The Quarter Life: Careers

It's the Quarter Life! My partner in crime Bryce has his post up, along with the links to the old posts. Check it out.

On with the show.

If you want to hear a twentysomething rant, ask them about their job. Seriously, try it. I know very, very few people who are my age(ish) and absolutely love what they do. They're out there, but they are certainly elusive.

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. Most of my friends are working jobs that a) pay them A LOT of money but demand an incredible amount of their time and energy, b) pay them almost no money AND demand an incredible amount of their time and energy, but offer them the opportunity to participate in some greater good, or c) don't pay very well, aren't all that interesting, and are really just helping to support grad school/bumming/getting on their feet. It's exceedingly rare to find someone in this age bracket who is getting paid pretty well to do something that they love to do but that doesn't consume their life.

I'm sure it's possible that someone has this job, I just don't know who it is.

Can I get a blogger comment amen?

Conventional wisdom holds that in your 20's you are building your life. You are putting in your time, working your way up the food chain, still in school, or figuring out what you are going to do. Whatever. The point is, at this age we're not supposed to have satisfying careers. We're supposed to have jobs.

And that's the catch. A career and a job really aren't the same thing. What I have right now is a job. It's a job that I really like (most of the time), but it's still a job.

A career, as a opposed to a job, should be a vocation. A career should be one of those things where you say, on a regular basis, "They pay me to do this?!" Don't get me wrong, a job can be like that as well (see: Me eating delicious burritos while talking about global economics). A career, at its best, should be deeply satisfying because it should combine your greatest personal gifts and your greatest personal longings.

And something else. It should fulfill a genuine need.

And that's where I get myself into trouble.

I'm a pharisee (little p, I'm not actually Jewish, or a scholar of the law, or...you get the point). Thg point is that I love the law. I want it to protect me. To make me righteous. To make me loved.

My legalism touches all things, and career is no exception. I believe that my thinking goes something like this: God says to love others -> The world has many people who need love -> I believe in God -> I should find people in the world to love -> Someone will pay me to love people -> I should do that even if it isn't what I want most in the world -> God will love me more if I choose this path.

That logical progression is, I'll be the first to admit, pretty sick. It's especially gross when you realize what a horrible perversion of love it really is.

The other day my girlfriend (Hi Deanna!) was asking me about my dream job. What would I do if I could do anything? "Something in music," I said. "A producer or manager, A&R for a label maybe. I don't know if I'd actually enjoy doing that, but it seems like I really would." So will I pursue that? I don't really know. I think the reality is that I don't actually know what it is that I like to do. I don't know what it is that I'm all that good at. At this point, I can't even guarantee that I'm doing something because I want to rather than because I think that I should.

I'm not sure, at this point in time, that I'm capable of doing any sort of work that doesn't serve, in some way, as an idol.

And so I find myself with nothing to say. I like my job. I have no idea what my career might look like. For the first time in my life, that feels really nice.