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A few weeks ago, my work team and I loaded up in a sweet Dodge Grand Caravan to travel across the state for a meeting.
This particular meeting entailed driving three and a half hours one way, meeting for one hour, and driving three and a half hours back. Since yours truly is the project manager, and it was my idea to make sure we meet with constituents and stakeholders in person as much as possible and I got to captain the boat both ways, something I never mind as long as there are people to talk to. Couple that with how beautiful the drive through the mountains this time of the year and we have ourselves a recipe for a memorable ride. Sometimes the journey is more fun than the destination.
Both of my bosses are PhD holding parents that are well respected in their respective research communities. One of my bosses is as laid back as they come and the other, the ultimate professional. It is a great 1-2 punch; in the community research arena, people are often wary of academics and my bosses make sure everyone is comfortable and the right things are said. This is born out of genuine care and interest rather than contrived lip service.
During the course of the trip, the topic of “work burnout” came up. I rarely talk about it, let alone in front of my bosses. Yet, hearing it from them made it okay to be out in the open. The meetings, mindless emails, idiots – you name it, they’ve dealt with it. That level banal bullshit grinds down even the sharpest edge. Honestly, I’d rather people be upfront with the mundane realities of their ten-year head start in the field rather than lie to me and tell me I’ll need to know cursive like teachers did in middle school.
We all grapple with work burnout. The idea that we work all these years to “retire.” How many times have you seen Mr. Beerbelly work, retire, head up to the tee box on the first hole and keel over with a heart attack? All of that work for what? We throw money into IRAs, 401k accounts, try to save squirrel a little money, buy a house and hope we don’t take it in the ass from life. Who knows if we’ll even have a Social Security?
It drives me crazy when I hear people say, “You never work a day in your life if you do something you love.” I love my job because I like to help people, I enjoy the people I work with, and I also enjoy not living in a cardboard box. Like many harsh realities of life, you have pay the bills. My one boss often laments about having nothing to show at the end of the day. He always talks about becoming a garbage man because of the movie Men at Work. This man holds two masters and a doctorate but would being a garbage man be his “never work a day in his life”? I guess the seaweed is always greener.
We spend a lot of our life in some sort of institution. From preschool up to high school, onto college and beyond. Each step of the way, people feed you more bullshit, from “you won’t get to use a calculator” to “if you work really really hard, you’ll get a great job and live the American Dream.” You basically get one shot to figure out your life. We ask 18-year-old kids who are often first-generation college students to figure out what they want to do and if they fuck that up, they are financially taking it in the shitter for quite some time.
“You can always go back and do something new, Madoff. What’s wrong with you?”
I’m glad I went to college and grad school. I’d do it again and I love what I do, but that doesn’t diminish the feeling of burnout. Yeah I know, you can chase a new dream but that dream better fucking pay the bills. Lop that on top of what many of us already owe and restarting from the bottom is often unattainable unless you want to put yourself behind a second 8 ball.
Every year is getting shorter and I never seem to find the time to do anything. We’re already a week into November and its dark at 5:30 p.m. Sometimes, the realization that I will be doing this for the next 35 plus with a high likelihood of never retiring gets me down. The only reprieve from the 9-5, Monday-Friday life, at least for the time being, are weekends, holidays and PTO. As Noel Gallagher once said, “You can wait for a lifetime to live your days in the sunshine, you might as well do the white line.” .
Respond
Madoff
I specialize in damage control, being the drunkest at any and all functions and social assassination. Always appreciate a strong gif game. Follow me on Twitter. Sometimes I put up cool stuff about golfing at the local dirt tracks.
@BLMInvestment
First yesterday’s post about late 20s and now this. I think PGP is trying to induce its readers into a quarter life crisis.
Don’t forget Victoria’s post about things being good versus them being right.
Oh crap, I totally forgot about that one. I think that I feel like I’m getting so old so quickly that I’m developing early onset Alzheimer’s.
I’ve need felt a stronger need to use my house down payment savings to buy a boat.
never, I’ve been drinking
Do you guys want me to write a piece about the stock market meltup before the crash, the fact that the amount of outstanding debt is literally unplayable and debt from predatory lending now stimulates the economy temporarily, how productivity has skyrocketed the last 50 years while income have remained flat for the past 25 so we’re basically not getting paid for our own productivity even though we work smarter than ever before? Do you want me to touch upon the fact that the impending civil unrest will be economics/survival based rather than political, religious, race based? Shit, I just did nvm lol
yeah I’ve seen The Big Short to boss.
This will be bigger than the 2008 crash by astronomical percentages. Start investing in electricity and hope they care enough to keep us alive
Or all the PGP Writers have synced up their cycles and are having one massive collective crisis.
I wrote this last week and finalized it Tuesday. No crisis, just writing about what’s relevant to me.
or that post about not being scared to get pregnant anymore…
did they take that one down? lol
nope it’s there, couldn’t find it earlier
Doing something you love doesn’t mean there won’t be times where it frustrates you, or makes you angry, or makes you want to take a break.
Just like with other things you love, like marriage or a relationship, I assume. Everything isn’t always easy and sometimes, people forget that.
You can’t appreciate the beauty of something without witnessing the ugly sometimes.
I always thought of it like playing video games as a kid: how much did you love games like Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot yet how much did it piss you off at times.
This is also a good way to relate to it.
Good reference.
Accurate as hell. As my sweet old grandma always said “Life’s not easy and life’s not fair. Suck it up kid.” People who perpetuate the “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” nonsense are more FOS than most of my patients. None of these things are supposed to be easy. Just gotta appreciate the good days and the little things. Great read as always.
And I honest to goodness do love my job and most of the people I work with. I’m lucky to have it and them. But it doesn’t mean things are easy or rainbows and butterflies.
I relate to this on a deep level. I love what I do, but it’s really hard not to walk into work some days and think, “What fresh hell awaits me today?” This was a reassuring read, Madoff.
“You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.” -Tyler Durden
I read that line after Mr. Beerbelly’s heart attack as “We throw money in IPAs.” That also would have been true and heavily contributes to my beer belly. Thanks for the fun start to the day.
Mr. Beerbelly was an allusion to the Paul Simon song, “You Can Call Me Al”. Sorry for starting your day in a sad way.
I’ve talked with comedians and gamblers who get burnt out too and those jobs are the dream for a lot of 9-5 warriors. I’ve also met retirees who hate being retired and go back to work. Always assuming the grass is greener affects how you think of your current life
I think it’s a balance between appreciating what you have but also not settling. Some of the greatest things that happen to people are a result of a calculated (or sometimes not so calculated) risk. And yet at the same time, plenty of people throw away great jobs, significant others etc and then are left wondering why tf they did that.
Sometimes I think I would be happier if I didn’t love my job so that I wouldn’t feel ungrateful every time it pissed me off.
I think people our age work to live, whereas the demographic our parents age lived to work. Hopefully everyone is making the most of their PTO now and not waiting for retirement to live their life. Just my two cents.
Unfortunately I fall into the category of fucked up my pick in college and now I’m paying for it. I work a great job and making more money than if I stayed in my chosen career field, but like you said, the feeling of not being able to retire is dreadful. Be a weekend warrior as long as you can. Like Def Leopard said….”it’s better to burn out, than fade away”.
Maybe I missed the joke but that was definitely Neil Young
Missed it like I missed my career choice!