When Your Job is Balls, But You Don’t Know What Else to Do

You don’t need to have the “perfect” job in order to love your work. But, most people are too scared to try this idea.

You know who’s annoying?

Those fuckers who love their lives.

You’re always wondering whether or not they’re high. Is Isabelle on drugs again? Is that why she’s all over YouTube, spraying her positivity everywhere?

I have to confess: I used to be this person. I was the girl who walked around yelling “HEYYYYYY!” and bear-hugging strangers, waving fully-extended arms, laughing unabashedly at a minimum threshold of 102 decibels—which, to be clear, is louder than a fire alarm, night club, and traffic accident, all in one.

God, who are we kidding: I still am this freak. I love this about me!

There’s no denying I am the human equivalent of a Christmas tree, like there’s some kind of festival going on in my brain 24/7. You should see me around parents. Parents love me. I think they think I am cheerful and bubbly and that naturally translates into “good girl,” but in reality you know what it translates into?

The relentless pressure to constantly maintain a conversation with me at all times. 😂

I am exhausting.

I feel bad for introverts who come anywhere near me.

I should come with a warning label, except that, too, would probably be FULL OF CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS AND LAUGHING EMOJIS AND HUGS—and, the grisly truth is, I REALLY MEAN THE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!! THIS IS HOW I AM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unless, of course, you catch me on The Off Day. There is always one Off-Day. You don’t want to be anywhere near me on The Off Day. That’s the one twenty-four hour time span in which I suddenly turn into a vicious and menacing, axe-carrying death punisher who puts lighter fluid in your cereal and makes Russian-born crime bosses cry. It’s not related to my period, I checked. I’m pretty sure it happens whenever I’ve just spent three hours shopping online and then get an “unexpected error” at checkout. These messages are like fungus. I always try the whole thing again, and then it happens again, and then suddenly I am a werewolf. Is there an essential oil for that???

Anyway, there are lots of things I get wrong in life, like the perfect ratio of water to rice, but one thing I have mastered is the art of making yourself happy. There is NOT some kind of “state of permanent happiness,” like we all imagine—that’s up there with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy—but rather, happiness is a verb. There is no “happy life,” but rather, “activities that bring happiness in life.”

In other words?

You are either doing things that make you happy, or you’re not.

I call this: The Happiness Work. We usually think of “work” as hard things that are undesirable, but “work” is “effort”—and effort can be joyful, too.

Therefore, The Happiness Work is what you do every day to give yourself joy.

It’s a daily activity.

An ongoing commitment.

A love affair with your hell yeah.

It’s an open-ended undertaking that has no end date, no expiry, no finish line. Because, being happy isn’t a place you finally arrive, put your feet up, and have a gin. Being happy is a temporary condition that gets rebooted every single day, and every single day you must fill up your happiness cup again.

Fill it up enough times, and eventually you will feel like you are happy—because the things you do every day make you happy.

Now…you know me. I’m not going to sit here and be all “join a knitting group and ignore your bills, fuckface!” That’s naive. But, I do have a theory about work, and how this ties in to the way we make a living.

If you are struggling with liking your job, then you are struggling with liking the things you do everyday in that job.

One time in prehistoric years (my early twenties), I took a job as an event planner (please laugh), thinking that events are FUN. 🥳 But, you know what event planning is???? PLANNING. 😴 Oh my god, so much planning. And, guess who isn’t a planner? DO WE HAVE ANY GUESSES? Because me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

This job was a shit fit, and yet, I still felt bad every day because, uh, I hated it.

But, instead of telling myself that this job wasn’t a good match for my strengths, I told myself that I was the asshole—and I wasn’t good.

There. Is. A. Big. Difference.

I didn’t know myself well enough, then, to know that I am not a detailed-oriented person who thrives off of checklists and likes color-coding my poops. Not that there’s anything wrong with color-coding your poop. Sounds responsible. But—it’s not in my DNA. I’m creative, right-brained, and full of big, screamy, sunny, bouncy ideas.

What I should have done was found a way to join the events space—or whatever industry I wanted—doing the kinds of things I naturally gravitated toward. You know what I would have been great at? Writing creative wedding vows. Writing creative invites. Writing creative menus. Writing creative signage.

But, you know what stopped me, back then?

