After working at one job for 17 years, over the past two years I have landed in three different spots, all of which were fine jobs, but just not right for me. Of course when I took each job offer, I thought (and told myself and others) they were perfect, just what I was looking for, bound to be happy at. I began to think that my job-hopping was less about finding the perfect job (does one even exist?) and more about getting really tired of real estate. I have, after all, been doing this for almost 30 years. I turned to Auntie Google for help and read about a gazillion posts listing anywhere from 4 to 15 signs you need to find a new job. Apparently there are a lot of folks out there looking to live their best lives and not finding it in their careers. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Office Space, a 1999 film with Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston. Ron's character, a bored programmer, admits he only does about an hour's worth of work a day and tells Jennifer's character he doesn't like his job and he doesn't think he is going to go any more. (On a side note, there is a scene later on, pictured above, when he and his two buddies beat up a printer, that is absolutely perfect. If you haven't seen that movie, stop reading this and immediately go find it.)
So was I bored with my chosen career or just plain bored with working? When I was much, much (much) younger, I thought I would be retired by now. Living the good life, responsibility free, going on cruises, wearing fabulous clothes and meeting equally fabulously attired women for lunch. My younger self obviously thought retirement equaled being rich.
So here I am, at retirement age, still working and clearly not rich. What went awry?
1. I was not born into a wealthy family. Obviously poor planning on my part.
2. The stock market scares me. I know there are people who love investing, watching their money go up and down, moving funds around willy nilly. That sounds exhausting. And scary. And sooo not fun.
3. Moving up the ladder in a corporate setting has never interested me. I am a 9-5 kind of gal. No matter the payoff, I hate working any more than the requisite 40 hours. Weekend days are me days, family days, pajama-wearing days. My cousin once told me a story about when he was graduating from UCLA way back in the day and recruiters came to the school hawking this or that corporation to get in on the ground floor of. His wife, a high school math teacher, told him he should go to the seminar hosted by IBM and listen to what they had to offer. He told her if that sounded so good, she should go. So she did. They hired her at a great salary and she divorced my cousin. I had my own opportunity back in the 80s when a fairly new computer company offered me a position with them where everyone got their very own computer at their desk and another one to take home, and, although they would expect hard work and long hours, the sky was the limit. I was tempted by the offer for about the time it took me to drive from the interview back home. It just wasn't for me.
4. I haven't won the lottery yet. I admit I am not very lucky. If there are 257 slips of paper with my name on them in a jar and one slip of paper with someone else's name on it, I can almost guarantee my name won't be chosen.
So the takeaway? It's pretty simple. I am not rich and probably won't ever be. But I work to live, I do not, nor do I care to, live to work. I admire folks that do, but that is just not me. I now have a nice 9-5 job in a sunny, light-filled office, with some pretty terrific people. I wasn't looking for this job, but it found me and I am so happy that it did. I'm still hoping I win the lottery, though.
