A Better Job

It's about the time of year when young people start college or other post-high school training and have to figure out what they want to do for a living for the rest of their lives.

That is a very important decision--certainly in the top five of the most important decisions a person ever makes, at the same importance level as marrying the right person. Both can either make us glad to be alive or can make us wish we had never been born.
               

I watch a lot of documentaries. I really enjoy them. I saw one recently about two families in the Midwest United States. As far as I could tell, none of the four adults ever really made a decision about what they wanted to do for a living. They bounced around from job to job as companies laid them off or went out of business. At fifty and sixty years old, they were still in entry level type positions, making entry level pay, far below poverty level.
             
It is important to decide on the kinds of work we want to do and the kinds of things we want to accomplish in our lives. It's almost impossible for most people to have a good and worthy job at any point in their lives if they don't avail themselves of some sort of post-high school training and education.
             
Some young people have an idea they want to prepare for a certain kind of work, but then they see how much effort and time is necessary to prepare, so they back off. The time will pass and effort to do something will be expended. Spend them preparing for what you want to do, that will help make you reasonably happy!
             
I expanded my thoughts from young people going off to college or technical training to adults who have been in the work place for many years. It is my experience that almost no one loves their job. Almost no one can't wait to get out of bed and get to their job, every day. Very few people would keep going to work if the paychecks stopped. I personally don't feel that we necessarily have to love our jobs to that extent.

But I do think we should like our jobs. We should do something that we get some fulfillment from every day. Even some fun and joy from at least from time to time. And it is important to earn enough money to provide for a family's security, comfort, and health. We should not feel dread every Sunday evening because we'll have to start a new work week on Monday morning. We should not hate to get out of bed because when we do, we just have to go to that lousy job.
               

If we don't like our jobs and feel grateful to have them, if we don't get some fulfillment from them, if we don't have fun at least some of the time, if we don't make enough money that we don't have to worry about money all the time, we should consider changes. It's never too late. I don't care for any excuses about not having time to get retrained for a different kind of job or to be promoted.

I have seen people who were very, very busy with their current full-time jobs, their families, their communities, and their churches, who went to school in the evenings to get trained to do something else, or to progress in their current jobs. Making changes can be hard, but not as hard as hating our jobs or being under-employed for the rest of our lives.
             
A bad job affects every other part of our lives. I think this is because we spend more time at our jobs, including getting ready for work, traveling to our work place, and traveling home from work, than any other thing that we do, except sleep. Spending most of our awake hours doing something we hate has to have an effect on our entire lives.
           
We may try to not be negative around others about a job we don't like, but it is obvious. And few people try to hide it. Negative jobs messing up people's lives accounts for untold divorce, abuse, and crime.
             
Children can get the idea from a parent with a bad job that working is a negative thing. They can get the idea that work can't be fun. They can get the idea that they're doomed to certain kinds of work, rather than feeling that they can do whatever they want and can be fulfilled by work. They can feel that their lives will be drudge until their jobs kill them. Please let's not do that to our children.