5 Things Nobody Tells You About Having a Career
Some of you will be lucky enough to get actual grownup careers right out of college. Others, like me, will merely have "jobs," punching time clocks and wearing mandatory work hats for a couple of decades until anything like a career comes along. I don't think the people in either situation are ready for it when it happens.
Because the difference between "job" and "career" is huge -- a career isn't just a job that pays more and doesn't require an apron. You work toward it your whole life, but there are no actual teachers to tell you what to do with the Road Runner when you finally have his skinny little leg in your fist. Do you eat him? Make a sweet pimp hat out of his feathers? Fuck his beak off? It turns out there are a whole lot of things people don't tell you about the career thing, like ...
Everybody Demands Your Time
It was only a couple of years ago that I was working a physical labor job that kept me clinched tightly in the asshole of poverty while I tried to come up with new ways to convince myself that I had it all under control. But on the upside, my routines were pretty simple -- I worked, came home, relieved stress with games and beer, went to sleep ... rinse and repeat. Sometimes, I'd go back to work after a couple of days off and hear about some psychopath customer who threatened the workers and spin kicked a computer off of the counter. How they had to call the police, and it was just this huge fiasco, and "Man, you should have seen it."
But I didn't see it because I was off. And when you're off, work stays at work. That very idea is the difference between a career versus just working a job to pay the bills. I don't know exactly how far up it's located, but once you reach a certain rung on the work ladder, you will see the psycho, because you're the one they call when his feet turn into those little catapult switches in Portal 2 and start whipping computer monitors into space. At that level, there is no such thing as "work stays at work." For better or worse, your life is your work.
The higher you climb, the more people need your input and help. And every person you add to that list takes away more of the time that is needed to complete the core duties of your job. Trying to explain this to someone who isn't living it is next to impossible, because they have no means of comparison yet. I have friends who still work those 9-to-5 jobs, and they can't fathom why I can't take one measly hour to visit with them.
I don't blame them, because they don't see the side of me that works from the time I wake up until 5 a.m. the next day. And that a one-hour visit means that I'm now going to be getting in bed at 6 a.m. The next distraction pushes that back to 7, and so on. They've never put that kind of commitment and effort into work before, so how could they know? It doesn't make them bad people. Except James -- that dude's a twat.
But because of that, they also don't understand that the reverse -- those occasional, spontaneous, off the cuff visits to me can wreck my day just as badly. Yes, it feels awesome to have friends over, and I never want to turn them away, but that's really the problem. Allowing it to happen freezes my progress and shifts my whole schedule to the right for exactly as long as they stay.
I understand how horrible that sounds, but it's really not. It's a simple solution: We just have to schedule visits in advance. When you fully commit to a career, that time is more valuable than the money you receive for it. Everything in your life becomes a delicate, precise balancing act: chores, family, friends, entertainment, sex, even eating. Friends and family picture you working all day, so they feel like you've earned a break and owe them that time. Work thinks that as soon as you're out of their sight, you're out goofing off, showing strangers your dick or something, so you owe them more work to justify what they're paying you. The whole world turns into that teacher who assigns you a 20-page report because to her, you have no other classes or responsibilities. "It won't take that long. What's one little assignment?" Meanwhile, you have four other teachers telling you the same thing, and you're trying to figure out how to finish 100 pages without resorting to cocaine.
Why That's a Good Thing
Your ability to manage that time is what sets you apart from everyone else who is competing for the job you currently have, or are shooting for. Not everyone can do it. Hell, for that matter, not many people can do it, but that's why those positions are considered special and desirable. It's why people who make it to that level are respected.
And if you don't respect them, there will be fucking consequences.
The financial rewards are obviously a pretty awesome upside, but there's something so much larger to consider. A person's ability to manage time on such an exact scale will dictate what they get out of life and what they pass on when they leave it. Let's face it, in the grand scheme of things, we're not here very long. The more you get done, the more you leave behind, both material and in a namesake sort of legacy. Yes, there's something to be said about stopping to smell the roses, but hurry the fuck up. You have shit to do.
Hobbies Dry Up
I used to love the shit out of World of Warcraft. I put more time into that game than I did my full-time job. If I could have gotten paid to play it, no one would have ever seen me again -- my kids would have been forced to get accounts just to talk to me. I would be one rich motherfucker, though.
I was able to play it so much because I worked eight hours a day and had plenty of time to kill when I clocked out. That's the upside to working a throwaway job where you're just another face performing basic functions. You can watch 12 hours of porn in one sitting when you don't have a crew of workers who depend on you to be able to show up at a moment's notice, sans boner.
