Last week, I announced that I’m introducing a subscription option for this newsletter. Part of what you pay for if you subscribe is access to a community of people who want to engage in meaningful discussions about careers, creativity, internet culture and much more.
I wanted to show you what that actually looks like. So, welcome to a thread!!
Thread prompt: How does your career make you feel?
Answer this prompt from whichever direction you like – emotional, social or philosophical. You might be feeling mad at the structural forces that are hindering your job right now. Perhaps you’re asking yourself some tough questions about your career that are bringing up some heavy emotions for you. Or maybe you’ve had a great week and are excited to be feeling creative again.
We’re not supposed to show our emotions at work, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling them. So let’s talk about that here.
📌 Programming note: Going forward, these threads will be a regular feature only be available to paying subscribers. By keeping this forum private, I hope to ensure it remains a healthy and productive space for online discussions, something that’s increasingly rare on the internet. If you enjoyed taking part in this thread, sign up here for a subscription
Currently, my career makes me feel a mix of emotions which I can only summarise as: contradictory.
I find myself stuck in a frustrating cycle of feeling my most engaged while working, but somehow I also simultaneously feel disengaged, too. I love my work and I'm more than happy doing it, but also I’d rather be doing ~anything else~ but work. It’s an exhausting feeling that leaves me pretty frustrated.
On the plus side, however, I’ve taken solace in learning that I’m not the only one who feels like this. The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, best known for coining the term “flow”, found that most people enter a flow state while working (compared to while at leisure), however they’d rather be at leisure than at work! (See here for the summary of the paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-27920-001)
This question appeared in my inbox seconds after I had very emotionally sent an email to someone who is helping me apply for an arts council grant. In that email I’d admitted that the questions around ‘your work/creative practise’ that involve digging into my CV had left me feeling a sense of shame/uselessness. For context I’m currently pursuing an ADHD diagnosis and as I’m processing that I’m beginning to understand why my approach to my career has been chaotic, disjointed, flaky and in truth, a bit amateur rather than professional/smooth/targeted. I’m an actor and a writer. The acting part involves so much of being at the mercy of others that I’ve blocked out large parts of my own work. I can’t remember the name or venue of any of the fringe plays I performed in in my 20s and trying to has made me feel like a huge failure, because they’re not memorable. But on the flip side I have had a brief dip into freelance journalism (ultimately didn’t fulfil), copywriting (same), a pretty solid voiceover career (that I’ve also let slide) and written and produced two solo shows for the Edinburgh fringe, created blogs, newsletters, live blogs, filled notebooks with the bare bones of (at present) 11 different projects, performed at comedy nights, made two short films and starred in four more and I’m currently flirting with performance art, dance and installation work. Yet I feel useless and ashamed! What is that instinct?
At the moment I am taking time away from my career, as I don't have the free time or right frame of mind to devote to it at the moment (for example in the last week 3 (or was it 4) medical appointments and an all day judicial hearing (my wife had previously been representing me). Emotionally losing my wife was hard, but we also worked together. Going through a Coroner's inquest hearing earlier this month, then organising her cremation was tougher on me than I realised and I've recently been referred for bereavement counselling.
On the plus side - I'm signed off work until late April 2022 with a GP's fit note (albeit it being self-employed that doesn't really count for much) and there are no expectations on me to resume my previous activity at the moment - financially I'm ok and luckily I can easily take a month or two off so that I'm not overwhelmed.
I’m going to answer as a before and after. Before I left the corporate grind, I felt like I was trapped in the bullshit machine, endlessly producing data to fit the corporate demand for ratings of people, sucked into ceaseless meetings, always glimpsing but never participating in “real” work. But after, which is to say now, as I pursue a career reset built around what I love, I feel energized, constantly tantalized by cool things I can do. I’ll stop there!
My career feels like a battle with myself and my own values. I write about the climate crisis and this year my focus is on rejecting capitalist 'hustle culture.' But I'm also a young and new freelancer and find myself overworked and overwhelmed with the gravity of the crises I write about, on a weekly basis. Being a freelancer is exhausting. Being a climate activist is exhausting. Being both is a recipe for burnout. But I feel like I can't do anything else and I don't want to. This is where I need to be.
