This is one aspect of East Coast culture that is so, so prevalent. Boston has a huge amount of single people just for this reason. This makes sense to me.She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”)
More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.
It's a scary thought to think about how your life could be different if you waited it out or if you did something different. I think that's part of where that mentality comes from. Also, if you are in a big city there's a million different things to be done. Both of those are issues that have come up in my life at some point or another. It makes sense to me too. There isn't too much out there nowadays that is actual meaningful work that has a direct impact on...anything...
Absolutely. This is where I am right now and honestly, it's not a comfortable place to be. But, I spoke to a guy a while age who advised me to think about what I want to do rather than taking any old job that comes along. The reason being, that it's easy to get stuck doing something that you never cared much for in the first place, but was an immediate source of income. And after thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense to me. Fortunately, I am able to take this path, though many others might not be. Sure, I fill the days with temp work and things I want to work on, but none of it is simply to keep busy. Instead, I'm trying to get deeper into things that interest me and that has guided me to what my current goals are. Anyway, if nothing works out the way that guy suggested, I can always fuck off into the world again, which is how I ended up doing something I didn't want to spend my life doing in the first place. But who knows? Maybe things would turn out differently if I went shooting off in another direction a second time. I think that there is a lot of meaningful work that can be done, but the problem is that it's often not well-compensated or may be dangerous or outside of where one resides and has important relationships. Meaningful work also tends to be very hard work, which I'm ok with. Hopefully thing will turn out better this year.It's a scary thought to think about how your life could be different if you waited it out or if you did something different.
That's the exact path that I want to take. It's something that has led me to many an argument, as I know a lot of people that say "a job is a job, you should be happy to have one". No. I shouldn't be if it's not a job I'm not happy working. Less pay for a more interesting and/or fulfilling job is an easy trade off to make, or an entirely different job. There's so many possibilities that if something isn't working, it's probably work the risk to try something else (assuming family, significant others, money, etc don't pose an issue). Very hard work is typically very fulfilling work.
I'm in the same boat. I've been a web developer for the past 5 years and was getting pretty fed up. I recently changed jobs because I assumed it was my employer that was causing me to become fed up but to be honest I think it's the job itself. I've very lucky (or am I?) that I live with my parents (being of Indian origin that's the norm) and I'm pretty frugal so have saved up a lot of money. I'm really thinking of going back to college to do something like barbering.