I was gchatting with a friend who wants to leave his job to pursue a life of not his job about how exactly he’ll go about making money should he leave. For the time-being said friend needs to keep his current job, so he’ll stay identified as “a friend.”
This friend is one of those modern renaissance men – a writer, graphic artist, video producing stage manager type who’s dabbled in theater and fashion (if you count be-dazzling suspenders for a Lady Gaga concert, which you should). He has a good job writing for a major publication – a job many people would die for, and a job that could become a fantastic career. Problem is – it’s not a job he would die for, and it’s not a career he wants. And to make matters more frustrating, it’s one of those “incredible opportunity” jobs – which in Manhattan is code for pays shit and consumes your life.
What does he want? He isn’t sure, but it definitely doesn’t fall inside the box of traditional careers. “Well, will staying at this job help you in this or other careers?” I asked him as we played 20-questions, should-I-leave-my-job? edition. “I don’t want a career,” he responded.
It was the most honest and relatable thing I’d heard (since that St. Patty’s Day convo).
A career – the way most people think of it – is a trajectory inside a sector of employment. You have a career in journalism, a career in media, a successful career in law, education, finance. You pick a path and march up its ladder toward whatever level you can reach. Specific things get you there, specific things don’t – end scene.
This friend isn’t interest in any one thing with any one title. He wants to create some things, participate in creating some others then figure out what he likes next and go make some of that. Maybe that means writing? designing? producing? entrepreneuring? He doesn’t know, and right now that’s not his question. His question is how he’s supposed to get to any of that if his 9-to-9’s are spent slaving at a career he doesn’t want for a paycheck that amounts to little more than he’d make at a Baby Gap.
“Your opportunity cost is out of wack,” I told him as we discussed the merits of staying versus going. “Even though you have a good situation at a good company, what they’re paying you isn’t worth what they’re costing you in opportunity.”
If that isn’t the plight of the 20-something “creative” I don’t know what is.
We (well, many among us) need jobs for money and money for survival. So we get jobs that make sense and offer potentially great career projection. Then we decide we don’t want the careers we’re projecting towards, but don’t know how to A. figure out how to make money off what we do want and B. figure out how to make better money until we survive.
Find me a job that pays tons and takes very little time and effort(that isn’t being a professional egg donor), and I’ll get on the waiting list of would-be creatives begging to work there.
So then the question – and my friend’s question – becomes one of those simple ones that’s annoyingly impossible to answer:
How much is your current grind preventing you from getting what you really want?
Enough to make what little money you’re paid totally worthless? Enough to make you leave it behind to bar tend?
How much do you not want your career to leave it behind and do life from 24 on without one?
All we truly need to survive is some money, some health insurance, a place to live, and Top Ramen to eat. So then to my friend the question becomes not if to step out of the rat race but how? You can’t google, how to leave job and become creator of TBD things (but if you do – just for fun – you’ll get this).
Opportunity cost is a tricky bitch in the life of this city’s 24-year-olds. The “careers” of the world have you by the balls, the Baby Gaps employ a steady stream of actors, and “creator” isn’t something you can list on a LinkedIn profile.
So what’s a guy like my friend to do? I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. And in the meantime, if I read the TIME “What the Healthcare Bill means for you” article correctly – at least he’s still young enough to get covered under his parent’s health insurance.
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I’m going through this right now too, obvs. Maybe we just all want what we don’t have.
At 26 he’ll have to make a different decision… health care is expensive.
And a “great opportunity” job can only be classified as such if it is for him, so like you said, this is not. The “when” to leave would be immediately if he’s not happy. The “how” would be with a plan, and there are plenty of side jobs to pay the rent and Ramen for the young NYCers willing to put in the leg work to find them. I know more than a few who make it work, with certain sacrifices.
Predictable won’t be his life, but if he’s willing to live with a good bit of anxiety about where that paycheck is coming from, what is the next project, etc., I’d ask, “Why wait?”
The final decision comes in the consideration, does “lifestyle” mean working to earn it or leaving to love it? He’s not earning what he wants through his current employment. I think that’s scarier than leaving and taking the risk at trying some of that creating you wrote about.