Skip to main content

Jobs, Career, Money: Things That Matter

I have been thinking about jobs and careers and money a whole bunch lately.

I have a job, but not the career I want.


I have money, but not enough.


It surprises me to say both those things, but they are true.

I am not highly career-oriented, but I have realized that if/since I will spend 40 hours a week contributing to some sort of business endeavour, I want it to be something that I fully buy into, somewhere I would recruit my friends to join me, where the vision is to accomplish something bigger than ourselves.

I don't care about being overly-rich, but I have come to value three things that I am not currently able to afford; living debt-free, saving money for the future and being able to travel. The first two seem obvious. The third: I'm not a big spender in most areas of life, and am most likely to "indulge" myself in a trip to visit far-away friends or see a new part of the world. I feel okay about this.



As I have been thinking and talking about my next job, the numbers on the salary have played a bigger role than I'd expected. I sometimes browse websites, and immediately write off work that is at my current salary level. I don't think I make that much, given my education, experience and location. And don't get me wrong; I'm grateful to have a job at all. But this can't be forever.

In the past month, I've had two conversations with people who would like me to work with them. Both are jobs I could get excited about. (They're somewhat similar jobs, which affirms to me that this area-of-interest could become an area-of-expertise.)

But the glitch is that neither can offer me a salary tomorrow. One is a business start-up with limited capital. The other is a non-profit in which staff raise their own support. Both scenarios make me nervous, even though the content of the jobs sound just about perfect...


Why am I telling you this? I don't know. But them's my current thoughts.

Anyone want to throw a decent-paying cause-oriented job my way?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Sarah6:01 PM

    In my experience, you have to choose between a good cause and good money, because they tend not to be found together. If I'm wrong, I'd love to know about it and would consider changing jobs :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beth10:13 PM

    Sarah, I have to say... I don't think cause-oriented jobs are uber-high-paying, but I DO think that it's possible to find a good cause and good money in the same place. If I had accounting skills, I would have a bunch more options to apply for :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:54 PM

    The best job sounds like it would be cause based and would let you raise funds to travel!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thin
1 comment
Read more

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro
2 comments
Read more

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st
Post a Comment
Read more