Decisions, decisions

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1761615]

Context

Comments

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Quitting to do anything else would probably feel like an improvement to me now ;)

[andrewducker]

"Quitting your PhD to offer sexual services to squid?"

"Love to!"

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Well it depends how well the squid pay, a girls gotta live!

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Or did you mean, quitting your job, and working for no pay, to make the world a better place?

[andrewducker]

Well, almost certainly for low pay and low security, at least to start with.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I sit here and write ads for after hours escort services, penis pills, miracle weight loss products, gay fetish hook up sites and "escort reviews."

When I'm trying to figure out the best way to describe a rent boy's cock so that closeted married men will decide it's worth $300 of their cash to suck it, I'm not really letting bourgeois morality enter the picture.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Back when I was employed, if I'd been told that me ceasing to do what I do would really improve the world in ways that were real and believable (and nothing to do with free market ideology) I'd have done it like a shot.

[nwhyte]

Been there, done that...

[andrewducker]

I really should have had an option for "I am already saving the world, thank you very much." as there are a small number people on my friends list like you, or Rose (a peace corps volunteer currently based in Togo).

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

If I had a job, that it is. I don't, so it's a bit irrelevant.

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

I didn't quit my job to save the world though, I quit my job to save me. 4 years and 1 chronic illness later, I've no idea if that was the right thing to do.

[andrewducker]

I hope you're doing better now than you were then.

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

Actually, that makes it sound more dramatic than it was. I quit my job mostly to save me from boredom, though looking back, I suspect I was depressed as well as bored. The chronic illness (ME) came later.

[yalovetz]

And have active plans to do so.

[andrewducker]

Go you!

What are you planning on doing?

[yalovetz]

Retraining in science. Hopefully gain skills that'll help me contribute to working on environmental issues.

[andrewducker]

Oh, cool. That sounds like a good long-term plan.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

In an odd way, I find that I get more done when I'm busy. Also, I have more connections and more money when I'm working. I do much better at saving the world when I'm employed. When I'm unemployed I'm disengaged in ways I can't quite explain.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I haven't quite given up on the idea that my job helps make the world a better place, although I do keep meaning to organise my time better so I can also volunteer in my local community at least one afternoon a week. Having said that, if the Boy won big on the lottery, I would totally quit to become a full-time philanthropist!

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

My job is moderately satisfying. They treat me very well. I have plenty of time and energy outside working hours to do things that make me happy and have good effects on those around me, and I do; I'm very content with life at the moment. So I don't see any reason to quit my job.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm already getting paid to make the world a better place; between the teletriage and the patient-placement service contracts I'm guaranteed to have (indirectly, admittedly) saved lives and relieved suffering.

-- Steve'd like it if he was paid a bit more for making the world a better place, but doesn't insist on it.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I feel my job does make the world a better place, which is one reason why I do it!

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I would quit my job within a nanosecond were I the only person whose financial security I'm responsible for. As it is, I have to earn enough to support two people, pay off debts and ensure that my wife can visit her foreign parents.

I would dearly love to be doing something that I thought *mattered*.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'm in a similar situation - I like my work, and it does give me the opportunity to make a difference on asylum issues in a small way, but I would give it up if I could. Ideally, I think I'd spend about half my time on meaningful volunteer work/activism and the other half just doing things that help to keep me sane and healthy (my spiritual director would say that the second half is meaningful activism, but that's a different issue). But like you, I don't really have that option because I'm financially responsible for others (in my case, four directly and one indirectly, in the sense that djm4 and I are each other's backup for periods when one of us is out of a job). That's a situation entirely of my own making, of course, and I don't regret it - but it's there.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that I definitely agree with that last bit - I hope I didn't come across even slightly as saying I regret having to support minnesattva.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

No, not at all! Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you did. That bit of my reply was more to reassure any of my household who might come across this thread :-)

[zz]

arguably, at least some of my work makes the world a better place already. e.g. developing and running a site that make accessible books available to vision-impaired children.

other than that, i wouldn't know what to do, or have the self-confidence to do it. my life/family have had sufficient instability & money problems that i'm loath to risk my financial security that much. and i don't have a partner for financial or other support.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Job I do now: Improving the quality of company audits.
Job I would do if I quit my job: If I could afford to live off a massively reduced income, then I'd want to be an RPG writer.


I'd struggle to argue that the world would be substantially better if I wrote the greatest Traveller campaign ever, whereas running the programme that monitors the quality of audits for the largest accountancy firm in Europe does have benefits for society. That, and I pay more tax if I work for the accountancy firm.

[mair_in_grenderich]

I don't have a job. If it was obvious to me what *I* should be doing to make the world a better place, low pay and low security included, I'd go and do it.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Clearly I made the decision to go work for a bank with all that entails (long hours, offset by better than average pay & a generous dollop of antipathy from the tabloid press).

I have no desire to be poor, be at the mercy of a landlord, worry about bills & be unable to do the things I want, so I won't be quitting my job any time soon. I think I would actually find a lack of financial security more stressful than my job in many ways.

I think it's tremendously difficult to live without a conventional job nowadays, unless you have a particular talent or are willing to live a very unconventional lifestyle. (I met a woman who lived in the back of a van so that she could spend half her year climbing in South America and the other half training climbers to fund that. Worked for her, but my idea of hell.)

That said, if I suddenly came into money and didn't have to work, I most certainly wouldn't.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’d love to work for a sustainability organisation in the UK or go and do VSO and transfer some corporate governance skills to developing countries.

I might be able to do the later when The Captain and Bluebird are at uni.

Doing the former would actually be harder as the pay cut relative to the cost of living looks like it might be more significant.

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

I find the article a wee bit hard to take 100% seriously just because of the position of privilege the writer obviously comes from. Not everyone can just up sticks and quit their jobs! Personally I'm hopefully going to end up working to save the world, at least a little bit- who says you can't do both?!

[andrewducker]

Yup. It requires money, and education, and backing. Not everyone can do that.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I like to think that most of the jobs I've had make the world, or people's lives, anyway, better. Certainly the one I'm training for does - or rather, offers the chance to do that, or to totally bugger people's lives up if I do it badly.