They’re all late night, btw.
The only scary one is the fear of losing a job that I haven’t yet tried to persuade anyone to change. Because they can’t control it, it has the power over them. The fear does. And they’re stuck with nowhere to exit. Or should I say they feel stuck without realizing that letting something go could do something incredibly good. What happens if you lose that job? No rent?
What’s the worst thing? Won’t be able to find another job and that’s what you are afraid of? Why? Because you are genuinely convinced you are really not that good enough and maybe even terrible at what you do for you to sell yourself successfully and find another job? So you are afraid that will be the end, the eviction, the bankruptcy?
So?
Will you die? Nah ha. Will you become homeless? Well, you’ll have at least a few months until that might happen. At the bare fucking minimum, can’t you go find a job as a server? Or a janitor? Or something in moving? There will be something. “But that’s not my field of work, I work in an office.”
Well so fucking what?
I didn’t think that the whole purpose of your existence was to remain within your industry and same field of work.
We are talking about the bare fucking minimum — something you “know” is so deep you’re scared to death of falling into it, but all I’m saying is let’s talk it down that hole and see how actually deep it is.
We’re talking about what the worst thing is that might happen if you lose your job. And that involves not committing suicide because you can’t pay for your mortgage, your car, your utilities. Instead, you don’t deliberately roll yourself into a dead-end street facing the wall and think “this is the destination,” and I am saying turn the fuck around.
If you were about to get evicted, wouldn’t you go for anything at that point to make cash? Wouldn’t you think of moving to a much, much cheaper place preferably immediately before the next rent is due, if the contract allows? Wouldn’t you deliver some pizza or uber a little here and there? I mean anything. You would, and you would probably feel like a loser at their very lowest — but is that worse than hating every second of your life in that office doing a job that is “within your field”? Is doing something that requires fewer skills and pays lower really that much worse?
You know when making important moral decisions I have discovered one very useful landmark from which to measure and to decide. That moral decision should, or actually ought to, be based on what makes one the happiest.
Happiness is the landmark. And it is as reliable of a beacon as something can get.
I’ve prioritized many things in my life. I’ve tried and none made me happy. Until at some point I finally had the brains to start making happiness the priority.
And it fucking worked.
If I don’t go out that month because my daughter is in town — I understand that I am going to be happy that month because I am with my daughter. When I am out, I am going to be happy because I am out. If I have to untangle something messy at work, I am going to enjoy completing that exercise knowing how I’ll feel at the end and that I’ll take credit for it. When I am at work, I am happy because I am doing it.
Now comes the big fat if. If that job makes you miserable, why the freaking fuck? Whát is the fucking point of trying to get back to your own field to do the exact same thing you hate so much?
[Don’t even tell me you are there for the pay or I’ll want to slap you in the face. I wouldn’t do it but I’d want to, no doubt. How much is your mental and emotional health worth? You realize there are people out there hating their jobs and, because of that, their whole lives — all the while making more than you? So, the same level of misery but you’re getting underpaid. Go find something more fair for yourself and stop making yourself miserable on purpose. And do not interrupt me in your own head by finding excuses why this is impossible. You have mastered one thing perfectly — and that is to find excuses. I know this for a fact because you are a human.]
You can try doing anything else that can bring you cash but one thing is so much more likely to happen. You may actually enjoy doing something. Or at least, you are very unlikely to feel as miserable once you’re “outside of your professional field.”
That alone will take away so much misery from you, and that’s the bare minimum. You’ll be secretly glad that it happened because the worst you had thought that could happen would have already had happened and there would be so much less fear in you. In the beginning you will be scared to your bones. But once you go hit the rock bottom in your own self-imagination — the absolute worst thing you feared had already happened, and you didn’t get back at a similar place at another company where you would finally continue your journey of having an absolutely constant, background for every other thought, fear of losing your job. That happened, that’s gone. You’re no longer in your field. That fear ends up leaving the head altogether with you leaving your professional field that was making you miserable. You are now absolutely new to something completely different that you could have never possibly imagined could be a part of your life, something you would have never thought you’d be doing for a living. Now you’re doing it. As you do it, you may decide that you do not enjoy it — and you know what then happens? Something that is the inevitable outcome of hitting that rock bottom you had been maintaining in your own imagination for quite some time, but many passive people who move through life as plankton with the current of events being the only thing taking their lazy asf assess from point A to point B in life, call “the Universe conspiring to bring what is best for you if you are open.” That concrete structure in your own imagination collapsed to smithereens — and now you don’t have, even slightly so comparable to an earlier one, fear of losing whatever the off-field job it is that you end up doing. The words “fear of losing your job” will certainly not apply to your situation at that point to an equivalent extent. You were already, in your own mind, at the very bottom and now you just had to take another “shitty” job.
