Why Chasing Your Dream Job Isn’t the Ultimate Goal

The lifestyle pastors of professional America will tell you to find a job that fulfills you. Find your passion. Don’t worry about the money. As long as you’re doing what you love, that’s what matters.

I don’t find that to be helpful advice. For those of us who don’t really have a passion, the subway of indecision carries us along with no convenient stops. Sure, we stare out the windows at the beautiful scenery and consider the possibilities of our various interests, but none of them seem quite right. We get bored in the brevity of our attention span while the thing we thought we loved so much loses its luster. Perhaps the problem lies not in the imperfections of an average job, but the imperfections in us.

If you choose a job based on whether it makes you feel happy, you may find yourself wandering aimlessly for the rest of your life. Granted, your ideal job is probably one in which you take pride, which embodies your values. And if you can find said job, that’s great. However, if you spend our whole life trying to find meaning in the work you get paid for, you will easily miss the meaning outside your profession.

If I depended on my jobs to give me meaning, I would lead a depressing life. But I find meaning outside my jobs: in taking care of my body through yoga, in building relationships with others, in reading and finding new things to learn. I find meaning in drinking in the golden sunlight, in delirious dancing during an all-nighter, in wrapping myself in blankets. In some ways, it doesn’t matter what I get paid to do because I find fulfillment in other ways.

Yes, there are such things as bad jobs. There are toxic environments and disrespectful people. It is important to find a healthy workplace, and to do something you deem worthwhile. But you don’t need to make your job an ultimate goal, because there is so much richness in life outside the workplace.

When Self Awareness Is Really Rumination

Many have complimented me for my self awareness, my ability to understand my personal growth challenges and identify my weaknesses. However, what many do not understand is that not all of my musings are a result of self awareness, but rather rumination.

Like a cow chewing its cud, I regurgitate my thoughts and turn them over and over in my head. Unlike a cow, I can never seem to fully digest them. They keep coming back up to haunt me. While I have done this for almost as long as I can remember, some periods of time are worse than others. My obsessing over various topics has kept me awake at night, trapped me in bed in the morning, and made me late or absent to scheduled engagements. Sometimes I can distract myself long enough to be productive; sometimes I can’t.

In trying to dig to the root of my struggle, I think I may have begun doing this as a self-soothing tactic to remedy my loneliness. I know that my thoughts are not logical, so instead of communicating them to others, I allow them full reign in my head. I don’t really think of it as anxiety as much as a means of comfort, much like a child sucking on her thumb.

I have tried to process these thoughts with people I am close to, but what I have discovered is I reason them away. I may acknowledge that they are illogical feelings, and almost apologize for them to the people I talk to. In recent reflection, I realized I still talk to my friends about the same thoughts and feelings I was having a year ago. The obsession is relentless.

So what do I do with all that? I have tried reasoning my feelings away, because I am a huge fan of being a person of reason, but there is no reasoning with feelings, no matter how convincing the argument. I think what I crave more than anything is for someone to enter into the worry with me, to cry with me before helping to bring me out of it. To help me realize that my feelings, however illogical, are valid.

Sacred and Sexy

When I think of the word sacred, my mind tends to shoot directly to those of religious status. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, perhaps you would agree that those whom you see dressed in religious garb elicit a different response from you than that of your interactions with friends. I see a woman with her head covered or a man with a priest’s collar and I interact with them differently than I would with the average joe. Not in a discriminatory way, but such that I try to be respectful of their traditions, whatever they may be.

On the other hand, many religious organizations in Western culture have become much more casual in the last century, even in the last decade. When I was a little girl, I saw lots of people dressing up to go to church on Sundays. Now, churches encourage people to wear jeans and t-shirts, promoting a “come as you are” vibe.

Neither of these are necessarily bad. Because how one dresses is a very concrete idea, it seems convenient to draw on that example of how the idea of sacredness has changed in our culture. Of course one can receive and give and participate in sacred experiences regardless of what he or she is wearing. I am not trying to bash people based on their clothing choices.

