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I'm in my late 20s and I still don't have a "career plan." I think that I just don't want a career, and that people in the United States put too much emphasis on their career in their lives.
I want to have a job I like, but I don't really care to have a career. I want to LIVE my life and not have it revolve around work.
Thoughts?
Since you haven't posted a reply to anyone, I assume you weren't really looking for an answer or suggestions for what you might do, maybe just trying to stir up a little controversy for the lulz (there's an insult implied in "too much emphasis on their career").
If you're looking for "just a job", decide what you want out of the job -- certain amount of money, ability to sleep on the job, variety or monotony, etc. Then go to bing or google and look for phrases like "best jobs without degree" or "highest paying jobs without degree" or "best jobs for drivers" etc to start your research based on your criteria. Then figure out what you need to do to get the job.
A career is something you build. It's a specific field that you stay in with the goal of learning more about and developing yourself. A career is about depth and growth. A job is not. Much of it is a mindset - if there are two plumbers, one can consider him/herself to have a job and the other can consider it a career. The one who considers it a career is looking to learn and develop their skills. The other is looking to put in a days work.
Another example: my college girlfriend's grandfather was a skilled carpenter in Virginia. He was in a house with a beautiful old spiral staircase in it, and as he touched it he wept, saying "no one knows how to make something like this any more". That's a carpenter who sees what he does as a career. Someone who knows how to swing a hammer, lives for the weekends and has no desire to learn new skills or become really good at something, who can't wait until the end of the day so he can have beers with friends: that's a job.
It has nothing to do with amount of formal education or the nature of what you're doing: it has to do with passion, and what psychologists call flow: the end of the day comes and you've become so engaged in what you're doing that the hours have slipped by without you really noticing them.
Is being self employed a life of poverty? Being an enterprenuer and having a career where you work for
someone ese making them rich, doens't make for poverty. OH the life people live when existing in a small box.
For awhile supplemented my income and I wrote & conducted seminars traveling around the country for a large company. My seminars were for upper management. Being a woman 25+ years ago, I would actually have men say to me, as they held most of these positions in upper management that attended my seminars 'you know your job is for losers who can't get a real job'. Oh I knew the game, I had worked with these kind of clowns several years before. They were threatened and the last thing they wanted was some woman knowing more about a subject than they did.
Always thinking, never saying, I'm not stuck like you are. When I finally got tired of this 'work' I told my last group on my last day. When some clown said something similar. I get to travel around, all expenses paid, getting paid for being creative while working out of my home. While you go into the same office day after day worrying whose getting ahead, am I making my 'numbers, what about this merger, rumors of cutback's', etc. Whose the loser? Go ahead and complain about me to headquaters, this is my last day.
Good for you OP. I never considered myself having a career. I jumped around in jobs learning skills in my 20's till about 34 when I woke up and said f* it. I'm sick of the BS and sily drama of working for someone else. And took my various skills and turned it into a business.
Then met my husband and took my skills and joined his even more successful company.
He's been doing this business since the early 70's. people ask him what his career is and he says making money while having fun.
Don't listen to the nay sayers. You are cut from a different cloth. You'll probably in your mife creat a niche or a brnad and others will say, OH I thought of that years ago. But they never did antyhingn about it casue they were to scared to take that leap or were too busy working in their 'career'.
I don't think its so much about "climbing the corporate ladder" as much as it is, being able to carry certain responsibilities. Unless OP intends on only supporting himself, and doesn't expect a woman to give him children, then maybe he can be alright with staying at that level.
But typically, most men get older, want families, etc. Unless your job is providing you with a certain level of income that allows you to comfortably provide for a child, and save for retirement, that will be a problem for many women.
If kids aren't in your future, then hey, do you.
This is one of the reasons I won't have children I don't want to work myself into an early grave taking care of them and taking on added pressure at work. Most guys are slaves to there families and work themselves to death.
You know, I used to think this way when I was your age, but eventually I realized I had to work 40 hours regardless. Might as well make those 40 hours financially worth it.