Just a year and a half ago, I tripped and landed face-first into this job that sounds so ridiculous when explaining it to someone that I eventually learned it was just easier to say, "I work with computers." Before I knew it, I was being pushed up that ladder, and though I'm not complaining in the slightest, I found that the more responsibility I took on, the more of my life that job took up. Little by little, WoW got whittled down until it just disappeared altogether. That happens with any career, and because of that, it becomes increasingly more important to enjoy it, because there is a tipping point on that scale where your career becomes your hobby.
There's no such thing as a day off. You're as much at work at 3 a.m. as you are when you're in the office. If what you're doing isn't one of your favorite things, you're going to find yourself on the ass end of a nine millimeter, firing into open crowds and screaming out the names of former SNL cast members as each one falls. No, work is something you tolerate. A career is something you live.
Why That's a Good Thing
Look at it this way: Let's say that one of my favorite things in the world is writing comedy. I'm talking about loving it in a way that if I never made a dime off of my work, I'd still be writing just for fun. And let's also say that after doing it for so long, some crazy person noticed and said, "Hey, I like those words that you're saying. Here's some money. If you do it again next week, I'll give you some more money. We will continue this process until I run out of money or you run out of words. You don't even have to blow me for it."
Yes, I'll admit that my career started out of sheer luck, but what I'm saying is that these things are absolutely out there if you know where to look. Love numbers? Bam, accountant. Like messing with computers? Booyah, tech monkey. Enjoy showing your freakishly large breasts to strangers? Pow, stripper. I wish I had understood that years ago, instead of just accepting that I'd always be resigned to shitty jobs with shitty pay.
The Financial Rules Completely Change
Wanna see something completely fucked up? Check out the $55 million football player who had to petition the courts to lower his child support because he's so broke he has to live with his parents. Think his demise is an isolated case? Here's 15 more. Or how about this ridiculous list of musicians who have gone broke? Google around -- they're in no short supply.
As I see it, the problem lies in the fact that there are no teachers to show you what to do when the world suddenly jerks you out of a lower or middle class income and fills your bank account with what you'd have previously considered an unspendable amount of money. How could there be? How many people have actually gone through that?
"So who can tell me the proper way to transfer half a billion dollars from savings to checking? Anyone?"
Now, I'm not saying I'm rich -- don't get me wrong here. But before this job, my life was ground zero of a monetary A-bomb. By comparison, what I earn now makes it look like I hit the fucking lottery ... but even those "broke" stars I mentioned earlier would kill themselves if their income suddenly went down to my pay scale. It's all relative.
But even on a smaller scale of changing tax brackets or escaping poverty, it requires an extreme change in how you look at and handle your finances, and very few people are ready for that. I talked in another article about how people who aren't used to it tend to spend any extra money right goddamn now for fear that it will disappear if they let it sit. So it should come as no surprise when we see stories of musicians like MC Hammer filing for bankruptcy after blowing through $30 million in just a few months.
It's not something you get taught -- it's something you have to learn from failing at it in various ways. You're used to viewing money as a means of survival, so when you start to get more of it, saving for retirement and setting up emergency funds is a foreign concept. And if you fuck up, it will cost you everything.
Just this year, for the first time in my life, I found myself writing a check to the government instead of them sending me a tax return. That's huge, because that windfall was what I used to count on to bail me out of the debt I racked up the previous Christmas. It's how I bought gifts for the two birthdays that pop up in February. All big purchases -- car repairs, new glasses, computer upgrades, jade cock ring -- were held off until that check arrived, and it would be gone in a matter of days.
Going from receiving several thousand dollars to paying several thousand dollars has forced me to learn how to save money and resist my natural urge to spend it when I see it piling up. I can't view it as "extra," but as income that is waiting to be spent on the next disaster. It's my MC Hammer prevention kit.
Why That's a Good Thing
If tomorrow all of this is taken away, I now have the intellectual tools to start hatching an escape plan. I know not only the value of saving, but the necessity of doing so. I understand what it takes to live a certain lifestyle, and I know my limits on what I can spend. That's a lesson that I could only learn by living in both financial states. One taught me how to take a billion financial shortcuts, like how to make Hamburger Helper without milk or hamburger. The other taught me that I don't have to.