What I am trying to say is that Western culture’s idea of sacredness has dramatically diminished. Men used to take off their hats in the presence of a woman. Women used to avoid revealing their knees in public. While I am glad dress codes have become much more relaxed, what does the word sacred even mean anymore?

I have thought about joining a nudist community because I love the human body, and I love my body. But at the same time, I believe the human body is sacred, so I hesitate to reveal my entire body to the general public.

I believe sex can be a sacred act in the sense that it is one of the most intimate expressions of love one can give another.

I believe health is sacred because it is as we are pursuing our own personal wellness that we can be the most giving and helpful to others.

I believe we can be sacred and sexy at the same time. I’m just not completely sure how yet.

What Physical Loneliness Looks Like

In my opinion, touch is one of the most intimate ways to express love to another. Of course, there are many dimensions and expressions of love, on emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and sexual levels. But at this stage of my life, touch is my favorite.

The only way to achieve physical intimacy as an adult is within the boundaries of a romantic relationship, or at least the simulation of one. No wonder so many people rush into unwise unions; how else are they supposed to feel the loving touch of another human being? Why can we not all love more overtly, without reserving such love for romance? Not that everyone should have sex with each other, but surely cuddling, kissing, hugging would be a way to build and strengthen bonds with one another as humans. To increase intimacy among mankind. With loneliness being a universal struggle, I believe all of us have a need to be nurtured in some way.

I once sat behind a couple at a public gathering, watching them interact with each other. She leaned on him, he scratched her back. Over, and over. Not just a quick pat, but a slow rubbing up and down to display affection. My blood boiled and fueled the tears of yearning hiding in my eyes. I don’t know what it’s like for someone to rub my back like that. But I want to.

Perhaps some would say I am desperate to be in a relationship. I do not altogether disagree with such allegations, nor do I fully agree either. I have fared quite well without a boyfriend, and do not believe I need one. However, what I do crave is physical contact. Not sex, necessarily, but some form of intimacy with other humans that conversation simply does not satisfy. I do not want to wait my entire life to seclude myself with one person; I want to make everyone feel loved. And it seems that reserving love for one person is a waste of the human heart.

When pondering “couple hood,” my mind immediately wanders to marriage. I think someday I do want to marry, but I have conflicting thoughts about it. Sometimes I think I can love others better by remaining single. But in a way I wish I could have sex with everyone. I know what it’s like to feel alone, isolated, desperate, helpless. And I don’t want other people to have to feel the way I have. Even if it’s just momentary relief, I want to give someone what has not been given me. I want to wrap my arms around them and love them, pretending that for once, everything is going to be okay. For them to experience my body and for me to experience theirs, to escape the world for a little while and go somewhere else. I want everyone to be able to feel that because the world is a broken place. I am broken. And I want to help other people put their pieces back together.

I, Songwriter

I thought I wanted to be a songwriter until I realized what went into writing a good, popular song.

As a child, I grew up in a religious (and sheltered) home, so I patterned some of my first songs after hymns, which could have up to seven verses. Not until I was older did I realize most songs have only two verses, because that’s all that can fit into a song most people will listen to.

As I wrote more, I became more creative with beats and instrumentation, but my songs were still overtly religious. The famous saying goes, “Write what you know,” and that really was all I knew. But my musical tastes began to change, and I listened to more mainstream music. My eyes opened to a vast world waiting to be explored. I had had no idea just how big and diverse the world was until I entered college.

A lot of songs you hear these days revolve around love, breakups, sex, and going to clubs, among other experiences, many of which I have never encountered. I have learned much just by listening to songs many deem shallow or cheesy. Songwriters will say they write from their experiences, and people relate to them. I desire to relate, not because I want to be just another crowd-follower, but because I want to understand the people around me. I want to understand what public school was like, how young people learned about the world around them, how they experienced pop culture.

I cannot write mainstream music because I do not have mainstream life experience – whatever that is. I have been in love before, but I have never had a boyfriend, or gone to a club. Not that these are the only things I need to do to “fit in,” but I still feel very naive about the world. I yearn to grasp the way people interact with each other, what they do on weekends, how they have fun, what gives them meaning. Every person is different, but some life experiences are more common than others.

