Well I am 38 years old and I have had several jobs throughout my life. Most of which have been in the Logistics / Warehouse field. I live in Louisville KY and it seems that all jobs in the area basically fall into 6 fields, Warehouse / Logistics, Sales, Food /Beverage, Truck Driving, Nursing and Sales. I have been checking job sights for a couple of years now and this is all that I really run across. All of my friends & family are in these same fields, so I do not have any fresh ideas / leads to go on.
I can not explain the frustration I currently am going through concerning a career search. Yes…. I said career and not a pay check. At my current salary range” $35,000 yearly” I surely do not see me saving enough money to start my own business or ever retiring.
Finding a career that I enjoy doing has really been difficult, if not impossible in finding.
The “Work at Home” route I believe is 99% scams or it is going to be a $5,000 yearly opportunity.
Following the “What I love to do” idea sounds real good, but in the real world those jobs pay about $8 per hour.
I have thought about going back to school for one of those 2 year / 18 month courses like “Pharmacy Tech” or “Para Legal” but after really researching fields like these, there are very few of these position open and they do not pay well. I make as much now as I would if I had that degree and who knows if I would even enjoy the job any better than the one I have now.
I am slipping into a depression over this! I feel like I am going to be 60 years old still stuffing boxes at a hot warehouse, on my feet for 10 hours a day. I think I understand now why someone takes a chance on doing something illegal to make some quick cash or just running a way to start your life over down in the islands somewhere.

The whole doing-what’s-right-for-us vs paying-the-bills conundrum is huge!

I despise that I have to do this, to the point where I feel physically ill most days. I have to stifle my true self for such a large portion of my life, and voicing my opinion will get me into trouble- hence the really awful pseudonym (the e-mail address is real).

I have forced myself to do this for 10 years, and it’s not healthy. It is only within the last year that the cubicle-caged animal within me has started pacing relentlessly and screaming in pain: “This is wrong! You are not supposed to live this way!”

Only recently have I been able to proclaim (and truly believe) that just because I don’t want an office job does NOT mean I am lazy; and damn it, I AM a professional, regardless of my desire to dye my hair pink (which I have never been allowed to do). When pursuing knowledge of my choosing, or a project of my own making, I will work long past the standard 8-hour block of time, and only want more.

The crux is, how does one pay for food, a place to live, transportation, and medicine without “the real job?” Nobody tells you that in high school, and they sure as hell don’t want you to find out in college. That is the sole reason I didn’t pursue art as a path, even though I’ve always known it was the only thing that would ever be right for me.

Now that the blinders have come off, the only reason I haven’t done it is because I haven’t yet assembled the pieces to accomplish the goal. That is why I am here.

I made a wrong turn that lasted 10 years, and I’m turning the giant SUV of my life around.

All of us were over educated and under achieving, so we had that community sense of shared struggle. These were the funniest, warmest, sexiest and most nourishing people I have ever worked with, and thus it made that job the best I’ve ever been paid (not much) for. They made going to work an adventure everyday, and when I left (I was leaving the country), I felt a great sense of loss.

Moral of the story: it is not the tasks, it’s the people that make it suck or not suck. Unfortunately, that’s not a question you can ask at an interview – “Will my co-workers delight or despond my psyche?”

I need a new career.

On the idea of “real jobs”, I can only speak from my mostly one sided perspective. It seems that many of us trade our time, i.e. life, in exchange for money so as to keep ourselves treading water in the shallow end of the pool. We put in our time, doing what we are told to do, and not utilizing our full minds/intellect/creativity. Then we get our pittance and spend it to keep ourselves from drowning until the next time it is doled out to us. We become wage slaves.

I am extremely lucky in that my job is not what I would consider a real job. It is flexible enough that I will able to work while on the path of discovering, developing, and living the story life at the same time.

Look forward to more updates. Keep up the great work!

http://www.polyp.org.uk/cartoons/consumerism/polyp_cartoon_Rat_Race.jpg

Hope Portland is awesome… tell Jolie I said hey!

Wes

Great to see you on video. I think having video updates adds another dimension to the words that you write in your blog.

I’ve come to realise that it’s not so much that real jobs suck but there are many ***holes in various organisations that make the jobs suck. An experienced colleague once told me, work is work, but it’s the people around you who make it suck or not.

I feel blessed to be in my current job in that the people are great and the pay is decent and I hope to stay on. But I’m also working on side-projects to kick in when I decide that I’ve had enough of the 9-5 (or 8.30 am to 6pm) office life and where it helps me transit to my next phase of life.

Be well and prosper!