I work customer service for a technology company, and sell organic supplements & cleaning supplies outside of that. I did go to college for 3 years, then escaped when they got rid of my major and told me I'd have to transfer 4 states away to get all my credits to transfer. Hah, no thanks. I honestly feel like I'm doing well for not having a degree, the lack of heavy student loan payments really helps.

I fear unemployment. I don"t condone a society that measures a person by material values but being poor sucks arse after a while.
I also think if there are more people who are sitting around on their backsides wondering what to do with their lives, it will lead to a surge in depressive illnesses. (this is coming from a self certified lazy git)

I'm a musician composer and teacher

This thread just gets more and more interesting I feel like this thread has really helped to get to another each other a bit more and am glad to see others were also curious.

Thanks everyone for keeping the momentum going

dj
bar-attender
chef
telecom executive
stock market analyst

and now i am working to be an Artist ( blame DMT )

The thing I picked up most from this thread is that most people here are viewing "happiness" and "economic success" as two separate things.
A career is like a marriage in some ways. You certainly need to find something/someone that has enough things in common that you can stand it everyday. That is only 50% of the equation... the other 50% is YOU. Perhaps you need to change a little here and there to accept things and to grow into it all. I've worked with many people that decided early on if they were going to be happy or not at a job (or a marriage actually). I've also worked at jobs where I had to sift through some of the negativity to see what it was I could enjoy about the job and in the end really enjoyed my time there.

Good luck to all of you, and I hope you get what you need.

"Isn't the point of technology that everyone should be unemployed and instead pursue their interests? I am and I'm loving it! I think people are afraid of unemployment as a serious lifestyle because they might not like the social consequences, the lack of a lot of money, or the fact that they don't want to confront themselves and find out whether they really love life, or work just to pass the time without having to think about things."

..Or they are afraid of their family starving. I agree with what you are saying as an ideal, but sadly it is just not reality in this culture. How do you pay rent? Are you a breatharian? Do you live in your mothers basement? How do you eat? Are you a hunter gatherer? Do you live in a tent? Are you on welfare?

Just saying..it is much deeper than people just being afraid of social concequences etc..you have to either leave society or just be homeless in society to live without ever doing some type of work to make money or getting welfare etc..Even people who make money in less than legal ways still have to use money at the end of the day.

Trust me, I have known many people who tried to live outside of the system. Eventually they all either end up living in a tent somewhere running out of money until they can not eat any longer or they end up on welfare. Then they go make money somehow or they just live on the wages of welfare that you can not really live of much anyway..or they end up homeless long term and I have seen people go seriously downhill that way. If you have never actaully been homeless long term, well it does not look fun from my perspective. I just see sad people in dispair.

This society is horribly backwards yes, and people are overworked and wealth is not equally distributed at all etc..but at the end of the day people are still just trying to live. You cant blame them.

I paint towers for the high voltage power lines and some cell phone towers once in awhile.Mostly paint towers for the power companies though.I make good money and I love my job.I have traveled all over most of the United States in the 20 years I have been painting towers.

Yeah, I agree, the surge in depression would indeed happen at first, as people got laid off. But the question that intrigues me is why that would be (and is) the case. Is it because of the poverty that follows, or because one is confronted with the fact that one can't really enjoy life if someone else isn't designating them a purpose for a huge chunk of their time? Is it both, or something else?

Imagine a society where all our basic needs were met completely - health, food, shelter, and we had no worries over things like money and bills, as resources were shared and in abundance. What would everyone do with their time? What would you personally do with your time? This question is important because that day is coming, sooner or later, when we learn to manage the resources of this planet more efficiently and work together to produce abundance for all. Probably not in our lifetime, I'm not deluded, but in the course of our future I can't see it not happening, unless we enter some kind of perpetual dark age or just go extinct fairly soon.

Either way, I predict that the answer wouldn't be to lay around eating potato chips on your sofa all day, as I don't think that monetary incentive is what drives us as humans. I think every individual would develop a plethora of new, personal interests and simply pursue them actively.


I am currently on welfare, but I would prefer to live in my mother's basement, actually, if she had one and I was allowed to stay there (which I wouldn't be). I have a friend who lives that life and I envy him. He's in his 30's and has no worries whatsoever, and pursues his interests in computers, fantasy books and video games.


No I agree completely, I was talking more about idealism and what we should strive towards as a culture. For me, the poor lifestyle without working works, but it wouldn't work for everybody the way the system is designed right now. I don't look down on people who do work; I just don't look up to them either. It's a personal choice within the context of how our society operates at the moment. The system is not worthless, I'm not being a teenager about it, but it could be a lot better. Until then, we'll continue to find ourselves in this monetary paradigm, and it's just not a game I personally find it worth playing, so I don't. But everyone's mileage does indeed vary.

