Over the last few years, I’ve noticed people posting on social media about having the “Sunday Scaries”. Apparently this is when you get a sense of dread, anxiety or fear on the last day of your weekend. I suppose in some cases, this can ruin ½ of your weekly number of days off.
Dang. That sucks.
I’ll confess to thinking about work on Sunday. I start to think about the week ahead and the specific things I need to do. I’ll think about projects and specific students that I need to check in on. By Sunday evening, I’m checking and responding to school emails. I just did that right before I started typing this.
I’ll also confess this: I look forward to Mondays. I look forward to the week ahead at school. I love my job. I love my students and I love teaching. Tomorrow, I’ll have a couple of hours of office time to catch up on bigger email requests and to work on maintaining the Sculpture Studio before class. Then I have a class that I love. After that, I get to listen to a new episode of This American Life on my commute home. Mondays are pretty sweet.
I know this isn’t how everyone feels about Mondays or about their jobs. I understand that it can seem a bit insensitive and arrogant for a person who loves their job to wonder why everyone doesn’t work a job they love, but if you’ll allow me a bit of space here, why don’t we all work jobs we love?
When we all went into quarantine 4 years ago this month, heck, it may even be close to the very day, we watched the news as a virus stretched across the globe and killed a ton of people. Some were people we knew. Many of us lost loved ones and the rest of us worried about them. Most of us sat at home and got a bit of a reality check. It’s just a job. It’s not your life. Your life is separate from your job. And many of those jobs went on just fine in our absence or we were able to do from home.
This was a major time of re-evaluation for me. I do love my job and I think my students enjoy having me as a teacher. However, if I could no longer do my job, it wouldn’t take long for someone to be hired in my place. A couple of years would pass and I’d be all but forgotten. It’s a job. I am not my job and neither are you.
The average American lives 70-ish years. Most Americans are lucky enough to not have to begin working a career-type full time job until their 20s. The average American works 40-ish years. Let’s think about that a minute. You have 70 years to live. You’re toddling around or in school (against your will probably) for the first 18 years. You probably signed on for 4 more after that. Now you’re 22 and in the prime of your life. You start your career working at a lower level, working hard, trying to make a good impression so you’ll be noticed. Maybe you work extra hours. You do that for 40 or so years. Now you’re 65 or more and your health is in decline. If you’re lucky, you’ll live a few years in retirement. Then you’re dead.
For those 40 years you’re working, you’re spending 5 days each week at that job during the bulk of the day. The people you associate with are people you interact with there. Your job quickly becomes the major part of your life. Weekends are a blur because you have 2 days to do all the things you didn’t have time to do Monday through Friday.
How is it that we’ve willingly signed over the majority of our lives to a job? Especially a job that we don’t love? This job you have right now, is that how you really want to spend your life?
I know I’m lucky/blessed to have a job I love. I understand that some of you are working towards a job you think you’ll love. Maybe you have to put in a few years at a job you don’t love to make it to the job you do love. That’s cool. Maybe you got the job you thought you wanted but it turned out to be a bummer. Maybe you’re realizing that this job is just using up all the good parts of your life. It will do that.
I remember the week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks hearing news anchor break from his report by saying something about the fragility of human life and that this should be a wakeup call to us all. That if you’re not doing what you love to do, maybe it’s time to rethink your life. I remember hearing that again in April of 2020, because, honestly, who has a shorter memory than us?
Maybe it’s time for you to rethink your life again. This job you have, do you think that’s why you were put on this Earth? Is that how you really want to be spending 40 years of your life?
Students talk to me often about types of degrees and possibly changing their majors. I always have the same question for them: If you could wake up every day and do whatever you want for the rest of your life, what would that be? That’s the job you want. That’s what you should be doing.
You only get to do this once.
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