mel-web

There are days when you want a job, and there are days you love your career.  Jobs are simple, self contained methods of earning money.  You show up, you do your job, you leave and spend the money you made.  Careers are different.  They make demands on your time outside your paid hours, there’s potential to move, grow, and advance.  You invest in your skills and your abilities.   You make trade-offs in your life to do so.  But it feels good to be passionately wrapped up in something.  Today, and maybe next Monday, I’d just like a nice job.

To be honest though you can have nearly any position in the world and treat it as a job or a career.  If it’s meant to be treated like a career and you treat it like a job, well, things might not end well, and probably sooner than you’d like.  I can imagine your always worried that you’re being let go, and that is a scary prospect because you have no idea where you’d go if that happens.  Jobs are dependent on employers and don’t have much of a life of their own.  And if you have a job and you treat it like a career, well, I imagine you’re feeling rather unfulfilled and bothered about how others are not putting in like you do.  Life probably feels rather unfair because you’re not advancing and growing as it feels like you should be.  Balance comes in knowing what you have, and treating it appropriately.

I never wanted a career.  The idea of a job for a while until hubby & kids came along is much more appealing.  I want to be a old-school mom.   You know, great with house work, raising well rounded kids, a good host to neighbors and friends.  All that classic TV family stuff.  So, knowing that college was more secure than finding a suitor I went for a degree I could work from home with: Computer Science.  That’s gone well, a little too well.  Now, about 5 years later, I have budding career I never intended.

I find myself in this career a bit bitter, but a bit excited. I’m loving what I’m doing, and I’m hating getting up to do it.  I imagine someday I’ll have reduced hours and be more at peace with things.  But for right now, in this time, I feel oddly pressed into something I like.  And that just seems contradictory doesn’t it?  How does one get pressured into to doing something they want to do?  Wouldn’t it just happen without pressure?  I suppose it sort of did.  I love my where my career is going.  I can see it working out very well long term.  However, when the alarm goes off in the morning, I’m still going to be dragging me feet all the way to my beloved window seat in the office.

I left that cozy window seat at about 6:15 p.m. tonight after a 1.75 hour conference call with project members from Chicago and California.  I have some more work to do tonight (partly because I’m curious), and that will put me at about 10 hours today (which is quite a bit above my average).  So I find myself with sore eyes, an aching brain, and the curiosity of how I ended up in this career.  It’s a good career, but it’s definitely a career.  Now the balancing act: keep work at work, home at home, and reflect & mature each while not active at it.

I wouldn’t mind a job somedays, but I like where my career is going.