But there is one very, extremely, indispensably important condition: you have to make a decision that you won’t even consider starting to look yet for another similar job within your old field of work to do the same thing somewhere else.
(It’s a whole lot different story if someone offers you a job. Then please take it. After all, it proves that you are actually good at what you do, or job offers wouldn’t have been coming your way anytime soon.)
Once you make that decision, you stick to it and you do not start looking for a similar role somewhere else. You hated that job. You didn’t decide to lose it, they said goodbye to you. Meaning you had no choice. Meaning, that it is stupid to want to dive back into your own misery. It is fucking strange to want to do that. Maybe you’ll discover you enjoy washing dishes, who the fuck knows. Whatever it is, imagine that it happened, then these truths below will be self-evident.
- You are not as miserable after you went through all of the consequences, and that includes getting dumped by your long-time significant other because of your situation — we’re talking after all of this crap had happened.
- You are not as afraid to lose that job because the new job is shitty for a reason and that’s why there are many shitty jobs available around meaning you won’t take no shit from your manager and will leave immediately if the job is starting to make you feel much worse. The difference makes sense?
Getting way ahead you may even find something you enjoy and are good at. The magic interconnection of the two. Good for you then. I don’t care.
What will however take some brains to notice is that the only difference in your daily average emotions is simply less misery. It may still be misery in all mighty sense of that word. But it is less misery. And as that goes down happiness immediately goes higher. Works like a clockwork. Probably the only thing about feelings that actually works like a clockwork.
Actually no. There’s a bunch.
And the only thing rational for you to do is to keep prioritizing less misery and more happiness — whatever it takes. It took you being fired to realize that. It was the “worst” thing you had imagined that could happen and it fucking did. And you became less miserable after deciding not to go back. So stick to being led by what makes you happier. You won’t find what makes you “happy” easily or maybe at all unless you start by prioritizing things that make you happier. It’s like wandering in the direction of something by the good smell you’re catching in the air. That’s your once miserable soul sniffing out happiness, so follow the fucking smell.
I need to cut down on my cursing. I blame it on New York.
Then, another good thing will happen. Think several months later.
You’ll start just a little bit more to enjoy and will get just a little bit better at everything else that you do. It’s because you have become happier. That is the only constant in your life that will have changed. Except for a now nonexistent miserable job you would in the past refer to as career.
And at that point to not notice the correlation between the two requires an impressive level of stupid. Once you switch from one shitty job to the one that makes you just a little bit happier, you’ll feel better, and there you’ve found the formula. Oh dear realization, where have you been all these years. And that comparatively more elevated level of self-image will positively affect everything else that you do. If you stick to this principle, it will lead you to beautiful places you never thought you’d be in. You will be happy and you will enjoy what you do. And if you’re ambitious, you will find something in that job that can get you to the top. I can only say go for it. Because now you will be working your ass off for something you love and, or for something you are very determined to achieve.
It will be a beautiful time for your mental and emotional health. And it will spill over to your physical health. And to how many years you will live and how happily so.
Isn’t this worth pursuing?
Let me tell you what. If enough people were pursuing this idea, janitors and movers would be everywhere and dirt cheap to hire. Never hired a janitor but moving pays fair. Not a lot but it’s okay. I now have friends in moving, some are planning ahead to incorporate and do this on a bigger scale. There is room for ambition everywhere.
Long story short, the happier you are, the better off you are. No matter what, prioritizing one’s happiness makes everything else better. It’s the trickle down economics all over again but in this case it works.
I have an important segment on tomorrow’s Zoom call will more than two hundred people at work that I need to speak to. A lot of managing directors are on that video call, including mine. And I am out here at 2:27 am writing this. Because I know publishing this will make me feel better. I enjoyed the process and want this to be out there. I don’t care who reads it or if anyone at all. I know this will make me feel good. I know when I feel good it is because I did something valuable and I served my own core values. And I enjoyed it for that same reason. And that is why I will actually do better tomorrow morning than I would have without this.
Good night.
Jan 9, 2021; 2:27 am
Hollywood Beach, Fl
