The Dream Job is the One You Don’t Have

In the course of my employment, it falls to me to arrange production of videos we can use for promotional and marketing purposes. We don’t have the capability to do “high quality” videos in-house, so this necessitates hiring a vendor to do it for us.

This year, we are considering shaking things up and going with someone new, someone a little more flashy and “cool.” Such hipness comes with a higher price tag, of course, and over the last several months, I’ve been trying to investigate if we would really get something for that extra cash. To discern the “value add,” if I may employ one of those “I am a smart business person” phrases.

As part of that, myself and one of my colleagues visited their offices today and felt an immediate pang. They occupy several floors of an older high-rise downtown — it’s all exposed brick and hardwood floors and new furniture and lots of glass and windows. There’s a full bar, complete with working tabs, and everyone is young-ish and wearing jeans. The complete opposite of where I work in some ways, and it in stirred in me some feelings of professional resentment.

The meeting went well, but the visit left a bitter taste in my month. The superficial stuff is just that, but the people we past by also seemed fully engaged with their work — in one case, the production of a puppet show for one of their kid-focused clients. I briefly daydreamed about working there, full of energy and creative ideas and relief from the stress of stretching my thin selection of business casual clothing items to its limits.

But the thing is, those people I passed, any one of them could be stewing in a secret hatred of their job and work environment. Brick walls and nice lounges do not self-fulfillment make. It’s foolish for me to think that by changing scenery I could achieve something as elusive as that. But at 30, I’m starting to run out of ideas. I’ve never had a job that I didn’t feel bored by at some level. They say to follow your “passion,” but I’m not sure that’s something I am ever going to find.

— Day 2 —