Today is Thursday. It’s Ramadan here in Kuwait. I just got up a few hours ago. The internet connection is crappy as usual. The weather is nice and warm. Not to hot but but clearly summer. I am at the 6 month mark and I am ready to leave this place. It’s one thing to get away from home for a while but it’s another thing to move away for such a long time as to start feeling like you don’t really have a home. That feeling…..no “home”, it’s partially brought on here by being displaced from my real home but that feeling can be intensified by working for the very organization I followed to the job away from home. It just depends on how connected I feel at work that can define part of what might be called “job satisfaction”. It’s the same reason that soldiers have a certain esprit decor. A sense of not being the “only one” but belonging to a cause.
People are the same on the inside no matter how much they are paid. This experience I am going through goes to show that you can be paid well and still not be satisfied. While it may be true that you can purchase a certain amount of entertainment, the fact still remains, happiness isn’t for sale. True satisfaction doesn’t come directly from accumulating cash. I know this because while I am able to save my pennies, I really cannot do as much with them for either myself or others when I am so far away from my real home. I have had more joy from being able to help someone than I get by simply counting the pennies used to do the deed. Some people will jump up and say well you can feel good by helping me. It’s deeper than that. Don’t get me wrong though I get the request when it happens.
I have had to learn to separate the job into it’s own unconnected facet of my life and not look to it to be part of where my joy comes from, at least in the case of this job. There is a reason that certain jobs pay more than others. Some are because of the amount of study and skill required to perform the work. Others are based on a level of convenience or lack thereof and some are based on a combination of both skill and inconvenience. My current role is a little of the latter.
Having come to this realization, I should be able to complete my tour here and not drop everything and just walk away. I have considered it many times but I keep hanging on to my goal. That goal…freedom to enjoy the things in life that don’t come with a monthly bill and requirement to pay it off each week or month. It’s the idea of being able to find other enjoyment in doing something that I don’t have to make a living at but could if I wanted to. If I could change the field I work in to be less demanding and more able to be pursued at a pace I wanted instead of full speed all day every day, it might be a place where I could enjoy it again. Currently, my position isn’t like that. It’s go go go go all the time on the most boring of computer work and it borders on making me insane. It’s directed by people who do not truly understand IT systems. They approach it with no creativity and no room for making alterations to streamline and simplify how the overall system works. Instead it’s about following strict inflexible guidelines with a change management division that bends to nothing. It’s about expansion and money. It’s not as much about finding the awesome way to do something cool.
Large organizations like those that write the most popular operating systems in the world are flexible. It is part of why they are world class organizations. They give creative license to the employees and as a result, they create some of the most popular software in the world. It is this freedom that has been crushed in many organizations and it makes for incredibly dull work. It has become a drag to go to work for these stifling agencies and that dear readers is where I want to escape from. I used to be in the creative world but have found myself trudging to the lockstep drone of inflexibility. I will return to the creative side and it should make for better blogs in the near future.
I hope that if nothing else, the things found here will help you but if it doesn’t. I will still serve as a place for me to look back at and remember where I have been and also where I am going.
My you find your happy place in the job market and may you never find yourself working a job that appears to have no end and no place for enjoyment.
– C.R.
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