Posted on January 13th, 2010 in Freelancing, Internet, Life As A Nico
telos |ˈteläs; ˈtē-|
noun ( pl. teloi |ˈteloi; ˈtēloi|) chiefly Philosophy or poetic/literary
an ultimate object or aim.
ORIGIN Greek, literally ‘end.’
To be perfectly honest, I myself don’t know where I’m going with this lifestyle I’m leading. This isn’t a statement that’s supposed to induct me into the ranks of a ‘lost generation’ or the hopelessly misunderstood. There is not much of a deeper meaning to this. I’m saying this because I’m not sure what is the point of me working as much as I have been lately.
This also isn’t to say my work is pointless. This can be supported by the fact that my workload has been gaining weight, which is a good sign considering that whole Recession plague (no, not H1N1). I’m also trying to avoid sounding like I’m bragging that I actually have a job in this day and age.
My point: my freelance side projects and taking work home from my main job have made recreational time kind of scarce. I’m even writing sentences of this post in between emails, Photoshop, field research, code, PowerPoint, and spreadsheets.
Don’t get me wrong, I love what I’m doing and it’s a good thing I love what I do for a living. Yes, sometimes I even love the spreadsheets.
And sure, like any kind of career, parts of it are difficult and sometimes, you will want to bludgeon someone with a keyboard. After all, nothing good was ever won easily.
But unlike most other careers, working for the internet is really vague about what is the end-goal. To become a consultant? An independent contractor? A professor? A CEO? A unicorn?
When I take a step back and try to think about where I want to take my career path, I realize that I’m already doing what I set out to do in the first place:
Working in, for, with, via, and on the internet.
If this is a series of tubes, I feel like I’ve scored in becoming a train conductor. I don’t take shit for granted. I am lucky to be where I am and I’m happy I worked that hard to get here.
But I’ve been working a lot lately, and to what end? To work more? To work even harder?
Maybe the means are the end. If hard work is its own reward, then that explains my workoholism.
And maybe this post, which said really nothing more than “Nico is working,” might be a signal.
If I’ve already found a good (albeit confusing) place to be professionally…
Maybe I should work on finding a good (and just as confusing) place to be personally.
And from this point forward, I’m open to suggestions.