Do What You Love

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Yes, it's Slate, but it's interesting.

One consequence... is the division that DWYL creates among workers, largely along class lines. Work becomes divided into two opposing classes: that which is lovable (creative, intellectual, socially prestigious) and that which is not (repetitive, unintellectual, undistinguished). Those in the lovable-work camp are vastly more privileged in terms of wealth, social status, education, society's racial biases, and political clout, while comprising a small minority of the workforce.

Yet with the vast majority of workers effectively invisible to elites busy in their lovable occupations, how can it be surprising that the heavy strains faced by today's workers—abysmal wages, massive child care costs, etc.—barely register as political issues even among the liberal faction of the ruling class?
In ignoring most work and reclassifying the rest as love, DWYL may be the most elegant anti-worker ideology around. Why should workers assemble and assert their class interests if there's no such thing as work?

DWYL reinforces exploitation even within the so-called lovable professions, where off-the-clock, underpaid, or unpaid labor is the new norm: reporters required to do the work of their laid-off photographers, publicists expected to pin and tweet on weekends, the 46 percent of the workforce expected to check their work email on sick days. Nothing makes exploitation go down easier than convincing workers that they are doing what they love.
Instead of crafting a nation of self-fulfilled, happy workers, our DWYL era has seen the rise of the adjunct professor and the unpaid intern: people persuaded to work for cheap or free, or even for a net loss of wealth.

Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life! Before succumbing to the intoxicating warmth of that promise, it's critical to ask, "Who, exactly, benefits from making work feel like nonwork?" "Why should workers feel as if they aren't working when they are?" In masking the very exploitative mechanisms of labor that it fuels, DWYL is, in fact, the most perfect ideological tool of capitalism.

I think I agree with their premise, actually.

I do too.

I'm reminded of something I read recently (can't remember where) which asked "Should people who love their job be paid less?"

Sure, they're already working on weekends and sick days... why not pay them less too?

Hang on now.  I never said shit about paying them less.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, what, I should get a job I hate?

Um.

Wait a minute.

HEY, YOU CAN ALL BE SUNNY & UPBEAT LIKE ME!

[LMNO]

Well, as one of the privliged white kids growing up, I got the "follow your bliss" and "do what you love" and "find a job you love" stuff a lot.  It didn't help that my dad loved physics and science, and was a physics teacher, and became director of a national physics lab, and became a national science advisor.

So, there I was, I loved music, I loved horses, I loved books... And 30 years later I'm not a cowboy or rockstar or noted academic, I'm grinding it out in a financial corporation, analyzing IRS and SEC regulations as it pertains to life insurance.  It kind of fucked me up for a while. 

I know, petty, rich white guy whining.

And I know, I know, I'm still rocking, I still get to ride, I still read.  But to spend 8-10 hours a day doing something I really have no deep enjoyment of at all, at all, is kind of shitty.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, as one of the privliged white kids growing up, I got the "follow your bliss" and "do what you love" and "find a job you love" stuff a lot.  It didn't help that my dad loved physics and science, and was a physics teacher, and became director of a national physics lab, and became a national science advisor.

So, there I was, I loved music, I loved horses, I loved books... And 30 years later I'm not a cowboy or rockstar or noted academic, I'm grinding it out in a financial corporation, analyzing IRS and SEC regulations as it pertains to life insurance.  It kind of fucked me up for a while. 

I know, petty, rich white guy whining.

And I know, I know, I'm still rocking, I still get to ride, I still read.  But to spend 8-10 hours a day doing something I really have no deep enjoyment of at all, at all, is kind of shitty.

According to the article, you're doing the right thing.

[LMNO]

Hm.  I didn't think if it like that.  I notice that I am uncomfortable. 

That indicates a potential learning option.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

All I know is that I hate my job, I hate my fucking coworkers, and every day I hate myself a little more for sitting here hating it all.  I put up with this shit so that my daughter can go to a solvent school.  That situation is almost over, fortunately.

