My Job

[pam]

OK, I have done office work (tech/pc/hardware-phone support, job got outsourced and job prospects along with it) office work (clerical), and retail work.

I incredibly dislike cubicle land - it seemed unnatural and a slow form of suicide, so I decided to cut my expenses, economize and work only part-time at a brain "free" job and use my intellect elsewhere.

Well my retail job is really getting to me, I have to deal with managers who are either rude or stupid, they are mostly both, and supervisors who are put there by said managers who are TEENAGERS, they aren't even the smart teenagers at my place of employment they are the bubblehead teenagers.

I have a resume that I doubt anyone there could even understand, let alone spell.

I know I am sounding stuck up but I am TIRED of stupid people having the upper hand over the wage earning part of my life.

Guess I am just venting-I guess I already know what I need to do (AGAIN )

Edited July 15, 2008 by pam

[JMeganSnow]

So . . . what kind of input are you looking for, here?

[pam]

So . . . what kind of input are you looking for, here?

Thanks, I guess I AM looking for advice after all. I really am not sure what to do to be honest.

Pam

[Zip]

I've always believed that in order to be happy, you must be happy in your work. Perhaps you just need to apply yourself to finding the productive work you are meant to do.

From there I think most of the rest will fall in line.

[KevinDW78]

Do you have goals? What is it you are eventually trying to accomplish? Does this job serve toward achieveing that goal?

[athena glaukopis]

Here is a book you might find helpful, via a review from Jean Moroney (wife of Harry Binswanger) from her website Thinking Directions:

Barbara Sher

I could do anything if I only knew what it was (2001)

I wholeheartedly recommend Barbara Sher's book, I could do anything if I only knew what it was. Her purpose in writing the book is to help you find and pursue a career that "makes your heart sing." She includes many creative exercises for zeroing in on that ideal career. They include describing the job from hell, remembering what you loved as a kid, planning the next 50 years, etc.

Not interested? Already in the right career? Me, too. I never did any of those exercises. That's not why I recommend this book.

I recommend it for its excellent advice for how to pursue a challenging career—to pursue it despite old emotional baggage that sometimes gets in the way.

Inner conflict can make you stuck. And when this happens, Barbara Sher argues that you need to act. Endless self-analysis will only keep you stuck; action will give you new information and build new confidence. For example, she encourages some people who are stalled in indecision to take the wrong job—and do it outstandingly. Because you can learn a tremendous amount about the right job, by doing the wrong job well.

By nudging you into action, Ms. Sher helps you uncover and demystify feelings of conflict. "Start moving toward a goal...and [any] resistance will leap out of hiding and start trying to talk you out of moving," she says. And once you hear the little voice that is stopping you, she has excellent advice for what to do about it.

Her top suggestion is to identify the source of that little voice. For example, in one exercise you write out what each person in your family thought you "should" be when you grew up. It turns out that most resistance is based on stale opinions of others that you heard in the past. Once you see where resistance comes from, it loses much of its emotional power.

Throughout the book Barbara Sher expresses respect for feelings—without giving in to them. She makes a case that it is never laziness that stops you from pursuing goals—it's always inner conflict. But whatever the conflict, she makes it clear that you can make the life you want happen now.

I wish the title of this book were, "I could do anything if I only knew what was stopping me." But whatever the title, I think this book is of great interest to anyone pursuing a challenging career.

[pam]

Thanks all

I completely agree that i need to find my calling but i also know to wait for that may hurt one's psyche if it is never found.

I think it may be too much to expect sometimes...

I will look for that book ty Athena, sounds like exactly what I would need to read right now.

But,

I fluctuate.

Any opinions on this vs Ayn Rand?

http://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html

Quite the contrast but I can relate to both ideologies.

Thanks again

Pam

Edited July 16, 2008 by pam

[Tenzing_Shaw]

Any opinions on this vs Ayn Rand?

http://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html

Quite the contrast but I can relate to both ideologies.

Regarding the author of "How to Drop Out", I think a retort I once heard attributed to Yaron Brook is appropriate: "Get a life! Get a mind!"

[Tenzing_Shaw]

Quite the contrast but I can relate to both ideologies.

After looking more carefully at the website you linked to, I believe my previous response was too mild.

That man is profoundly evil. If you can truly relate to him in any way, I strongly suggest that you give some hard thought to whether his ideas are good for your life.

[pam]

After looking more carefully at the website you linked to, I believe my previous response was too mild.

That man is profoundly evil. If you can truly relate to him in any way, I strongly suggest that you give some hard thought to whether his ideas are good for your life.

Can you explain profoundly evil in more detail? (I understand what you mean in that he is a parasite, but the profoundly part is something I would be interested to hear your thoughts on.)

I am much more inclined to Objectivism believe me to anything this person or others like him espouse.

It is just the idea of maybe everyone doesn't have a calling, or do they? Maybe people expect a "calling" to be something glamorous or exciting when maybe one's calling is making a good burger (AS).

