🧑💼 The Idea of Career
Whilst studying some years ago, the "Wheel of Life" concept was introduced to me as a means to look at myself and review how I'm feeling about things. If you're unfamiliar with this, the idea is that you split a circle into 8 categories of your choosing and regularly rate how happy you are with each one. There are plenty of templates available and this is the one I like to use:
I don't review this often enough and decided to spend a bit of time on it yesterday. Despite generally feeling quite miserable about life still, things have picked up quite a lot since I last reviewed it 6 months ago. Whilst this proved a useful reminder that I'm feeling better about things, 2 categories were much lower than others - Career and Personal Growth.
In many ways, these 2 categories are linked and the underlying meaning to me is:
Continue to learn.
Which certainly applies to Personal Growth and I was quickly able to think of a lot of activities / hobbies that I could do to help me feel better in this regard. When I started to think about Career though, I struggled. Perhaps with good reason...
What is my Career?
I've been a full-time dad for over 4 years now. Whilst I've done a little bit of work on the side, it's been minimal and there's little doubt that what I would have said was my career is becoming little more than a distant memory. So I asked myself what my career is now? Surely everybody has one in some sense and then I wondered, what's the definition of career?
So I looked it up:
an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress (Source)
Ok, so I've got something to work with now. My occupation was as an IT developer which slowly moved into management. Always within IT though so is my career IT? Or was my career IT? (If you hadn't guessed by now, when it comes to my working life, I feel like I've lost my identity.)
So could full-time dad / househusband be considered a career? "Opportunities for progress" feels like a stumbling block here. Unless stopping my baby from throwing their half-full bowl of cereal onto the floor when they've had enough counts as progress (and if it is, it would be my current career goal). I'm not feeling it though. So is IT my career that one day I'll return to? Then what does that make being a full-time dad? Is it a job? So this time, I looked up the definition of job:
a paid position of regular employment.
a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid. (Source)
Is it a Job?
Well, I'm not getting paid so I guess not. Maybe one day, my children will be counting their money like in the above image but I'll probably have to wait a while for that. So what do you call something that you spend the majority of your life doing that you don't get paid for? Is it a hobby...?
an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure (Source)
Nope. Definitely not.
So after much thought (which I've significantly summarised in this post), I don't know what to do to improve my feelings about "Career". Is it a case of accepting that I no longer have a career and the mental act of accepting that will make me feel better about it?
Greetings friend @the-gorilla
The position you propose is interesting, being a full-time father is a long-term investment, hoping that the "son" project becomes good enough to feel satisfied with his work, although he may decide to take a different path from the one taught.
Careers are those tasks that we decide to carry out, be it in a home-family or business environment.
A hug
The boys have certainly become "life" for me and I have a category for "friends and family" already so it feels that Career should be something more... work oriented. Whether that's crypto, blogging or I perhaps "entrepreneur" 😄
Considering that from Monday I will only be working 3 days a week, I think I will soon be your colleague. That is, my career will be the same. Is it bad to be a parent 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Absolutely not. I am sure that this is happiness that cannot be replaced by anything. However, unfortunately, the family must have some income, so this issue will have to be resolved somehow.
A career is a very uncertain thing. I had a very good start, a rapid rise and bright prospects. Then those people who were chosen according to dubious criteria received promotions. Then the war started, the company started having huge problems.
Never regret your career when you are a parent :)
I previously posted this comment from my wife's account. Sorry about that. One laptop for two and my inattention make such mistakes numerous.
It's the hardest job you'll ever have 🙂 I don't know how much (if) I enjoy it. It's getting better now that they're getting older but even after 1.5 years, the-child and the-baby can't spend more than 5 minutes in the same room without screaming at each other! It makes things much harder than they need to be!
Oh, and when the-mrs-gorilla gets home, they find a new level and you crave the moment that they go to bed.
What's happening with your company? Is there any element of normality where you are?
All our factories were stopped on the first day of the war. Due to the blocked ports, we were never able to launch them. And then it turned out that one of the owners is closely connected with Russia, which means court cases and the transfer of his share to the state.
Now I work only three days a week and it is still unclear how the situation will develop further.
This complicates everything. But you will still remember those times and be nostalgic for them.
Yeah, maybe when they've both left home 🤣
Great way to look at things.
I think in most I am 0-6. Just health I am maybe 8, but I am a heavy smoker, so it will go down too :)
I used to be 7-10 in all. So many things changed.
A wake up call.
Thanks for this post.
That definitely sounds like a contradiction to me 😆
I don't know how important it is that you have 4 for everything vs. whether you rate everything higher - Some days we just feel more positive than others. I think the important thing is that everything's balanced - that you don't put all of your energy into "Fun & Recreation" (for example) at the expense of other elements. Although the only important bit is that it sometimes gives us "A wake up call" that we need.
Indeed, a wake up call.
Fun and recreation was always a part of my life, alongside learning, sports, adventure and so on.
Things changed, but I still have my wonderful students, that give me energy.
Again, thanks for this great post.
It really made me think, and even do some push-ups :o)
Younger me:
I think just about anything can be a career. If someone is fully satisfied and fulfilled as a parent and home provider, then that is the appropriate career. If someone is mainly looking for a challenge in their job, that will be what defines their career. By the way, this doesn't have to stay the same for life ;-)) Look at what makes you happy and will make you happy (when the little ones are not so little anymore ;-)) and where you are drawn to in terms of content. Most of the time - in my experience - it kind of happens on its own...
Ich denke, so gut wie alles kann eine Karriere sein. Wenn jemand vollauf zufrieden und ausgefüllt ist als Elternteil und Hausversorger, dann ist das die passende Karriere. Wenn jemand vor allem die Herausforderung im Beruf sucht, wird es das sein, was seine Karriere definiert. Das muß übrigens nicht lebenslang gleich bleiben ;-)) Schau, was Dich glücklich macht und machen wird (wenn die Kleinen nicht mehr so klein sind ;-)) und wo es Dich hinzieht inhaltlich. Meist - meine Erfahrung - ergibt sich das irgendwie von alleine...
I can't remember where I heard it but somebody said something along the lines of:
Whilst I find periods of reflection useful, sometimes I wonder if it makes my thoughts more complex rather than giving me clarity. It's strange, but I've never felt confused about what any of the categories mean to me until recently. Perhaps I need to realise that what I've always defined as career is currently on hold due to my focus on other things and that I'm happy with that 🤔