Are You Still Searching for a Job That’s the Right Fit?

Maybe trying to find the “right” job is the wrong approach.

I’m one of the many creatives who decided early on that I would pursue “regular” jobs rather than attempt a creative career. As a writer of fiction, I was realistic about my chances of ever making a living off of it. So I tried to find jobs that were “parallel” to my writing, jobs that involved writing and that would allow me to be a novelist in my spare time. This failed on two fronts. I didn’t end up writing many novels, let alone publishing any, and I found myself severely burned out by the time I was in my mid-thirties. I’d always believed that there was a “right” job out there for me, but I never found it. I tried one thing and then another, and failed to capitalize on my experiences and build a career of note. 

I never could get the hang of the linear, progressive career trajectory, and this made me feel that something was wrong with me. What I realize now is that my story is typical for creatives. The problem isn’t us. It’s that we are part of a system that tries to assimilate those who would live by a different set of values. Creatives just aren’t that good for the economy. We want to do what we want to do, and when a job ceases to inspire us, we cannot stay in it and remain sane. On top of this, we have very limited reserves for dealing with bullshit. So our work histories often look patchy, and we get questions about why we haven’t made anything of ourselves, given our talents.

This perspective is built on faulty assumptions about what we should want or pursue in our working lives. Let’s tear some of those assumptions down.  

Career trajectory is a lie

The idea of a career trajectory is just that: an idea. It’s an idealized model of what a “successful” career looks like that has emerged from a system that values the productive capacity of workers. A successful worker is someone who is consistently productive up to the point of no longer being able to contribute, i.e. retirement. The problem is that fulfilling work and a successful career are usually at odds, because they operate on opposing tracks. A traditional career trajectory is meant to benefit the organization you work for, and through that the larger economy. People who stay in one industry and move up the promotion ladder are efficient cogs in a smoothly running machine. A fulfilling career, on the other hand, is for the benefit of the worker. It may sometimes happily coincide with the ideal career trajectory, but mostly not. It may have starts and stops, an industry switch, retraining, or any number of inefficient moves. The system, while paying lip service to the idea of a fulfilling career, will punish you in numerous ways for trying to have one. Anything like a spotty work history or one that seems to lack focus will be a detriment in job hunting. And thus the truth is revealed: the system does not actually want you to be fulfilled by your work, unless it is a side effect of your productive capacity.

Creatives are particularly disadvantaged in this system. It’s not because we cannot find fulfilling work. It’s that in order to continue to be fulfilled, we need to feel inspired – and generally working in the same career for our whole lives isn’t going to do it. What feels like the right path can quickly become the wrong one once we have reaped all the inspiration we can from it. Our system likes to frame this experience as that job not having been the right one to begin with. This puts the responsibility squarely on the worker to find the job that will be “the one,” in which they can finally fulfill the capitalist requirement of sustained productivity. But creatives are not linear people, nor do we function well within rationalized systems that constrain creativity. We usually end up blaming ourselves for being “unfocused,” “lazy,” “selfish,” or any other negative character trait the system likes to assign to people who fail at traditional career trajectory. In this environment, creatives can often begin to distrust their instincts.

No. Trust your instincts. In a system designed around precepts that are fundamentally at odds with how you need to live your life, your choices will inevitably look bad or wrong, or perhaps even like failures. They’re not. 

Career trajectories don’t exist anymore, anyway

In high school I can remember being told that kids in my generation were the first who could not expect to do as well as their parents. I imagine this is even more true for youth today. I came up during the era of bankrupt pension funds and a loss of trust in big companies. Now we are transitioning to a gig economy in which long-term, secure jobs with good benefits are increasingly scarce. It’s a painful time to be alive – but some of this is actually good news for creatives. Why? Because we are built for times such as these. We understand job insecurity because we’ve always dealt with being unable to settle down. Many of us already have the experience of patching together a living that allows us to continue our art. And we have a head start on dealing with the feelings of inadequacy that come from not being able to build a traditional career. So keep on doing your thing, creatives! 

You will never “figure things out” (hopefully)

The other day I was listening to a podcast by a woman about a decade younger than me who was talking about how it took her a long time to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, and that she’d finally done it. I remember feeling exactly that way at her age. And I couldn’t help but smile at her confidence and enthusiasm. It’s likely she’ll need to reinvent herself a few more times before her allotted life is over.

Make no mistake: there is no such thing as figuring it out, at least not for all time. You may find something that works now, and it may feel like it’s The Thing, but I can promise you that you will grow to a point where you’ll need something new. This is a good thing! Follow those instincts. Life is long (well, hopefully), so don’t fall for the lie that it should look like education/preparation → marriage/kids → career/savings → retirement/“fun” → decline/death. Instead of feeling inadequate if your life veers around and seems to fold back on itself, be proud of it. “You have to live spherically, in many different directions,” as Federico Fellini said. “Never lose your childish enthusiasm, and things will come your way.” Words to live by for creatives!