''Would you rather work in a job you totally hate but pays you well or work in a job you love and find inspiring but the pay was low and you had to strictly budget your financial matters.''
That's the hard question of this week's Weekend-engagement and I would like to share my thoughts about this confusing subject.
We all should find the right path which brings passion in our life, The path isn't laid out for us yet,we have to find our way ourselves
A well paid but awful job
The pros of having a well paid awful job is being able to save up quite some money for a few years, and use the money to buy happiness after or invest in an own business and leave the shitty job. In my case, I might choose to invest in a small bed and breakfast and restaurant in Ghana or something else that can make me happy and make the years of working hard in an unpleasant job an opportunity for the future.
I actually have been considering doing some IT study since the jobs pay so well and it is often possible to work online, from anywhere in the world with a good internet connection. I have no clue if I would like the work and I don't think I would feel very passionate about it, about the study itself for sure not. However, I expect that this job would be wonderful to combine with traveling. It would be possible to work part-time, since it is paying good enough to life a simple life. I don't really have to love my job a lot if I only have to work 3 days a week and enjoy my time for the other 4 days. And in the best case, I might even like the job!
A shit-paid dream job
The other choice of this weeks ''weekend-engagement'' is a shit paid job which would be a true dream job, a job which makes me feel passionate, a job that doesn't feel like a waste of time, and which makes me feel like I would rather skip my vacation than my job. I would really love an opportunity like that since it sounds like the perfect life. Ohh how I wish I could find a job like this! I would definitely choose a dream job over a well paying but boring job!
And about the money? Well, I can live cheaply. I think I often dress very well in second hand clothes and I buy mainly second hand clothes since last year, And about a car? The Netherlands is a bicycle country, so no car needed and no fuel needed. My camper would also be very unneeded if I rather stay at work instead of travelling, although I can also live in it and travel if my perfect job happens to be online. And a campervan here in many European countries is much cheaper than renting a house anyway.
It is good to sit down and take some time to consider your options, I believe there are always different right choices, but perfect choices are rare
Even though I am just 24 years old, I have already had many jobs in my short life. My first job was delivering newspapers when I was only 13 years old, after that I started selling flowers, had a morning newspaper job, worked as a cashier, had 3 different waitressing jobs, worked as a forklift driver at a tulip farm, worked in a factory and my current job, at an insurance company. During this jobs I have had great experiences, and often, I felt like I sold my soul to the devil. That's where I learned how frustrating bosses and colleagues can be. Good people at the workfloor can make a great difference, even if the job itself isn't fun.
I kinda liked the job I had at the factory, putting all day kiwis in the machine to be skinned. I am pretty sure you don't need to have a brain for this job and you can completely lose your mind because it is so mindless, It is unbelievable. One thing I liked is that nobody was bothering me and I was just daydreaming all day and kinda happy with my own thoughts. I was pretty much the only one in the company liking that boring job. I guess I was just quite insane for being content with it. But it paid very well and it paid for my campervan! Although, it is still definitely not a dream job.
My current job
Right now I am having a job at an insurance company, a temporary job since they actually want people to work at the office so they might fire me when they have enough office workers, but I love working online and taking it with me while traveling to Austria or to other countries, My workfield? People who are traveling are calling me for help, mainly when they need medical care and bills to be paid or (medical) flights home. Some of the cases I opened are because of a broken bones, heart attacks, Psychical problems or even rape and attempted stangling, I have heard a lot of sad stories and even left some tears while in a call, probably without clients noticing it though.
It is a job which makes me feel useful and I feel like I wanna develop myself more within this job to be able to help people better. But a dream job? no, still not. I often feel slightly bored but I do still feel satisfied with the salary, the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world and my collegeus who don't wanna murder me when I make a mistake.
Working online while traveling with the campervan comes pretty close to a dream job to me!
Back in the days when I used to work as a forklift driver at a tulip farm, I kinda loved it
It is always hard to make big life decisions like studying for a career or changing jobs. Sometimes it doesn't matter how hard we think about a difficult choice and its results, you only know if it is the right choice after making it. You either know you did the right thing or are full of regrets, and we just have to live with the results or we can try to change our paths by reschooling ourselves or simply try to apply somewhere else. You can only know if you like a subject when you have gained enough knowledge about it and you only know if you love a job if you have been doing it for a while. All we can do is think hard and hope we will make the right decisions, trying to look for that dream job, and more importantly, a job which makes us happy. Not everything in life has to be perfect.
Thanks for passing by!
Regards,
Sascha