When You're Absent, Things Stop Working
I bring up fast food jobs a lot in these types of articles because I believe they're among the most clockwork efficient workplaces on the planet. For the most part, they can hire almost anyone off the street and plug them right into the mix, getting pretty much the same results with any crew. If one of those people happen to get sick, they can call someone else in, or the manager can jump into that spot. A few minor adjustments and the machine keeps turning. No problem.
But call in sick as a judge, and court fucking stops. Even back down on that fast food level, the higher you climb on the corporate chain, the results get progressively worse for being absent.
Remember when Bill Gates got the flu back in '98?
For instance, on the workers' side, we always hear the same thing when the manager crashes her Lamborghini Diablo and has to miss a week: "When she's not around, this place runs so much smoother." No, it just runs with less stress on you because you don't have someone looking over your shoulder, ready to fire your ass for rubbing your balls on the lettuce. Yes, basic operations get done because you're used to working in patterns, and it doesn't take a manager to continually tell you how to do that. But keep that manager out of the picture long enough, and everything goes to hell. All of that work that she normally takes care of without the knowledge of the rest of the crew starts piling up, and nobody else has the skills or training to even know where to begin.
Eventually they have to find someone who can make the work schedule, order stock from suppliers, do payroll, organize advertising, communicate with the corporate office, hire new workers when the lettuce scandal goes public ...
If you're that manager, you're dreading every second that you're not at work because while you're gone, there is an enormous hole that isn't getting filled, and you know how much you're going to come back to. You have a very specific skill set that cannot be replaced on a whim, and that's why yours is called a career, while the teenager making fries is working a job.
It's all about how much the company relies on you to be available at any given moment, and they don't trust just anyone to do that. If they did, every job would be a career, and all the lower end tasks would be performed by robots and people from Wyoming.
Why That's a Good Thing
Being relied upon means job security, and that is one of the most valuable assets you'll ever acquire in the workforce. When you're in a position of being irreplaceable, you'll find that companies are much more liberal with things like raises, time off, benefits and even the tone they take when they speak to you. They know you're important, and they want to keep you around. As far as careers go, there is no greater feeling. Well, maybe getting away with shitting on the floor, but if you're smart like me, you have that written into your contract anyway, so that's a given.
As far as life in general, it teaches you how to be a problem solver. And I'm telling you, nothing gets done faster than when you're the one fixing things. There's liberation in knowing that you don't have to depend on other people to do things for you.
People Assume That You're Not Enjoying Life
Whenever I talk about my work hours, I inevitably get a friend or family member telling me, "You need to slow down and learn to relax before you give yourself an ulcer." They talk about how unhealthy it is to live under that much stress, picturing me blocking out every other facet of my life to appease the ever-looming Work Overlord.
The problem is that they're still using the same frame of mind that they were in when they worked a crappy job that they hated. They're assuming that what I'm doing is stressful and taxing, and it's just not. When you have a job that provides a reward, working a 16-hour day is no more taxing than spending a day on the beach or laying around, playing a video game. And I'm not talking about a paycheck type of reward. I mean the satisfaction of seeing the end result of something you created. I don't care if it's writing dick jokes, building a homeless shelter or seeing your store break a sales record. Seeing your work pay off in a tangible way is the fuel that keeps the rocket going. But my family has never experienced that, so they tell me that I need to find a stress release, not understanding that my work is my stress release.
I will typically have 60 hours invested into my work before the end of the fourth day. Aside from doing it because I love it, I also do it so that when the weekend rolls around, I have time to spend with my family and friends. What I'm not doing is locking myself inside seven days a week and pecking on a keyboard until blood comes out of my eyes.
Slow down and enjoy life? Fuck that. I did that for over 30 years, and it got me nowhere but poor. I'd rather speed up and enjoy life because I've since learned that the harder I work, the easier the rest of life becomes. Not just for me, but for my fiancee, my kids and the bill collectors who don't have to deal with my cursing anymore.
Why That's a Good Thing
Most people don't have the stamina to put in hours like that, and the world doesn't expect them to. Hell, personally, I don't want them to. The more people who are able and willing to pull those kinds of work weeks, the less of an advantage I have -- It's one less thing I have going in my favor, and believe me, I'll take everything I can get, because I don't have much to begin with.
That's me.
But if you do happen to find something that provides the sort of satisfaction that makes you want to do more of it, and people are actually handing you money for it ... take advantage of that shit for as long as you can. Someone can fill in for you when you're dead.
For more Cheese, check out 4 Awful Ways The Internet Is Tainting Everything Else and 5 Reasons Money Can Buy Happiness.
