The “less than ideal job”

So I was taking a look at this article over at ZDNet about the underemployment of countless hordes of former tech workers. Now, these people have MBAs and years of industry experience and have developed skills and experience related to the high-tech industry, which are mostly things that I never bothered to do, but I still identify with them to a certain degree. Right now many of these people are finding that they cannot get jobs in the fields they are trained for, at the income levels they expect, and that they cannot afford to be unemployed either, so they’re ending up in blue collar jobs and service jobs and retail jobs they haven’t considered since High School.

I have always come at that sort of issue from a sortof different POV. Like somehow because of my broad-based interests, massive potential, and the speed at which I learn new skills, on some levels I think I consider most jobs in most industries to be underemployment for me. Obviously, I don’t have the educational background many jobs are looking for (nor the experience for that matter), but I have always known that there is nothing I can’t do if I set myself to do it. This in mind meant that as soon as I saw that real people were living their and raising their families and still capable of happiness while earning $7 and $8 an hour, I knew that as long as I was basically going to be underemployed no matter what field I decided to work in, I may as well just find something easy and finite to pay the bills and spend the rest of my time trying to live up to my potential.

So, when I got “disqualified” from ASU, I wasn’t motivated to try to get back in ASAP. Or at all. (Except that since then I’ve spent more time defining what “living up to my potential” includes, I now kinda want to go through ASU’s Fine Arts program. Oh, and find a good film school.) Instead I just worked my 40hours/week at jobs that I knew weren’t going anywhere, and have tried to spend the rest of my hours pursuing things that make me happy and fulfilled.

So, I’ve never really expected to be fulfilled by my “real job”, and I haven’t been disappointed. Mostly what I expect from it is a steady paycheck and for it to not get in the way of the rest of my life. All these dot-com kids who for a few short years were earning huge sums of money to do what they loved are now facing the same hard truths that most people face right out of college; it is hard to find work that relates to the field that you have trained for, especially that you find fulfilling and rewarding. Luckily, since I never really believed that the modern American job market was any good at supporting healthy attitudes towards work and career and didn’t bother trying to seek out some mysterious full-time job that would cater to my personal ambitions and goals, I’m not in that disillusioned state where I wonder what happened to all the “good” jobs – I’ve understood for a good long time that the “good” jobs are few and far between unless you find business itself fulfilling.

Wait. I feel like I’m babbling now. Can’t remember what point I was trying to get across, if any. Maybe something about being satisfied by setting my expectations lower. Maybe something about ralagating “work” to something I tolerate so that I can spend the rest of my time doing things I enjoy. Maybe something about how someday I hope to be able to earn money from all my other endeavors, perhaps enough that I can work on them full-time someday. Maybe nothing at all.