Pam

Edited July 16, 2008 by pam

[fletch]

From the essay:

I'm extremely frugal, love unstructured time, and would sooner eat garbage than feign enthusiasm. More than ten years later I'm a specialist at eating garbage -- as I draft this I'm eating a meal I made with organic eggs from a dumpster, and later I'll make a pie of dumpstered apples.

Was this essay written by a man or a raccoon?

[Tenure]

Why? One word: marxism.

The only reason you can't just go find a vacant space and live there, the only reason another entity can be said to "own" it and require a huge monthly payment from whoever lives there, is to maintain a society of domination, to continually and massively redistribute influence (symbolized by money) from the powerless to the powerful, so the powerless are reduced to groveling for the alleged privilege of wage labor, doing what the powerful tell them in exchange for tokens which they turn around and pass back toward the powerful every month and think it's natural. Rent is theft and slavery, and mortgage is just as bad, based not only on the myth of "owning" space but also on the contrived custom of "interest," simply a command to give money (influence) to whoever has it and take it from whoever lacks it.

[Haemp]

How do you mean "a calling"? I think its a confused term that could be translated into "what you are good at" and then you do the mistake of looking for something to be easy.

[Tenzing_Shaw]

Can you explain profoundly evil in more detail?

Certainly. First, I would like to say that I think this man's evil runs deeper than marxism (although he is guilty of that, as Tenure writes).

Hatred of man

Once humans fell into civilization, the only possible outcome was our extinction, so let's hurry it up and limit the damage we do to the earth.

Here is a man who hates his own nature as a human. He goes as far as to compare mankind to "chicken pox" and "yeast". He subsists (as you point out) as a parasite off of the achievment of others.

Parasitism

Prieur knows he is a parasite, and he is counting on those he feeds off of:

What if everybody dropped out? Who would you scavenge off of?

The question is moot. In practice, everyone is not going to drop out. Most people will cling on to their unsustainable habits to the very end.

This man makes explicit the looter's premise which Ayn Rand revealed in Atlas Shrugged.

Hatred of the achievments of others

In those societies, there will be no need to scavenge, because there will be no police to stop us from digging up the pavement and planting fruit trees.

For thousands of years we've been going into debt and calling it "progress," exterminating and calling it "development," stealing and calling it "wealth," shrinking into a world of our own design and calling it "evolution."

Widespread and deliberate evasion of reality

Good health care is a necessity, but the industrial medicine that we've been trained to call "health care" does more harm than good at enormous expense.

Indigenous people are much healthier than industrialized people. The technologies of the moment sicken and kill us more than they help us. Our population is so high not because industrial methods are more efficient -- they're actually much less efficient.

Hatred of the purposeful life

I am not goal-oriented. You could say I'm "process-oriented," or that I "surf the flow."

Some of the happiest people I know have dropped out only a short distance. They still live in the city and have jobs and pay rent, but they've done something more mentally difficult -- and mentally liberating -- than moving to some isolated farm. They have become permanently content with no-responsibility slack jobs, low-status, modest-paying, easy jobs that they don't have to think about at home or even half the time when they're at work.

Result of his ideas on his own life

More than ten years later I'm a specialist at eating garbage...

On a personal level, I am also deeply offended by his essay "Science the destroyer", which happens to be an attack on some of my highest values.

As a final judgement on this man's character, I will quote Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged:

"The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose."

In my opinion, this man is morally worse than most murderers. In essence, he wants to die and he hates the fact that others want to live.

As for me, I love science, industrial civilization, wealth, and goal-directed action. When that awful creature finally achieves the death he is working toward, I hope that his corpse rots in the shadow of a glittering skyscraper.

It is just the idea of maybe everyone doesn't have a calling, or do they? Maybe people expect a "calling" to be something glamorous or exciting when maybe one's calling is making a good burger (AS).

Whether one is competent at making burgers or inventing world-changing technologies is not the issue. One can be perfectly moral doing the former. The issue is Prieur's repudiation of all the fundamental virtues, especially of productivity, and pride.

I am much more inclined to Objectivism believe me to anything this person or others like him espouse.

Excellent! My advice: forget about that monster and read more about Objectivism.

Edited July 16, 2008 by Tenzing_Shaw

[pam]

Thanks all for the responses.

Tenzing_Shaw, thanks-I am not a very prolific writer so let me just say I agree with you for the most part-well probably 99.9 percent. ha.

The only thing I think that appealed to me about the essay is probably the misplaced rebellious spirit of it.

Yes Haemp-a calling is something you are good at-I agree that many think once they realize what it is for them the skies will part and they will effortlessly skip into success.

Pam

Edited July 17, 2008 by pam

[pam]

I Love the quotes that this site puts up.

I thought this one was appropriate and I also think it applies to this thread well.

Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer\'s permission. He does not hold it by permission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot.-- Ayn Rand

Edited July 17, 2008 by pam

[01503]

I think by "calling" can be defined as "one's passion, and what one longs to do with their life." I feel that my calling is writing, and I love to write. I especially love philosophy and history, so I may be an author in those subjects. I will one day write for ARI, if it exists then. I'm only 15 now and I don't exactly like the way this world's going--the people who are dominating the influence our world preach acceptance of anything but things they disagree with, and they just *love* the idea shutting people down.