My lack of common experience limits my ability to write catchy songs. I am not denying that I have something of value to offer the world, I just haven’t figured out what that is and how to do it yet.

My New Year’s Resolutions

Clean out closet – completely
Clean out car
Keep at least one of these snacks on hand as consistently as possible:
- baby carrots
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumbers
- sugar snap peas
- edamame
Achieve the ability to do 10 regular pushups in a row
Achieve the ability to do a pull up
Increase my jogging speed to a consistent 10 minute mile or less
Read 15 books

These are a few thoughts I wanted to jot down. I’m not big on resolutions, but I am big on setting achievable goals. What are your goals?

I Yearn for More

The question “How are you?” has morphed into a shallow greeting not meant to elicit an honest response. Those who do wish for an honest response have to probe further to uncover the mysteries that lie beneath the masks. Perhaps the more appropriate question to ask would be “How is your soul?”

If I am honest with myself, my likely answer to that question is “My soul is groaning.” I can tell you what my daily stressors are and why my life is hard, but that barely scratches the surface. Beneath the top soil of my heart lies the tough clay surrounding the root of my struggles, which sometimes not even I can define. Words are not sufficient to describe my feelings, my yearning for something I do not know how to find. And often this translates to depression.

I do not deny that chronic depression is an illness, a chemical imbalance of the brain that should be addressed. It is a battle I have fought for many years. Those who wrestle with depression feel differently from those who do not, even if it entails periods of numbness. There is a depth to the darkness that lasts indefinitely, casting a spell of fog upon those who experience that darkness. One could even argue that those who are depressed feel more deeply in certain ways. But suppose this is not a bad thing? Suppose we looked at depression from a different lens?

What if depression is not merely an illness, but a deeper realization of what it means to groan for eternity? That my soul longs for an unearthly love not yet realized? The material woes and issues of this life are but a thumbnail of a bigger picture which has yet to be revealed. A rocky relationship may propel me to fear that I am not loved and will therefore be alone. A dwindling bank account may scare me into thinking I will not be provided for.

Often we realize and express these anxieties only on the surface level, hoping that if we could just make more money or get along better in a relationship that our problems will be solved. We cling to these tangible issues because they are the some of the only ways we know how to express the deeper feelings of our hearts.

Truthfully, solving the issues on the surface may make life more convenient, but it will not satisfy the underlying ache that permeates the very fibers of my being. To place my hope of fulfillment on my surface saviors is a burden none of them were built to bear.

Many who aware of their deeper feelings have come to this realization, that nothing on this earth can fully meet their most intimate needs. As a result, people have ended their lives as a sign of giving up on this world, longing for a sense of relief and rest. They are right to realize the emptiness of life, but as most therapists will say, suicide is not the answer. What is has been debated over centuries, because this life as we know it is simply too limited for us to completely understand the human spirit. This much is clear: we are meant for something greater; what that entails remains to be discovered.

When Dark Descends

This evening I am enjoying the warmth and comfort of my apartment, the soft glow of the lamp on my homemade coffee table, the smell of cinnamon and orange drifting through the air from the kitchen. From my cozy corner I contemplate the presence of fear, of darkness, in the context of the surrounding materials shielding me from those horrors, and yet I have had more exposure to those elements than I would ever wish.

I watched an episode on Netflix in which the characters had to face the darkest part of themselves in order to get what they wanted. They had to come to terms with who they were. Coincidently I read a blog post right after that in which the writer suggests we run toward our greatest fears to create our best work. It is in the midst of this situation I find myself contemplating what areas of my life are shrouded in darkness. What do I fear? Who am I deep inside?

Far be it from me to expose my innermost thoughts to the internet, so if that is what you are expecting, I am afraid you will be left wanting. Still, I believe it a challenge to know for sure what our deepest insecurities are without extensive searching and reflection. We do not have a dramatic musical score to tell us when we have solved the riddle. Instead we have mere scraps of music, little bits here and there waiting for us to piece them together into our own song.

