Dear OOO,
I like my job, principally. The individuals are good, the work is fascinating, the pay is nice, and I have a number of flexibility. I’ve been right here a very long time, although, and generally I surprise: Am I an unambitious weirdo if I do not attempt to stage up?
–California
One factor you understand after a few stints as a office recommendation columnist is that no person—or at the very least no person in the kind of “creative class” careers that usually lead individuals to confuse a job with a spiritual calling—feels assured about the place they’re of their profession. Middle managers surprise if they need to be senior managers, whereas senior managers fret over once they’ll be despatched again down. Junior workers fear about whether or not they’re progressing quick sufficient or in the event that they’re progressing too quick and will likely be pressured to handle. People who’ve modified roles many occasions (hi!) are anxious about individuals seeing them as flighty job hoppers; those that have stayed in a single place for a very long time are anxious about individuals treating them as a chunk of furnishings bolted to the ground.
The pandemic, in fact, has exacerbated the entire above. Being trapped at house all day—concurrently remoted from most family members and with no separation in any respect from a choose few loves ones—can actually do a quantity on an individual’s relationship to sanity and actuality. And for those who’re the sort of one that defines your self by your job to a wildly unhealthy diploma (hello once more!), some quantity of panic about your skilled station is all however inevitable. (It’s not simply workplace employees. Anne Helen Petersen’s latest essay about what she calls “the ‘capitalism is broken’ economy” elegantly knits collectively the fates of “creative class” workers and repair employees, arguing that the actual drawback is dangerous enterprise fashions that demoralize and burn out employees in principally each sector of the American financial system.)
So the straightforward reply, California, is that you’re not an unambitious weirdo for sticking round in a task that you just like and that treats you nicely. When every part round all of us feels unstable, there’s not solely no disgrace in holding onto a job like that, there’s an entire lot to aspire to.
And but! Something in your mind or coronary heart or soul is telling you {that a} fairly good job with fascinating work and good pay and type coworkers shouldn’t be in truth sufficient, and that’s price taking significantly. Perhaps it is the bigger world’s fetishization of fixed development, wherein case please do your greatest to tune it out. But maybe it’s one thing extra, some stirring within you telling you that whereas on paper you may have it made, you’re simply not feeling it in the meanwhile.
You don’t point out something about whether or not you are feeling fulfilled or glad by the work, which makes me wonder if you do. There is nothing fallacious with doing a job for a paycheck with out anticipating some psychic reward—drawing boundaries between your job and your life is wholesome, or so I’ve heard—however your query appears to counsel that that’s not your type. And I surprise how a lot work that “mostly” in “I like my job, mostly” is doing. Some inquiries to chew on: Are you having enjoyable? Are you extra typically excited or full of dread initially of your workday? Do you are feeling challenged? Are you in a position to strive new issues? Do you’re employed for and with individuals you wish to study from?
Some of those questions will really feel irrelevant to you, whereas others will resonate. That final one is especially essential to me personally; the occasions I’ve really cherished my work have been when I’m surrounded by people who find themselves each smarter than me and supportive sufficient to show me issues. The frequent hyperlink between all my questions, although, is that they transcend floor attributes like pay and normal pleasantness, and strike at how your job is definitely affecting your well-being.
