boring jobs

09 Jun, 2024

i think no matter what, for my next job, i want it to be—well, "boring" is misleading, but earlier today i was saying to my mother that even though i felt like i ought to move on and push myself, when i've been at jobs where i felt like i could do them in my sleep (including ones that were high-skill that i was just very, very good at), i had way more energy to do things like... write stories and poetry. perform music. sing. read books. play games.

and it's not per se that it was the hardness of jobs but a sort of... not being able to rest on my laurels at all. a kind of discomfort with something in the environment. at my last job i had an issue where i discovered their insurance didn't pay for nearly any of our doctors, and refused to cover one very important thing, which drove me up a wall for several months and sent me down a path of deciding to switch career tracks.

all this is to say—maybe what i really mean is a sense of ease in a job, whether it's feeling supported by your team or like you've got everything handled—that's when i feel like i can do my best creative work. i mean, right now i'm working on some interactive fiction that's functionally about burnout and damned if i can't channel that vibe well right now, but i had my highest fiction-writing output during a year where i was kind of eh about my job but sure was getting it done and generally feeling secure with the people on my team.¹

and all these things i really want to do again. i'm kind of a serial hobbyist and have way too many of them, but in recent years i've just felt like most of what i can do is ooze onto my personal computer and look at the internet. and that's really not where i want to be. so here's to boring (asterisk, footnote) jobs, and not living to work.