"What kind of shit sandwich are you willing to eat?"
I’m disillusioned with work; I’m tired of working.
Before you say anything, if you know me at all, you know this isn’t out of some sense of laziness. I’d love a vacation just as much as the next person, but I like work, okay? I’m the type of person that never stops working. I get antsy if left alone too long without something to do.
I’m also not the type of person who settles for “just okay.” I can’t. I’m driven by purpose. If I’m going to spend forty hours a week somewhere, I want those forty hours a week to count.
Lately, I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is very, very wrong.
I loved working in higher education. That was a passion job: shaping and guiding young minds. I loved the close relationships, the high touch atmosphere. I was talking to students everyday. But there was a tax to all of that, and that tax was, oftentimes, my emotional boundaries. Working in residence life wrung me out emotionally: I was respond to suicidal students, students suffering from alcohol poisoning, anxious students, depressed students, students who didn’t know where to find their next meal. Living where I worked, I was literally surrounded by it. It was hard. Fulfilling, rewarding, challenging—but so hard on my heart. Unsurprisingly, as with many jobs in education, I was not paid the money I wanted, which is pretty endemic to most of the higher education landscape, unfortunately.
The other “tax” we pay for passion is our time. I wanted a life outside of work for my hobbies, to travel, to relax. My work often seeped into other parts of my life—in e-mails returned after work hours, in hours in the evening catching up with work, in the hours I spent each evening recovering from work that I couldn’t use to actually rejuvenate and fill up my cup.
So I traded up—or so I thought.
I want to be perfectly clear: I want to take responsibility for whichever part of this is my fault. I made choices; those choices had consequences. I’m facing those consequences. I also want to address the question: why is it so goddamn hard to create organizations that honor people’s humanity and treat them fairly, that harness people’s passions, and that leave people emotionally and physically in tact, if not better?
I stepped out of the not-for-profit higher ed sphere and into “corporate.” I traded passion for a cushier paycheck and better hours; I rarely work after five these days, and I don’t answer e-mails after hours. I’m most of the way done with paying off most of my debt! I’m building up my savings, and I have a retirement account! I’m adulting!
But holy hell does it feel like soulless work sometimes. Most of the time, I’d even bargain. I traded my “passion” job for a job that would let me live a better life outside of work, and I got that, but now, some of the hours at work wear down my soul. It’s not hard work; it’s not stimulating work. Most of my co-workers are pretty nice. There’s one major thorn in my side, and I can’t be too explicit about it, but it’s one damn big thorn and it makes me feel like I’m bleeding out on almost a daily basis.
It hurts. I hurt. My soul hurts.
Look, you can tell me I’m bitching and complaining for no good reason. Sure. Someone out there would kill to be where I am. But I’m in a lot of existential pain here, and I’d appreciate it if you just sat here with me a while.
Because I know I’m not the only one who feels like this. I wish I were. I wish I were the only one in my group of friends who felt like I’m constantly hitting dead ends with my job and feels like I’m trading in one poison for another. But I’m not.
My career trajectory isn’t admirable. My longest held job was for two years. And then I had a one year stint. And then another one year stint. And I just ended another one year stint. I know how that looks. I don’t want to job hop. Nobody wants to job hop. Applying to jobs is a big pain the ass, and organizations waste incredible amounts of money and time due to staff attrition. Managers have to spend time finding, interview, and training people, all of which are extremely labor intensive.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to stay at a company as long as I can, but the circumstances of the places I’ve been have made me decide otherwise. Look, I’m not trying to be difficult here. I’m just trying to make a living without feeling like I’m compromising my mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, or physical health. You can honestly tell me if that’s too much to ask, because I don’t think it is. These past few years, it’s just felt like I’ve been asking myself, “What am I willing to put up with until my next job?”
Here’s why I’ve moved on from jobs:
Lack of/end of growth opportunities
Emotionally draining organizational culture
Low pay
Frequent evening hours
Misalignment in values, morals, ethics
Soul-sucking (I don’t know how else to phrase this?)
Not challenging enough
Not aligned to my skill set or the skills I’d like to be using
Poor treatment of workers, including me
I’m not impenetrable, but I also don’t think I’m the most sensitive person in the world. I’m pretty goddamn resilient, but I’m at a point where I’m over having to recover from and brace myself for strings of shitty days at work one after another until I burn out and trade one job for another differently shitty job.
Look, if I’m doing something wrong, someone please tell me. I’m not trying to be ungrateful. Most of us spend forty, if not more, hours a week at work, and I just want my forty hours to be a good forty hours. I want my forty hours to be meaningful, without it constantly burning me out. I don’t want live my life perpetually exhausted or void of meaning or paycheck to paycheck. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, okay?
I thought about what I wanted. Here’s what I got.
Mission and values alignment: I want to feel good about where I work. I want to know that the company I work for is doing good in the world, and that by working somewhere, I’m supporting that good.
Impact-driven: I care about the impact I’m making in the world. I want to make the world a better place, and I want my work to be part of the change I want to see in the world. I am motivated by making a positive impact in the world around me.
Employee-centric culture: I just want to be paid enough money, to have benefits, to have a boss that values me and supports me as a whole person, and to have a work-life balance that lets me live a vibrant life. I’m not asking for three months off a year or for paid lunches or a ping pong table or even dogs in the office. I want my supervisor to see me as a capable, unique, intelligent person who has something to offer, and as a human that has mental, emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual needs; and I want those needs to be honored. What does that looks like? Forty hours a week. Flexible schedule. Paid time off. Flexibility to use PTO whenever. A schedule that can accommodate family needs. Health insurance that covers therapy; encouragement to live a balanced, whole life. To be seen and treated as a human being, and to be valued and appreciated. That’s it.
There’s a slew of other things (I crave being creative, being in innovative spaces, collaborating with other intelligent people, and having a degree of autonomy within relatively flat hierarchies, and I love people-oriented, strategy-level work), organizationally, that are specific to me, but these are pretty much the baseline.
I’m doing everything in my power to give myself options to pivot when I need to, but I feel like everyday, I’m running out of runway on my tarmac, like I’m running out of air and my body is feeling more and more tired as I’m treading water. I don’t want to wait until I snap. I want to be able to see the future in front of me, clear as the light of the day, but right now, things are just looking a little dim and it’s really getting me down.
The title of this blog post is, "What kind of shit sandwich are you willing to eat?" And it comes from this blog post by Mark Manson. Maybe my answer will change tomorrow or next week, and maybe this answer is different today is different than it was a year ago, but if I can have at least most of the above, I’ll take a few extra evening hours now and then, I’ll take answering my e-mails after hours, and I’ll take challenging, ever-changing work. I’ll even take a sizable pay cut at this point— I don’t want to job hop anymore. I want to love my work again.