Blog EntriesCareers: Do You Make a Living or Have a Career?
The definition of the word 'career' today typically relates to the main stream of remunerative work we do through the course of our lives. If you think about the concept of career in terms of the history of mankind, its a strange little thing that has only been around for a couple of hundred years. It is an aberration. It only arrived with the organization of large corporations.
With the continual development of telecommunications and resulting decentralization of workforces, who know how long it will continue to exist. If you are honest with yourself, you will see that all 'career' ultimately describes is our progression through a list of skills and opportunities someone else has made available to us, where someone else is telling us where we fit in, and what our value is.
It has always perked my curiosity and interest that the word 'care' is ensconced within the term career. It seems to imply that these major corporations have taken it upon themselves to care for us throughout our professional lives. They essentially offer to be our babysitters, preventing us from making important decisions or progressing much and determining our own value. It gets at their unwillingness to let us take command of our own development and measure our very own worth. Hence, 'careers' enter the picture to help us find our way, only allowing us to proceed when we are deemed to be worthwhile (and only if they've got the money to afford it and someone to step in for the position we've held up till now).
No wonder so many people are dissatisfied with their jobs. Its all work, its all someone else's decisions, its all for someone else's goals, and its all building someone else's life. Yet so many people talk about career as if its the most important thing in their life.
I know as a child, when my parents went out for dinner, being baby sat definitely was not the highlight of my week. Living my life through paying with my brothers and friends was. Why do we change as adults? Why do we start measuring our success and life through someone else's eyes? Why do we let them direct our paths? Why have careers become so important?
Switch over to another phrase, 'making a living,' and now you are finally speaking a language I can appreciate. In case you didn't notice, the focus here is simply on life itself, this is something which 'careerists' tend to forget in my opinion. Our purpose on this planet is to live, not to have babysitters. This life is for us to learn on our own two feet, at our own pace: to experience, love, and grow. It's a life in which we need to set our very own value, and not have someone do that for us. All of which is the essence of making a living, it's about making life itself.
And that is the thing that I really love about internet marketing. Sure, you need to learn some skills for writing successful webpages, optimizing on the search engines and the like, but they are just technical skills which anyone can learn.
The principal thing I admire and love about making a living online, however, is that the only viable path for an online business is one which arouses genuine passion in you. The reason for that is simple: any topic out there has its own language, to one degree or another; only through being passionate about the topic will you understand the language. And only once you've understood that language that you will finally be able to reach those who share the same passion and be able to sell them the true value you are offering. Like it or not, that is the way of the internet.
Which is what makes this such a beautiful industry: to find success, you first have to find your passion. And in that sense I do not consider myself to have a career, but rather to be someone that merely makes a living. Even including this article, everything I work on I am passionate about. I never wake up dreading life anymore, but rather jump up out of bed eager to tackle a new day. No more fretting about missed opportunities or promotions I didn't get, etc. etc. I measure my own value according to the web creations I make, the contribution they make to my back account, the lifestyle I get to enjoy and the extra time I have on my hands.
That is the beauty of internet marketing. That is why I'll never do anything else
As a new father, Damian Papworth recognizes the constant tug-of-war for time, which rages between his office and his home. He always tries to find a way to improve family life. Recently he researched baby high chairs, doing some special analysis of portable high chairs.
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