Money vs. Happiness

Fact. Higher pay and job satisfaction are not mutually exclusive.

 

I don't think the measuring stick is more money vs. less money. I always gauged my satisfaction level with work in terms of time, which can't be price-tagged - there's no hour figure that's enough to take time from what I want to do. No matter how much I'm being paid, I eventuall had to ask how much time do they take from me, how much time does the job ruin either because of stress, hours worked, conditions, health issues, etc., how much does it prevent me from doing what I want, or living the way I want?

Each of us has different standards for that. Some people are fine working like dogs for big $ just for that week or two a year they get to spend in a resort, or for the giganto house they hardly get to live in, or for the car, or the status, or the good they can do for others with their dough, or the school they can send their kid to. That's fine. Others hate that rat race. Others make nothing, and hate their situation every second of the day, and there are also double-wides full of people who'd never live any other way and don't want to. Personally, at a certain point I simply couldn't stand delivering my life over to some overseer who took my time and paid me off with cash. I hated it and thereby hated myself. So yeah, twice I took steps back, big ones, and gave up high paying jobs (from my perspective anyway) to start anew.

The two times I was making a great deal of money I hated it and what it did to me. And at times I felt the same way making very little. But in the end I've never regretted a decision based on time, and although it took a long while to get there, I found a place of balance, where the time I give to work seems equal to the life it allows me live, where I don't resent what work takes away from myself and my family - it provides us enough financially, and isn't oppressive in terms of time. We don't have alot of stuff, don't want it, and frankly, I don't care to be around people who see material acquisition as the life goal. I think you work to live, not the other way around, but the balance point is different for us all.

I will say though that in general the people I know with the most stuff and with the most demanding jobs, in terms of time, are the most unhappy, stressed out people I know, no matter how much they are paid.

 

Can't provide a link as this was e-mailed to me, but worth reading:

 

I have always been a fairly melancholy person, and I've found it to be rewarding. I read this book recently and got a little bit of validation. I don't think there's anything wrong with being unhappy as long as you don't make others miserable in the process.

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

This slender, powerful salvo offers a sure-to-be controversial alternative to the recent cottage industry of high-brow happiness books. Wilson, chair of Wake Forest University's English Department, claims that Americans today are too interested in being happy. (He points to the widespread use of antidepressants as exhibit A.) It is inauthentic and shallow, charges Wilson, to relentlessly seek happiness in a world full of tragedy. While he does not want to romanticize clinical depression, Wilson argues forcefully that melancholia is a necessary ingredient of any culture that wishes to be innovative or inventive. In particular, we need melancholy if we want to make true, beautiful art. Though others have written on the possible connections between creativity and melancholy, Wilson's meditations about artists ranging from Melville to John Lennon are stirring. Wilson calls for Americans to recognize and embrace melancholia, and he praises as bold radicals those who already live with the truth of melancholy. Wilson's somewhat affected writing style is at times distracting: his prose is quirky, and he tends toward alliteration (To be a patriot is to be peppy a person seeking slick comfort in this mysteriously mottled world). Still, beneath the rococo wordsmithing lies provocative cultural analysis.

 

Happiness is a boner in this business; it goes away. (But never the semicolon. The semicolon is eternal.)

Remember: You're always one management hire -- Deputy SE, SE, AME, ME -- away from being miserable again, anyway.

 

I think the reality is that every job is going to have parts of it that sucks -- as Samantha on Sex in the City said, 'that's why they call it a job.' Because of that, I think if part of your employment is going to be a pain in the ass, you might as well get paid more.

 

As the joke goes: You hate your job? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and it meets down at the bar.

 

dude, did you really just quote Sex in the City?

 

SEX AND THE CITY! NOT IN THE CITY! IT'S SEX AND THE CITY!!!!

 

Unless we're talking out-on-the-street poor, contentment wins every time. If you hate what you do for a living, you're probably a miserable SOB the rest of the day, too.

 

Carrie had a Dr. Pepper on Sex in the City.

 

Agreed. I've worked at two unpleasant "regular" jobs the past year and a half. I was miserable every minute of the day.