This is the bit i that i think would be the most depressing. I think we are deeply wired to go out and fend for ourselves and after a days work certain reward receptors maybe tweaked. You"ve gone out , worked for your remuneration then eat and relax with a feeling of achievment and then pursue your interests with gusto. The same as a bird building a nest, a rabbit digging a burrow or a beaver building a damn.
I think it is very natuaral to go out and fend for ourselves in some way or another and the thought of being molly-coddled by society actually gives me the willies a little bit.

I am studying English at a university but my main priority in life is to be a freelance programmer I am also learning to play on the guitar so that might be a career one day... All i want is just enough money to have a home with huge trees and some animals so a cheap job would suffice...

I'm not really comfortable getting specific, but I am essentially a businessman.

I wear a suit and tie, show up at an office, am accountable to no one (other than clients who entrust me with their assets). I set my own ceiling, compete with the best (and most shark-like) people in my industry, work 6-7 days a week, sometimes love it and other times don't. It's an assload of pressure on the best of days, but I get off on the energy to be honest.

It doesn't define me by any means. I've got other passions and things in my life that I care more deeply about. But I don't have the luxury of chilling in mom's basement or going on welfare because society sucks. I have a family to support. And the truth is that I'm good at what I do, provide a valuable service and am compensated very well for it. I think that's fairly cool.

But I'm very clear that it's all a game. I put on my costume, leave the house and play the requisite role. And I'm usually okay with that. I enjoy it, actually - at least when it's good and things are going my way. I like my life compartmentalized like that. I always have, for some reason.

Would I rather be sitting under a shady tree, smoking weed and drawing a healthy salary just for being me? I don't know... I'd probably miss the thrill of the hunt and the weird top secret dichotomy.

I'm a physics PhD student. I work in a lab on campus doing ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy of various materials with alleged applications in solar energy and (lately) spintronics. I am very lucky to be able to work with such state-of-the-art equipment. The hours are very long, but if I work hard enough and smart enough, I get the feeling that I am actually contributing to the body of scientific knowledge. I am always learning something new, and that makes the research perpetually interesting. Keeping my sense of calm and sanity while under constant heavy pressure from my superiors is difficult, but if I can learn to work very hard without getting as stressed out as they do, I will enjoy this line of work. I find it hard to worry too much about my work because, at the end of the day, psychedelia is my true passion. This passion has been hard to communicate to my coworkers, but my supervisor told me a few days ago that my relaxed attitude has taught him how to work better... That felt nice. My supervisor knows that I am an ardent psychonaut. I will invite him to trip with me one day, if I ever find the right moment to inject an invitation into conversation.

On the side, I am doing some other things to pull in some extra money:
Three days per week, I work at a local elementary/middle school. I supervise kids who are waiting to be picked up.
I also work at a TV repair shop on Saturdays.

Physics is my main career path, and I am on track to continue doing ultrafast spectroscopy research for at least the next 5 years as I work toward my PhD.

"Imagine a society where all our basic needs were met completely - health, food, shelter, and we had no worries over things like money and bills, as resources were shared and in abundance. What would everyone do with their time?"

Well some of your time would have to be spent contributing..just as you would in any other culture even seemingly egalitarian indigenous cultures. You would have to contrinbute to food production/hunting/gathering..power generation etc..

The only difference would be that it would be a truely egalitarian society. People would need to work more like 2 days a week instead of 5..or maybe work 3 hours a day monday to friday instead of 8. "Wealth" would be evenly distributed. Maybe the idea of whealth itself would become non existant(as would the idea of someone paying to live) and the society itself would simply flourish. This would require all people to participate though. People would not be worked to death like the are now(literally in some cases).

There would be plenty of free time for people to persue other interests. The work that people would be doing they would probly enjoy as it would be only what is actually benefiting that community and it would not be draining as most work today is. Most of peoples time would be true leisure. Education would be a right not a privilage. The empowerment of every single individual would be an asset to such a community, as opposed to the empowerment of only certain privilaged people at the expense of others..

Im rambling..anyway my point is that you cant ever expect to just be taken care of. All you can expect is to be able to be compensated fairly for your own contributions to your society..which is something extremely rare today.

I work in IT. I used to work in a university in my home city, supporting the network and systems. About a year and a half ago, I moved away to be with my girlfriend. I now work for two companies and my working day comes in at around 10-12 hours, though I am about to finish the contract with one company and (hopefully) go full time with the other.

It's a small, well established IT company with a large client base. The guy who owns the company is a cool dude, and I am very happy to be given the opportunity to work for him. I am only on trial at the moment, so I am in a strange transitional phase.

It's cool because I will get to learn more. When I worked at the university, it was a large IT department supporting a large establishment. It was awesome, but there were a lot of specialists. With this new role, I am in a small team supporting many clients, for their whole IT infrastructures, so I will be able to learn all kinds of new technologies.

Computers have been my hobby since I was a kid playing on a Spectrum, so my career is a way for me to indulge my passion on a daily basis. I had a long stretch of unemployment over the last year, which is crazy, as now I have two jobs (funny how things work out). Things are starting to click into place again, so hopefully I can stay on at this new job, as I will be able to get my hands dirty within most areas of IT, which is kind of a dream come true.