I know people who do what they love.  They aren't working unpaid overtime (except, of course, for the ones who work for themselves) or smiling contentedly as they get sodomized by rich liberals or whatever.  They're making a living.  One's a photographer, one's a chemist, etc.

I get where the article is going.  But I also have to ask, who gains by the idea that you should have to hate your job or you're some kind of sell out?

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

It goes back to that whole Puritan thing of suffer in this life so you can earn bliss in the afterlife thing. Everything here should be awful and shitty and suck so much that you're happy to die and you've earned your ticket to heaven by suffering so much here. O.O

[LMNO]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

You have three choices:

1.  Do what you love.
2.  Love what you do.
3.  Be angry all the damn time.

I didn't do #1, I can't do #2 most of the time, and so for the moment I am stuck on #3.

For another 6-9 months.  Then I am no longer trapped...At which point I may walk the hell out of this place, or hell, I may even enjoy it again (since it will at that point be optional).

I just think that the idea of preaching (in a rather one-sided manner) that you are FUCKED if you love what you do, or are somehow "part of the problem" or whatever, is the denial of Slack™ as a desirable thing.

"Be content in your misery; it could be worse.  You could like your job."

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

I saw it along the similar lines, but not exactly the same.

The rich have the luxury to do what they love. People who are not rich have to do what they are able to whether they love it or not.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

I saw it along the similar lines, but not exactly the same.

The rich have the luxury to do what they love. People who are not rich have to do what they are able to whether they love it or not.

You and Nigel are both going back to school, yes?  Presumably to get the credentials to do what you want to do?

Are either of you rich? 

The poor have to bust their fucking genetalia to do what they want to do, and yes, there is a certain amount of luck involved (but not as much as "being born rich"), but both of you are proof that it can be done.

The only difference is that it's more or less handed to rich folks.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

I saw it along the similar lines, but not exactly the same.

The rich have the luxury to do what they love. People who are not rich have to do what they are able to whether they love it or not.

You and Nigel are both going back to school, yes?  Presumably to get the credentials to do what you want to do?

Are either of you rich? 

The poor have to bust their fucking genetalia to do what they want to do, and yes, there is a certain amount of luck involved (but not as much as "being born rich"), but both of you are proof that it can be done.

The only difference is that it's more or less handed to rich folks.

Fair point.

I'm back in school to get the credentials to do what I have to (that is, get a proper job). That I'm generally interested in science is a bonus, but my decision to go into it was based off usefulness of the degree and realizing that the rock star thing probably wasn't going to happen. I'm going to end up doing what I love, but the choice was borne out of necessity as much as anything else (with anything else including the desire to leave my job, or not doing what I don't love).

[hooplala]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

I read it as "must be nice to have the option of doing something you love".  Perhaps I read it wrong.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

I read it as "must be nice to have the option of doing something you love".  Perhaps I read it wrong.

I have that option.  But I choose not to use that option, as I do not wish to spend time in prison.

Because what I really want to do is rob banks.  No shit.  If I could do anything I wanted, I'd make John Dillinger look like a small time pickpocket.

[hooplala]

I was seeing it more as a myth that is fed to rich kids, that if you end up not doing something you love, you're somehow a failure.

But I may very well have been reading my own fears and insecurities into the piece.

You have three choices:

1.  Do what you love.
2.  Love what you do.
3.  Be angry all the damn time.

I didn't do #1, I can't do #2 most of the time, and so for the moment I am stuck on #3.

For another 6-9 months.  Then I am no longer trapped...At which point I may walk the hell out of this place, or hell, I may even enjoy it again (since it will at that point be optional).

I just think that the idea of preaching (in a rather one-sided manner) that you are FUCKED if you love what you do, or are somehow "part of the problem" or whatever, is the denial of Slack™ as a desirable thing.

"Be content in your misery; it could be worse.  You could like your job."

You make an excellent point, sir.  I'm probably just bitter after having toured a really excellent film school yesterday and know I can never ever, in a million years, attend it.