Vocational Crisis # 322: loving your life but kind of hating your job

Part of me really doesn't like taking work home with me. That's my biggest problem with academia. You're never "done." You have to be self-motivated to write and create on your own schedule, and then you're judged by how good of a job you do. This is preparation for most kinds of "professional" work, where you're paid to apply your specialized expertise to somehow "create" something that someone without your training/education just couldn't do.

While this sounds great to most people, at the moment to me it just seems stressful. I'm a smart, creative guy, but I want to be creative on my own terms. That is, I don't want my livelihood to depend on my own creative talents. That's too much pressure. I would much rather work a low-paying, even "dull" 8-5 job where I only have to work 40 hours per week. Then, not only would I not feel guilty about resting and relaxing after the official workday is through, but I would also have the freedom to then use my creative energies in whatever way I see fit, for my own fulfillment/enjoyment, not because it's what I'm paid to do.

My brother worked as a bartender for awhile right after he graduated college. This seems like a good possibility to me.

Pros:

- Once you're done with work, you're done

- Uniquely relational

- Relatively independent

Cons:

- Working nights and weekends

- At busy times it requires lots of speed/efficiency/multitasking

- Could potentially get old fast