The fact that there was “no job doing that.”

That’s a thing you’ve thought before, right? Well, there’s no job doing that one fun thing I actually like doing, so I guess I’ll just go be an accountant.

Wrong!

You know what I have learned in my 39 years of blissful, weird air breathing??????

You don’t wait for someone to give you the job; you go out there, and you give it to yourself.

This is a universal law, unless you’re administering a prostate exam.

In the context of a corporate job, where you have a defined “role,” you do the job you are asked to do—and then, you start proactively doing the job you want to do.

Key word: proactively.

As in—you don’t ask permission, you just show up and contribute.

I promise you, no one is going to say “wow, we really don’t want Kate giving us all that extra help, especially when she is so great at it!” Nope. They’re going to be like, “SURE, HAVE AT IT, YOU AMBITIOUS FISH FUCKER.” This is particularly true if you work for a small or mid-sized company, or any place where staff is being stretched so thin their cheeks are going to explode. Take all that time that everyone else is gossiping at the water cooler, and use it to your advantage.

Even if someone at some dumb company tells you that you can’t, you can! You can do anything. It doesn’t have to be a formally assigned project: you can take anything you see, and do it better, and then use it to build your portfolio.

Imagine that????? You can show up and do the work you like, whether it’s been assigned or not.

• If you secretly want to write a funny version of the company newsletter, start writing a funny version of the company newsletter

• If you secretly want to come up with a killer holiday marketing campaign, come up with a killer holiday marketing campaign

• If you secretly want to be in charge of buying product, start selecting the products you’d purchase this season, and why

What happens next is wild & wonderful & lovely: either you will make a name for yourself at your company as being THE PERSON WHO IS BANGIN’ AT X—and who should totally be promoted into that role (hooray)—OR, you will realize there isn’t room to grow within that particular company…but you now have a portfolio of work that you can use to pitch another company—or strike it out on your own. Magnificent!

If you work for yourself, on the other hand, the opportunity is e-n-d-l-e-s-s.

• If you secretly want to become a photographer, pick a theme and start photographing the shit out of it—then publish it publicly online.

• If you secretly want to become an interior designer, pick a theme and start designing the shit out of it—then publish it publicly online.

• If you secretly want to become a writer, pick a theme and start writing the shit out of it—then publish it publicly online.

The whole “publish it publicly online” thing is important. You need people to see the work. You need a way to establish a name for yourself as THE PERSON WHO IS BANGIN’ AT X. Without stakeholders in an office setting, you need to find your own. This should not be intimidating; this is, in fact, the best case scenario, because you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get people to rally around your work, so long as you have a defined theme around your work that can be rallied around.

Most people are too scared to do this.

Most people don’t don’t want to pigeonhole themselves into a niche, because they’re worried they’ll get claustrophobia. (I think???) But, replace the word “pigeonhole” with “specialize,” and suddenly the value is evident. You know who people want to follow?

Interesting people.

And, you know how you become an interesting person? By having an interest.

Which one is more interesting to you?

• Hi, I’m Caroline, and I write Caroline Speaks, a Substack on motherhood, marriage, design, cooking, and occasional thoughts on life, or;

• Hi, I’m Caroline, and I write What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking. (Which is a real Substack with over 100,000 subscribers, and tens of thousands of paid subs.)

The latter is tight. It’s a concept. It’s an actual pitch, rather than just a bunch of musings about random things. It’s built around one interest. Therefore, readers can quickly decide whether or not this is something they want to subscribe to, rather than not being able to tell???

Even if you DO want to be able to write musings about random things—and therefore not restrict yourself too much—you should still be able to pitch your work around a theme.

This is called business.

In all cases, you have more personal agency than you think over what kind of work you contribute. If you aren’t happy doing your job, then it’s time to consider what activities you would be happy doing, and figure out how you can bring them into your job. You don’t need to have the “perfect” job in order to love your work: sometimes you just need a little initiative to make the job you do have, into the one you want.

Initiative is what makes people money, not skills.

Lots of people have skills, but few people have the guts to do anything interesting with them.

Sometimes, doing the job you want is as simple as doing it.

The money will always follow—and so will your self-respect.

And, who knows: you might even turn into one of those fuckers that loves their lives, so long as you aren’t waving your arms harder than me.