I don’t want a Career. I have a Job.

Perspective

Perspective is powerful because nothing has to change practically, but, by shifting focus, our experience of any particular situation in life can feel completely different. Take a couple of recent revelations I have had about work:

I’ve worked as a security guard for 5 years now. I find myself frustrated with the boredom at times. I’ve realized that I’m expecting the job to give me something that it can’t, which is a deep sense of meaning. The main value of security guard work is that I can be at work earning a paycheck and doing my job well, but my mind can be in a completely different place. Most of the time I can think about whatever I want to think about. As a writer this is an incredibly valuable feature of the job. I can choose boredom because I’m looking for the job to give me something that it can’t, or I can meditate on ideas to bring into my writing. A simple shift in focus makes all the difference.
I have definitely had it locked in my head that I need to impact millions of people with my ideas. However, a few months ago I began to embrace the mantra of ‘one person at a time’. Sometimes in trying to impact millions, I am losing sight of the value of simply trying to be a good human being in my everyday life (which is challenging enough on its own). Positive impact is positive impact. I need to focus on doing the most good I can and let those behaviors touch whomever they touch (let the chips fall where they may).

Turning My Passion Into a Job

It’s been extremely hard to shake the belief that I have to be on social media in order to spread my ideas. This belief paired with the desire to make a living with my writing has led to a repeated strategic error:

Periodically I get frustrated with the mundane nature of my job in security.
Out of frustration, I decide that I’m not fully committed to making money with writing and speaking. I believe I need to ramp up my efforts so I can escape my job.
After about 2 weeks of hard brainstorming on how I can spread my message further and faster, I cave and tell myself, “I guess I have to get on social media. It’s what everyone does.”
I then proceed to post on social media aggressively. Over the course of about 4-12 months, I gradually burn out. The burn out negatively impacts my writing because my writing is now associated with social media. Social media posting becomes a job (which I have never found particularly effective in attracting more readers). By association, writing also becomes a job. Several times I have completely stopped writing because I got focused on producing social media content.

So in efforts to get away from my job as a security guard, I try social media to promote my passion for self improvement, and I end up turning my passion into a job. I already have a job. Why am I taking my passion and turning it into a job?

Social Media Gives Me Anxiety

I have now gone through the social media burnout cycle 5 times over the last 10 years. I’m sorry to those of you who may have followed me recently on YouTube, Spotify, or elsewhere but I have again shut down my channel/podcast. The measure of anxiety social platforms of all types cause me is never going to be worth the potential audience and income they might generate. I’m always going to be about my health first. The anxiety inducing effect of online platforms is where I’ve really been doing some hard thinking in the last few months. What makes me different from the large creators who have millions of followers? Why are they able to carry on and I am not (especially given the number of incredibly difficult things I’ve done in my life)?

Here are a few thoughts. I don’t have a concrete answer but maybe this helps someone else understand social media’s impact on them:

I’ve never thought about it before now, but fame is something I am completely uninterested in. I guess it would be a necessary evil if it happened at all, in relation to my writing. Whenever I would have a video do well online I always felt an unease about it.
Click bait thumbnails and titles are everywhere. Understandably, every creator is trying to grab attention but this makes just being on my YouTube homepage feel incredibly overwhelming at times (I still see lots of value in YouTube but I no longer have it on my phone).
As someone who has been working for quite some time to eliminate the use of pornography, social media platforms might as well be the same thing in some regards. Half naked women are huge attention grabbers and they’re everywhere in social media.

For these reasons and probably others I haven’t identified, I have decided hopefully for the last time that I will no longer make content for social media. But the question remains, how do I spread my message?

The only thing I can think of is to work to write compelling and helpful content and let word-of-mouth do the rest. It’s a long term strategy that may never produce any meaningful financial gain in my life. However, it’s the only strategy that truly resonates with me as an artist (note: normally I would refer to all this as a small business, more on this in a moment).

Recently I heard a best selling author define a few words that really helped settle this in my mind.

Hobby, Job, Career, or Vocation

Recently a friend of mine sent me a video of author Elizabeth Gilbert explaining the importance of understanding the difference between 4 words: hobbies, jobs, career, and vocation.

