You are not your job

Many people I talk to complain about their job. They work too hard, they don't get enough positive reinforcement at work, or they get too much negative reinforcement.

I tell them that people work to live, not live to work. Please don't define me by my job! You should work for money, or work for personal reasons, but don't read too much into what your job means. Find out what is important in your life. You are not defined by your accomplishments. You are who you are

When you retire an important question will be: Who are you when you aren't working? Have that answer ready, there will be a final exam.

This all boils down to a lecture on perspective that I wish I was able to give properly.

I was amazed to find this node existed because I have said "work to live, not live to work" many times. (And we all know that if *I* have thought something, there is no way anyone else could have ever had this occur to them.) I was pleased and surprised to find someone else has also come to this realization and wish to comment on it.

Teacher/Parent/Adult of Choice: "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

swankivy: "I wanna be a writer!"

T/P/AoC: ::amused laughter:: "Oh, no, no . . . I mean, what do you want to be . . . for a job!"

It's this what do you want to be thing that I don't like. What do you want to be when you grow up? Comfortable, happy, and preferably alive, I'd say. I don't really see why my job has to be such an important part of that . . . I know that I go to work mostly so I can get money so I can live, not because I particularly enjoy it. I don't hate my job (though I deal with assholes daily, but who that goes in public does not?). But if I had a choice, I would not go. I would be writing. (Or, of course, on the Internet wasting my life.) And I can write because in the daytime I stand in a bookstore for eight hours five days a week and help Grandma get a book for eight-year-old Shaniqua that she'll just love (translation: not remember in about a month). I don't mind losing that time because it allows me to get paid so that after work I can go back to my apartment and do my real business. My brain is mostly off during the day. It wakes up at night. NOT the other way around.

I don't understand the concept of climbing the corporate ladder. Sure, you get more money as you go up, but once you're working more than eight hours a day at something you honestly don't care that much about, when the hell do you have the time to spend it? You have the money to get that big screen TV and VCR, which you're too tired to enjoy when you get home. You have the cash to purchase that giant comfy bed, in which you spend many hours unconscious. You even have enough wealth to attract (or keep satisfied) that special someone, if you can find some time away from work to make that date. This is your life and you won't be here forever. Don't be stupid. Work to live. Don't make work your life, unless it's work you love.