Work

I have my resume out on several job boards and have since last November. I haven’t updated it or touched the job boards since last November. But my professional email account still gets emails offering various jobs for which I am qualified about once a week. I’m now over half way through what I have designated as a “year off” wherein I work mostly because I like the job. I needed the job to make ends meet while my non-compete expires, but at this point could quit and live on my savings well past that point. I could also spend an enormous amount of money on things I want and have genuine use for, if only I had a large disposable income again. So when I get these offers of crappy work in exchange for mighty fiscal reward, I have a small existential crisis. “It’s just a four month contract. It’ll be over and I’ll be laughing to the bank before I have a chance to hate it,” I say to myself.

But let’s face it. This is my year off. I haven’t had a stretch of time where survival didn’t obligate me to do something I found hugely misery-inducing ever. I am absurdly fond of my current relaxed, idyllic existence. I’m well rested. My brain works and I’m clever. My house is in shape and my cat is spoiled. I read everything. I hate my physics TA, one of the guys at work, and otherwise have no real life irritants. I’ve just acquired one additional roommate of whom I am very fond and who makes the house better by living there, and I’m about to acquire Clarity as a temporary crasher (and maybe mid-term Wisconsonian).

I do not want to work. I do not have to work. (At least not as long as I’m still eligible for COBRA. The story changes in another nine months) And hey, there’s a recession on. It would be greedy of me to take a job I don’t need or want when unemployment in my state of residence is brutal.

So no, I am not going to take that contract, even if it’s just four months. Money is a lovely, lovely thing. You can buy happiness. But the happiness to money correlation is not infinite. At some point you hit diminishing returns. Working anything less awesome than selling furniture for twenty hours a week would cross that point. So yeah, fuck you corporate America. I’ll just keep on doing whatever I want.