This. You can work 40 hrs and make $40k or you can work 40 hrs and make $140k. It's up to you.
OP here. I anticipated I would get some response, but not this strongly. I have been busy WORKING (yes, I work) so I haven't gotten around to replying. Here's a little bit about me.
- I have my bachelor's degree.
- I am way overqualified for the job I have now, and I don't make enough money to live on my own.
- I taught abroad for a couple years, and I plan to do the same again next year. Right now I am in the waiting game stage.
- I am gay, so I don't have any women to impress.
- I don't want kids. I want to live my own life. I love kids but they suck away all your money.
OP here. I anticipated I would get some response, but not this strongly. I have been busy WORKING (yes, I work) so I haven't gotten around to replying. Here's a little bit about me.
- I have my bachelor's degree.
In What? Many BS or BA degrees represent a clear career choice. What is your degree in?
- I am way overqualified for the job I have now, and I don't make enough money to live on my own.
Define overqualified. Having a degree does not always make one overqualified for a job, if that is what you are getting at.
- I taught abroad for a couple years, and I plan to do the same again next year. Right now I am in the waiting game stage.
That would be awesome to do. If teaching is something that you love could you do it here?
- I am gay, so I don't have any women to impress.
My brother is gay and with the kind of lifestyle he and his friends have I would say many in the community are working harder to impress both men and women. From the kind of home he lives in to the kind of cars he drives.
- I don't want kids. I want to live my own life. I love kids but they suck away all your money.
The Gay lifestyle sucks away all your money. I have plenty of family and friends that are gay and they spend way more on things than I have ever spent with a wife and six kids. My wifes cousin purchased a beautiful 4,000 square foot home on an acre of land with his partner. They have very high end cars. Income is there but I am guessing from watching that it is all spent maintaining a lifestyle. A close friend of my brothers asked for some advice on getting out of debt. He was renting a home on the beach,and had three car payments. His car payments alone were over $3,000 a month. My advice was to sell what ever he could. He ended up getting rid of two cars, moved from the beach house, and lived in a small apartment near his job. Took him three years to recover financially and he is now doing very good.
So that is my about me.
Maybe focus on the field you have the degree in.
Find out how you can get a better position at work or someplace else.
Maybe become a teacher if you love teaching abroad.
No big deal. Lots of people feel that way. You can make good money in jobs that are mid-level. For example, some people who are Executive Assistants are making $65-$80,000 a year and have no desire to move up from that role. I never used to think of my job as a career either until recently when someone called me a "career administrative assistant."
I'm one of those people who works when I'm at work, but I do not want to work 50-60 hours a week. I consider my job a job and only do it because I need to pay the bills. If I didn't have to work, I wouldn't.
I feel the same way as you do in fact I been working a pretty entry-mid level kind of job for a long time now more in IT though not an executive assistant.
As someone who deals with End Users every day and resets password for like the billion time I actually find it very fun and keeps me busy I pretty much ending up doing a career in desktop support but I have more a job than a career as I never wanted to move up the ladder way too much responsibilities and stress to being a system admin or programmer ( no offense ) but climbing up the ladder is sometimes way too much hard work.
- renewing certs
- being on-call 24/7 waking up at 3am
- working on the weekend
- working beyond 40 hours because systems don't break from 9 to 5
Yea no thanks that said I still make a decent salary and mostly work 40 hours a week with decent benefits and time off it helps to be an hourly employee as those kind of jobs are generally just that " just a job"
I'm an hourly employee and we have certain performance metrics we must meet (can do it in my sleep.) But many cannot, and they end up working overtime which eventually gets them documented and out the door. All overtime has to be approved, and it is normally used to cover people who call out, are terminated, or for special projects.
Sounds to me like OP is an employer's wet dream. While many employers try to market themselves to potential candidates as a great place to develop and grow in your career, the truth is that most of them really couldn't care less about your career progression once you are working for them. They hired you for that specific role, and that specific role only. Once you start bringing up career advancement opportunities, it makes managers cringe. Because now you're creating an issue for them that they will need to resolve by having to replace you once you leave.
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