Meaning and Goals
So at the beginning of october my work contract expired (research assistant at an university). So for about a month I have been unemployed. I have my master's degree in computer science, so finding a job will probably not be difficult (I hope).
However, the thought of just going back into some software development job (the last year of my job was basically only about working on an open-source project) seems wrong somehow.
Like, is that what I want from life?
What do I want?
These questions have kept me somewhat busy when I didn't distract myself with videogames or youtube etc.
Through a workshop I attended during my last month at the job, I figured out that I want to do more with people, so when I get around to actually start my jobsearch I will focus on IT consulting first. While that is my plan for now, I still have doubts in my mind: Why do I want THIS kind of job? I do not have that many or large bills. So if it is all about earning money for bills than would not ANY job do?
Am I passionate about working in IT or would it just bore me the same as any job at a supermarket or something?
So I got off track there. My main point I wanted to get at is: why do we(I) look for any particular job?
I think my problem is that I am alone. I do not have any drive or desire for some high paying job or for any kind of status. Neither do I have someone depending on me making some amount of money.
In the end, give me a job I do not hate that brings enough for the bills and maybe leaves a bit of expendable income to indulge in my hobbies. And of course leave also enough time to indulge in hobbies. Money without time and time without money is both difficult when it comes to most modern hobbies.
I think that it is better to have more time left over than money(as long as money is not too tight each month).
Even though I said I'm alone I still have my parents, brother, friends, who, in my head at least, have some kind of expectations of me. I'm the first in the family to get a college degree, so there is this unspoken expectation (again in my head) that I have to make something of myself.
Ahh, and there is the point I finally wanted to get to without knowing how to say it:
What does it mean to make something of yourself?
What does it mean to be successful? In todays world most people would think/say it is about money and a carreer.
But is it? Who defined that as "success"?
I have been feeling guilty sitting around reading, playing video games because, I guess, it has been ingrained in me to think like society: Anything that does not result in money is useless, a waste of time.
Another problem was that while these things bring me joy in the moment, society deems these useless, however in my last job working on that open source project, writing papers over the years; none of it ever carried much meaning for me personally either. People were like you work at a university(at least in my head, I do not have much social contact outside work, which of course were all people at university).
But now this (prestigious) label is gone and as I just wrote somehow I never cared for it myself outside of what other people might have thought of it.
I do not know if anyone ever reads these ramblings, and looking over the post especially no one will likely read this confusing mess to the end. But if you have, thank you!