Dreams Don't Turn to Dust

I’ve literally rewritten this opening sentence less than three times. That may be a new record. There’s a certain pressure to writing a good opening sentence. I remember while in school that my English teachers would constantly hound us students about making an interesting introduction. I would have to agree; I generally know by the third or fourth word whether or not I’m going to continue on the journey of reading something.  My English teachers would probably come to the conclusion that this is a terrible way to introduce the topic of this post, and to be honest, they’d probably be right. So, what exactly is it that you are going to be reading about?  Occupations.  Yes, occupations.

I’d like to begin with how I came to choose this subject. You see, I was talking to Katelyn Ericson about blogging, and how I can never decide on what to write about. She told me to write about anything.  I came to the conclusion this was pretty solid (however vague it may have been) advice. Once I knew I should write about anything, I needed some help in deciding what to write about, so I went to a random noun generator and generated 10 random nouns. These are the nouns it selected for me:

1. Bladder
2. Chime
3. Composition
4. Monkey
5. Occupation
6. Persian
7. Playroom
8. Space
9. Square
10. Turn

I briefly entertained the thought of writing various stories that involved bladders, but decided to pass for fear of embarrassing myself or people I know. Chimes bore me. Composition reminds me too much of intro to communications. I was pretty close to choosing Monkey as the subject, but then I decided it was too exotic for a simple blog post. Occupation was clearly the first noun on the list that was worth writing about, so I chose it.

I’m pretty sure most of my English teachers would have stopped reading this by now and told me to get to the point about 3 paragraphs sooner. But since they aren’t reading this, I don’t think it really matters how long it takes me to actually talk about occupations. I guess now would be as good a place as any though.

Occupations. The wide variety and large diversity (that’s only slightly redundant) of occupations in the world is mind boggling. When most people think of an occupation they simply think of a doctor, or lawyer, or fireman, or the other generic answers to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I however, find it fascinating to think about the jobs you never think about. For example, those sacrament cups you use every week at church, those chairs you sit at in school, and those light posts on the side of the road, someone had to make those. Imagine if you were the millionaire who decided to invest in a sacrament cup making factory? Imagine if you were the worker in the factory making those cups? 

The famous Jon Huntsman became a billionaire by starting out making disposable cup holders. Bill Gates became a billionaire by messing around with electronics in his garage. When people ask me what I want to do or who I want to be, I always answer with “I’m not really sure.” Maybe I should respond with “I wanna make toilet paper” or “I’ve been thinking about getting into the toe nail clipper business”. 

My entire life I’ve been taught to see the world and how it operates from such a limited viewpoint. It goes something like this: You will go to school. You will get older and go to college. You will get a job that is related to what you went to college for. I don’t how to explain it, but I see the world in such absolutes. Everyone takes the same path, but only the best make it to the end. You are paid according to how far on the path you made it. The smartest people get the highest paying jobs and the most prestigious titles. Those who aren’t smart or are too lazy end up with jobs that aren’t important or don’t pay as much. That is the way I saw life work. 

I’ll admit that I never wanted to end up with a manual labor job, or end up with a job that only pays 40-50k a year. That’s chump work. That’s the uneducated lower class people’s work. How could you live life like that? I never once considered why people do the things they do. I never considered what makes people happy. Happiness should be the biggest driving factor behind what you chose to do in life. If you are making a 100k a year, but the job you are doing is something you hate, then is it really worth it?  Maybe people find a lot of joy in fixing cars or helping construct houses? Maybe everything I’m going to school for isn’t what I wanted? Maybe everything in life that I had figured out, is wrong?

To be honest I have no real desire to do anything related to my degree. I chose it because that’s what society told me to choose. My degree has an average salary of 60-80k dollars a year straight out of college. My degree lets me sit in a comfy chair all day in an air conditioned office. Is that what I want? Is that what really makes me happy? Probably not. 

If I could throw away everything I thought I understood about life, I would. I would become a graphic designer and photographer. That’s what really makes me happy. Growing up I never thought to myself, “Hey, this magazine, someone got paid to take these photos…” or “Hey, that picture on this website, I bet someone got paid to take that”. It’s a shame I had no idea how the world operated. I would much rather work as a graphic designer and  photographer and be happy than whatever it is that I’m expected to be doing with the degree I’m so close to getting. 

I think there is also a lot of pressure from family. You don’t want to disappoint your parents. “Hey dad, guess what?! I’m going to be a truck driver!” I don’t know about you, but my family probably wouldn’t be the most supportive of that idea. I personally would love to be a truck driver. There have been times when I’ve seriously considered it as a job just to see if it’s as fun as I imagine it to be. By fulfilling your parents’ wishes, many times you sacrifice your own.

Anyways, that’s enough rambling for one night. Summary: find a job that you’ll be happy doing. Forget what everyone else thinks about that job. They may not understand why it makes you happy, and they make think you deserve something “better”, but don’t let that get to you.