What Is The Point Of A Career?
Reflecting on my career as I hit the midpoint
I recently attended a friend’s wedding. My fiance and I had a hotel room at the venue and one of our other friends rushed over to use our internet. I figured her cellular plan was out of data and she wanted to watch some TikTok or something. Nope she needed to debug her code… on a Saturday… 45 minutes before the ceremony was set to kick off.
I was pretty shocked. But that jogged my memory of other times I had seen similar things. While on vacation in Hawaii a few weeks ago, my mother in law (future MIL but who’s counting?) was busy planning out the schedule for a work trip to Europe. While the rest of us were chowing down on ox tail ramen (I highly recommend Ramen Nakamura in Waikiki), she was furiously typing away on her phone to her assistant and complaining about the spotty WiFi connection. My mother in law should be happily retired and yet she’s still working slavishly. Why?
I actually asked her one time — what is it that you want to make all this money for? She put down her phone and stared blankly at me and replied, “I don’t know.”
And this seems to be a common trend among workaholics. My hardest working friends and acquaintances all seem to say the same thing when confronted with that question — I don’t know what I’m working so hard…
