a dream/a burning desire and your wealth/recognition/fame will naturally follow. I think a more realistic scenario is that in the absence of a job, you will force yourself to survive by any means necessary. And this leads to my next key term: entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneur
-noun
1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
2.an employer of productive labor; contractor
[Origin: 1875-80;
Now, everyone loves an entrepreneur. The government will give you money to start a business, tax breaks to keep it running, and all your friends and family will be proud to call you their own. Of course, the government loves it because it’s the original stimulus package. New products and services means new jobs are created and money spent. It’s a great economical move. In regard to tax breaks, a small business takes on a lot of financial losses, which the government is willing to subsidize for a time. Now as for your friends and family—their love for your newfound go get ‘em spirit is a little more challenging to explain.
People admire those who do what they 1) don’t know how to do or 2) are too afraid to try themselves. That’s why there are so many people now telling me “ You have so much courage” and “good for you. I wish I could quit my job.” In reality, anyone can quit a job. It is very easy to do. Most people are employed under an “at will” arrangement, meaning they can leave at any time and their boss can fire them at any time, and that is with or without that pesky two week notice. You can quit your job right now. Let’s do it together. Get up from your desk and walk out. Do not look back. Do not feel bad. Don’t even tell anyone where you are going. They’ll find someone to replace you . . . probably a hungry college student who doesn’t realize 40k a year only gets you a few more packs of ramen a month. The reason why more people don’t up and ditch their day gig is that if you leave your job today you will be forced to work for yourself and find a means to survive that will involve more work than you have heretofore ever had to do for any other employer. That’s why more people don’t quit and start a business—they are afraid they aren’t resilient enough to put in the work, even at the risk of their very own survival. I know it sounds self defeatist, but let’s examine this claim.
By definition an entrepreneur takes on risk and has initiative. That’s textbook definition people. If you cannot find these two qualities within yourself, DO NOT QUIT YOUR JOB. Because if you go out on a limb but are too timid or too lack luster to get things moving for yourself, the fear of even missing a meal will bring tears to your eyes and devastate any dreams you may have had for professional independence.
Being an entrepreneur means you get up in the morning, figure out what needs to be done and then you do it. You are the secretary, the legal department, member services rep, transportation liaison, accountant, accounts payable, accounts receivable, director of PR, director of marketing, assistant to the president and the CEO. You field all questions (the ones you ask), find all answers (by way of your research) and have to pay all the bills (by way of funding you secure). You do all the work, and despite wearing all the hats, you get paid absolute last. If you do it well, and work hard, that paycheck at the end of the road is well worth it. Somewhere down the line if you can keep it up you can hire people who will work for your mission as well, and then you can begin to gradually you’re your workload and subsequently your stress level, even spending some of those hard earned rewards. Nothing is more gratifying than spending money that you know you truly earned. If you are not a self-motivated person with initiative (which can happen when you are used to being micromanaged, mismanaged and under developed by the man), you just end up frustrated and broke and more than ready to get another job. Trust me, I’ve seen it. Only the strong survive.
I’ll give the man some credit, if you are getting a job for the experience, or for some of the benefits (health insurance, tuition reimbursement, superb mentorship) or to supplement income to fund your business, that’s great. But never give someone else more of yourself than you give your self. That’s just not fair to you or the life you seek to create. And that’s the bottom line.