We should all be thinking about the differences between these words from the moment we start thinking about what we want to be when we grow up. Let me attempt to briefly paraphrase the definitions she gives:

Hobby – Something you do purely for enjoyment. You don’t need to share it with anyone or broadcast it anywhere. It’s not necessary to have a hobby but they do make life better.
Job – This is the one that everyone has to have on some level. This is the thing that pays you money so you can live in a material world.
Career – A career is a job you are interested in and passionate about on some level. This work is something you will work extra hours for and sacrifice other parts of your life in order to move forward. Gilbert makes the assertion in the video that if you are in a career you hate, you should stop and just find a job. I agree.
Vocation – A vocation is something you feel compelled to do as if God or the Universe has ordained you for that particular thing. It’s something you would do paid or not.

The two points I felt were most relevant to my own situation were the fact that we all need at least a job and the other three are nice to have but not necessary. Gilbert says that for large portions of her life she has worked multiple jobs in order to meet her obligations to herself, to not be a burden on anyone else, and not have to wait on sugar daddy’s or patrons to take care of her. She works those jobs so she can pursue her vocation which is her writing. You have to watch the video because she articulates it better than I’m writing here but this was extremely helpful to me.

I think of these 4 definitions as forms of work and I would add one more category: chores.

Chores – Chores are simply tasks that we don’t particularly enjoy and that we don’t get paid for but they must be done in order for our daily lives to function the way we as individuals and/or families desire. I’ve written before that we can work at many things. I’ve also written that I believe that most jobs are simply chores for society that we get paid money to do. These ‘chores’ allow us to have all the amenities of modern society (garbage/sewer/waste management, police/fire departments, hospitals etc.). My job as a security guard is one of these chores.

Of course, none of these labels/roles are fixed. My job as a security guard could very well transform into a career one day should I suddenly have a shift in interests. In times past I’ve tried to turn my hobby of fitness into a career as a personal trainer. However, in doing so, I turned my hobby into a job that wasn’t very engaging. Having these labels and definitions helps me know where I am with work and what to expect from that work.

Words Matter

Have you ever wanted to want something? I’ve wanted to want a career. I have friends who make much more money than I do. They have socially respected careers like software developer, firefighter, nurse, teacher etc. When I could say I was ‘building a business’ it felt more respectable but in looking back over the last 10 years, I’ve realized I wanted to want a business. However, if I’m honest, whenever I look at my friend’s careers or when I think about what it would really take to build a business from writing and speaking, I see a bunch of activities that I don’t want anything to do with. I think Elizabeth Gilbert’s definitions and reflections on her own life has helped me to finally come to terms with that. In 41 years on the planet, I haven’t identified any reasonably attainable career I’m interested in. Also, as much as I want to be my own boss, I am simply not cut out for all the networking, marketing, and hustling I think it would take to build an income from writing and speaking. All I’ve really wanted to do since I began writing in 2013 is write about personal growth and share that writing on my website. Something I regret is the small piece of the TEDx Talk I gave, where I refer to myself as a Character Development Coach. I was convinced that during the talk I needed some way to communicate that I was in business. I’m proud of the talk otherwise, but I wish I could get that piece back. It took away from the purity of just being a writer communicating an idea that I believe is valuable. But, you live, you learn.

The labels we give to things matter because they confer expectation even when we aren’t aware of those expectations. Again, this is why Understanding Your Story is an important principle of taking ownership of our lives. Words form stories and stories create expectations.

I’ve been lying to myself calling myself a small business owner because it seems like the right answer for someone who has an Engineering Degree and was a Green Beret. Especially if I’m not going to have a career. It just sounds better than reality: I am a Security Guard. It’s an easy job that fuels my hobbies (martial arts and fitness) and my vocation (writing). I am not at all interested in a career.

If I’m lucky, maybe one day my writing will change my financial life but I have to remember that I’m lucky to have a vocation in the first place. A vocation that asks me to aggressively hold myself accountable to self improvement and sharing that knowledge with others. That alone is pretty damn valuable.

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