Something I fear deeply is being alone. Not physically, for that is how I am most days. It is on a more emotional level I fear I will not find companionship or love. I have no doubt many people love me dearly, but very few are able to come with me to the darkest parts of my heart. Sometimes even I do not dare descend the rickety staircase leading to that dusty basement for the possibility of getting caught in the cobwebs.

In the midst of all this, it is often the advice of many to turn to one’s spiritual health for solace. But I say this: no matter what you believe, it will not always change what you feel. Yes, we must acknowledge our feelings. Yes, we must do what is right despite those feelings, but feelings, fears, and darkness will not always dissipate no matter how hard we try to make them. When hope looks like nothing other than a distant delusion and healing a cruel con, sometimes all we can do is add more measures to our symphony in the making. We cannot yet hear the full piece, only an incomplete cadence. As much as we want to dissolve the dissonance to reach a resolution, sometimes our only antidote is to whisper to ourselves, “Maybe tomorrow.”

Emptying the Inbox

In the past couple years I have developed my own style of minimalism for my life. I possess a distaste for clutter, and have improved my ability to detach sentimentality from objects that no longer add value to my life.

Since graduating college, I created a goal to empty my email inboxes, because digital minimalism is just as important to me as physical minimalism. Deleting and archiving most of my college emails was easy. The other challenge was cleaning up my personal inbox.

While I deleted many emails, there were many that I kept, but not in my inbox. I created enough folders to keep everything organized, but not enough to constitute another level of clutter. Creating categories such as bills versus family emails, or specific locations I’ve lived in, have been incredibly helpful in this process. I can now proudly say that my personal inbox has under ten emails in it, as I have learned to sort my mail as it comes in.

I understand that not everyone can do this because some receive hundreds of emails per day. I cannot say I know what that experience is like. However, I have discussed with some friends how useful “digital housekeeping” can be these days, and how it would be an interesting adventure to pursue that service as a line of work to clients.

I do not know exactly everything that that service would entail, but it is an area that interests me, and I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on it. Whenever I learn something that is useful in my life, I become excited to share it with others in hopes their lives can improve as well.

Theatre and the Internal Battle

Recently I have attended live theatre and loved it. Straight plays especially I am seeing these days contain challenging subject matter that beckons the audience to ask difficult questions. I love it when the art of live theatre serves a purpose in enriching people’s lives. However, recently I have discovered the changes in my taste for entertainment.

As many who know me are aware, I am passionate about emotional and mental health, especially my own. I have spent hours analyzing my emotions, habits, lifestyle, and childhood to determine why I think and feel certain ways, and how to improve those parts of my life that are unhealthy.

How does this affect my tastes for live theatre? I am realizing that the reason many shows are challenging is because the characters are not healthy. It is easy to see the unhealthy decisions of someone on a stage, but it is more difficult to identify those same issues in real life, which is what makes theatre so beautiful. An awareness or a call to attention of a character’s flaws creates a deeper awareness of our own flaws or the flaws of the world. This awareness in turn elicits a response from us, be it a call to action, or at least developing a unique perspective of an area in which one was previously oblivious.

The problem I have is that often I see elements of myself on stage played out in ways that do not allow for a resolution. At the conclusion of a given play, the audience is left to create their own resolution, their own determination to not turn out the way the characters might have. This can be a positive thing, especially if it motivates the audience to live healthier lives. Where I am in my own life, however, seeing dangerous life decisions played out onstage brings me pain because I am trying as hard as I can to avoid a similar fate.

In the midst of my daily anxieties, stressors, and irritants, during which I like to imagine the worst case scenario, I have thought that perhaps one day I will create short dramas to put on a stage to get them out of my head and out of my way in life. I think many people before me have already done that, as we hear stories of artists who lived tortured lives and wrote from dark places. It makes for great drama, because no one wants to watch a story in which everyone is perfectly happy the entire time. My hope is that the events I see onstage will not become a reality in my own life.

And so while I may need to take a break from live dramas to work on my own life, I hope one day I will learn to maintain a certain disconnect from people I watch in stories so as to enjoy them more.