Serve This

Recently, especially in light of the rollercoaster that has been my last couple weeks of work, I've come to the realization that my job makes me more or less a servant. It's not technically a "service" position, like answering phones and dealing with customers' problems, but that just means that instead of being a servant to customers, I'm a servant to my bosses. This was a difficult thing for me to fully grasp because now that I think of it, I've never been in the position to serve other people. I'm used to being served.

Most of us (myself included) went through years of school and looked at it as though it were some burden placed on our shoulders. By the final semester of my senior year at college, I couldn't wait to take my last exam, grab my diploma and go. Too busy being pissed at professors who talked down to me, and too worried about getting the best grades possible, I failed to recognize the fact that school was there for my benefit, and not the other way around. All these professors, TA's, and department administrators that I viewed as the enemy, were actually people that were being paid to make sure I got my edumacation. Maybe it didn't always work out that way, with lazy and self-absorbed professors all over the place, but that was the intention.

Well, now that I'm more than a year removed from graduation and been working for a while, it's becoming more apparent that the days of me being served by everyone around me are over. Though my managers and most of the people I work with are eager to help me and answer my questions, the bottom line is that I work for them and that's the only reason they pay me each week.

Ever since I started working this job, I've wondered why I get home each night feeling so tired and drained, and I still haven't come up with a good answer. I mean, it's not like I'm lifting rocks all day, I'm sitting at a desk for the majority of 8 or 9 hours. All I know is, at the end of each day, I feel like I desperately need some time to recuperate. Exactly what it is I'm recuperating from, I don't know.

I think a big part of it is that I'm just not used to being in the position of serving other people. Yes, I'm getting paid for what I do, but other than that, my work is solely for the benefit of someone else. On the surface, when my boss gives me a list of Action Items from a meeting to take care of, it's a lot like a professor assigning a chapter to study or a problem set to do. But in reality, studying that chapter or doing that problem set is for my own good. If I don't do it, nobody really loses out but me. On the other hand, those Action Items have very little direct effect on my life. I might gain some technical experience from getting them accomplished, but that's merely a side benefit. So while it's probably just as tough, if not tougher, to work on an MP for 8 hours as it is to be at this job all day, the situation is very different.

Doing something for the sake of money and doing it for the sake of personal gain are two different things to me. Money is great, but it's honestly not that important to me. Maybe it's because I've never had to worry much about not having enough of it, so I don't fully appreciate its value. But really, the paycheck I get each Friday is not enough, in and of itself, to motivate me to work my butt off at my job. I do work hard, partly because it's the way I've been brought up, but also because I have some faith that in the end, my effort will pay off in some way when all is said and done. I'm getting off my original topic though.

I guess in the bigger picture of my overall life, there's a significant shift in paradigm that has to come with the adjustment of starting a career. For 22 years, the focus has always been on improving myself, and working hard for my own future gain. Well, that future is now, and with its arrival, the questions arise - who am I working hard for, and for what purpose?

Because my primary role is no longer to serve myself and my own interests, there must be some deeper motivation and personal justification for something that takes up the majority of my waking hours and demands so much of my soul. Right now, I lack a clear sense of what this motivation is, or where it's supposed to come from, and maybe that's why I end up feeling so debilitated at the end of each day.

Maybe I need to have a wife and kids to support, and having them depend on me and my paycheck will provide a driving force to move forward. Maybe I need to take up a satisfying hobby, to counter the draining effects of serving other people's interests at work all the time. Maybe I should drop everything and start my own company, have people work for me, and continue to be entirely focused on my personal gain and no one else's, for the rest of my life. All of the above? None of the above?

Anyways, if I had known that leaving school would effectively mark the end of my life as a "servee" and the beginning of my life as a "server", maybe I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to walk across that stage to get my fake diploma on that fateful day in May 2002. But hey, life goes on. And I'd like to believe that some day, everything I wonder about will all make sense to me.

"Welcome to the real world -- it sucks" - Monica from Friends