My job allows me to not have had to pay for a vacation in three years. My job allows me 2,500 square feet of living space and a new "near-luxury" car (that's what J.D. Power calls it, "near-luxury." I find that funny, for some reason.) It allows for The Wife to have thousands of dollars worth of dogs around the house and to put her stamp on something she loves and that feeds her soul.
It allows for my seventh-grader to not have to go through the same hell I went through in seventh grade. Don't get me wrong: seventh grade in 2007 is apparently equally as hellish as it was in 1981, but at least it's not for the same reasons. If she came home crushed by somebody having made fun of her clothes, she can go buy different clothes. She never has to worry about the check for her field trip bouncing, or about not having lunch money. And before you ask, yes, I still after all these years know how to identify an overprivileged brat, and when I see her showing signs of being one, I call her on it.
I'm also lucky that, when I show signs of being an overprivileged brat, The Wife calls me on it. That is a good thing. I've been prone to show said signs (and have been all my life, even before I had even the remotest qualification to do so), and I know those signs well enough now to hate myself a little bit after I find myself guilty of it.
More than all of that, I have had opportunities to broaden my perspective that I never thought I would have. I never thought I would be counting kroner at a McDonald's in Denmark or driving a car from the passenger's seat in Australia. I never thought I would sit in a roomful of executives at some newspaper and have them listen to me.
And more than all of that, around all this stuff, I get to occupy the same house as four of the most fantastic people I'll ever have the privilege to meet.
I work with a lot of people who don't realize how good they have it. I work with a lot of people who get no joy from their work at all and it makes me wonder if they get joy from anywhere. I work with a few people who worry about whether the numbers on the spreadsheets add up and who are charged from above with the task of making sure they add up or it's their ass. I can see how that might suck out one's soul. I work with people who have everything I have and then some and think they "deserve more."
My job puts me around people who have no soul left. Maybe it's because they had to work too hard for the same level of success that has seemingly come so easy to me. Maybe it's because their life is all about spreadsheets and not about actually accomplishing something. Maybe it's because I no longer work with artists and instead work with Business People. Avid readers — well, maybe reader — will remember a post from low down on this page, from when I was contemplating making this career change, when I interviewed with the president of the company:
He was a Businessman. I've spent years cultivating a deep contempt for Businessmen. Soulless assholes who care nothing more than making a buck, who hire people based only on what they can see on paper, who don't create anything.That guy was shitcanned a couple of years ago. Not much patience among Businessmen for guys who don't make their numbers. Whatever that means.
I was worried then about transitioning from a job that required a lot of soul (while simultaneously stealing said soul) into a job where soul was not really a requirement. I've done OK, and I've done so without having to give up too much of what makes me, well, me. It does require a different approach. I have an obligation to the Spreadsheet Drones. I have customers who could give a shit about my work-life balance. Sometimes I overdo the amount of energy I put into bringing soul into my job, and I don't have enough left over for things that actually matter. The Real World will take whatever you give it, and no matter how much you give it, it usually wants a little bit more.
But as I get settled into Year 4 of Life in the Real World, life after journalism, I'm OK with what it has provided me so far. There is a post below which might be interpreted as, well, a rant. And it was. I'm entitled to that occasionally, too, because the pace can be frenetic and frustrating. But the rewards are really pretty cool.
If any of the above comes off as arrogant, I'm genuinely sorry (and it's not often I put "I" and "arrogant" and "sorry" in the same sentence.) I sincerely don't mean for it to be; far from it. I'm genuinely grateful for what I have. I think it needs to be said.
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