Peace

Macre

This is a thread called "what career do you have" The closest thing that describes what you are talking about is being a "leech"

It has been mentioned that people with a "career" are slaves to their jobs. That isn't my case, I'm one of the best at what I do, I could quit and get hired elsewhere in a few hours. I have to ask tho, are you not a "slave" to the teet you are currently attached to? When it dries up, do you think another benefactor will emerge to help you keep living?

I am not trying to be mean, I am just completely ignorant to your point of view. By nature, I have always been highly productive. I have been self employed and employed by others.... the only real difference was the regularity of paychecks.

rw

I really don't want this thread to turn into a discussion about people's opinion on work or careers, we all have different view points on what a career/job is, please bare in mind the intention of this thread was to share information about the careers we have, not whether we like them or not or if you dislike someone's career path.

I started this thread as way to get to know each other and learn about each other, I kindly ask that we stay focussed on the threads mission.

If you are happy, there is no need to judge how others live. I know many people who love their 9-5, I know many who love being unemployed, I also know many who love to be self employed, if you can smile everyday and love then keeping doing what it is you do.

Peace, Power and Respect

I understand that. I guess I should feel all warm and fuzzy about financing someone's desire to do nothing.

By the same mentality, I suppose I should be thrilled to get a cancerous tumor.

You say you understand, yet pass off a comment some might find unreasonable. This is not the place or thread, quite a few people were really interested in seeing what others do for a living, I kindly ask that this thread stay focussed.

I have worked in many roles, seen many employees, even hired 2 people, I can tell you without a doubt in my mind, 90% of those people were not happy working and wanted to do something else. Many of the common reasons are;

-Not feeling fulfilled
-Families to feed
-Lack of experience
-Lack of Qualifications
-Lack of interpersonal skills

One thing is for sure, many people are happy to get on with it, be constructive and earn some money. If someone is struggling to be constructive, I believe their are under lying issues along the line and if due to spiritual, physical or mental, love is the only solution.

You are very fortunate for doing the work you love to do and I am sure that others will not understand if they have yet to find a career path which pays well and that they enjoy.

I just want to find neutral ground here, I can sense a debate, feelings of resentment, ignorance and even an inkling of anger. This is not directed at you but generally speaking. If not love, what?

Thank you for sharing the information and contributing.

ONE - Only Now Exists

Yeah I see where you're coming from. But in a society where only, say, 3% of people had to work some of the time to keep things running, I'd gladly volunteer if I was good at what was needed to be done. And I'm sure many others feel the same way - people love to contribute when it's for a good cause.

And for those who'd just have free time to fill, I'm sure that many would choose things like physical activity. Who wouldn't enjoy surfing, hiking or playing soccer all day long? I'd much prefer that lifestyle to a life on the couch.


It is indeed!


Yeah, I think working is even more fun when you accept how much of a game and role-playing exercise it all really is However, it can certainly be rewarding, at least occasionally, to take it seriously as well. It's all about preferences, the way I see it.


This would be an accurate characterization if my skills were actually needed; they're not. We already have a global surplus of workers. Look around in the world - is the problem that people aren't working enough? Is the rising unemployment figures due to the fact that people refuse to work even though there are many critical positions to be filled?

I don't have a problem with your perspective, I just want to discuss it and analyze it a bit. It's totally cool if you don't want to do that, I'm just offering my counter-perspective on the matter.

The way I see things, as we get more and more people coming into this world, and better and better technology, the actual need of working becomes a less and less pressing concern for every individual. What we don't have is a structural system of governance which appreciates this fact, and that's leading to a whole lot of problems as we speak, and it will only continue to grow. At some point, we have to address the fact that all people not needing to work all the time is the reward of technology, not the downside of it! We've got it completely backwards as far as I'm concerned, and our system should be re-designed to accommodate this realization.

On a personal level, me not working gives that job I would have taken to someone else who really wants it. As one of us was inexorably destined to remain unemployed anyway, isn't it better that I do it, who can actually enjoy it and will spread happiness around me in that situation?


Sure I am; we're all slaves to some things. Universally and first and foremost, though, to nature. We have to breathe, drink, eat, shit, orgasm and stay reasonably warm according to her terms all the time, or we will get punished big time. But it's not necessarily shameful to adapt to the wills of others or other things. Is that something you are concerned about, when others imply that you might be a slave to something?

I too could get a job, though. It's not eternally out of the question; it's just not something I'm going to consider until I find myself in a situation where I personally will come to assess that the pros outweighs the cons.


I know you're not trying to mean, and I don't see you as being mean either. You have your perspective, I have mine. Let's just feel the love, man

As for being productive, I see myself as almost over-worked in the emotional department, as that is something I work with all the time. Just because a pursuit isn't appreciated by society doesn't mean it doesn't involve serious productivity.

Take care, and I hope I haven't stirred the pot too much in this thread.