Frustrated! Based on a lot of other people's comments, I'm not the only one. I really feel for those of you who're struggling and are experiencing a lot of shame or embarrassment about their careers, at the moment. I'm right there with you.
I'm a writer. To me, the life of an artist consists of two parts of an equation. On one side is pure creation, and on the other side is connection--where the audience actually sees and appreciates what the artist made. Without both sides, the art doesn't really become art, if that makes sense.
I'm very heavy on the creation side, but my audience side is nearly nonexistent. I wrote a book and unsuccessfully pitched it to several agents. I thought I'd build an audience by writing smaller things, but I'm so overwhelmed by the process of submitting to publications that I've submitted very little. About two months ago, I started a substack newsletter and have been disappointed in the engagement (maybe prematurely, I don't know).
I find myself feeling hurt, but I'm not hurt by the editors and agents who've rejected me or the people who don't subscribe to my newsletter. I'm hurt by the universe that made me want this thing so badly, but didn't also give me the talent or luck or whatever a person needs to move forward.
Anyway, that's where I am, right now. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get this off my chest, Anna.
I'm only a few years into my career, and am simultaneously feeling hindered but also in a dreaming place. I basically work as a Restorative Justice Consultant for school districts and local colleges. We go in, teach teachers/admins/students how to host and keep 'Circles', and then help them implement Circles across the school in order to create better communication between colleagues and eventually work towards whatever systemic change people want to see. The day to day of my job is really rewarding, and I enjoy that I interact with people so much. However, I do this work for a non-profit, so the pay is honestly not a living wage. If I weren't able to be on my parents health insurance or live with one of my best friends as a roommate, I wouldn't be able to sustain myself. Furthermore, despite working in conflict resolution and teaching these skills to others, the executive director of our agency is rather draconian. I've only just started dreaming of perhaps going freelance and doing this work on my own... but I have a lot to learn between now and then. (It's actually part of why I subscribed to this newsletter, I wanted to have more perspective from folks who are freelancing to make ends meet.)
Anyway, since starting to dream this dream of doing this on my own, and running the preliminary numbers, I feel incredibly energized. I know I'm good at what I do, it's just a matter of figuring out how can I do this without working within the very limited non-profit setting.
Answering this thread makes me want to be a paid subscriber!
I am in limbo, but at least I’m not stuck. After a twenty-year career in social work, I stepped away into the unknown. I thought I was immune to burnout, but it snuck up on me and got me good! Now I’m using my savings to look at other options. I’m writing an entertainment newsletter about the sillier side of life - celebs and pop culture. I insert my social work analysis when and where I can. It’s okay not to be okay with what you are doing. I think (and hope and pray) that there are other ways to live and make money. Love and good wishes to all who are struggling.
My career makes me feel free but it took me a long time to get here and is still a work in progress. I've been working for myself for the last 6-7 years and now know that I can never go back to work for other people. What started as experimental contract work led to a successful business as a freelance project manager. Two years ago I started creating content in the form of courses, tools, blogs, and resources for other freelancers and it has made me feel fulfilled in a way I never thought possible. Right now I'm struggling with the relationship between success and money. I feel like I'm getting closer everyday to doing my Work in the world, but I've also been pouring my heart and soul (and time and money) into content and writing that isn't yet breaking even. While I don't need the content stuff to make money because my client work pays the bills, I've still been defining my success in terms of money. So I've been in a process of redefining success. I remind myself that I succeeded because I made something that I was incredibly proud of, something that felt like the culmination of everything I had learned in my professional career, something that was 100% MINE. I never would have had the opportunity to do that without the freedom that came with working for myself.
As someone who is 20 years into her career, I have struggled the last few years with my identity. Especially after studying for a degree at 30! At at 39, I'm finding myself look back on all my career decisions and only now I'm realising that it's okay to feel unfulfilled. Even as a blog content writer, I have amazing productive weeks and then weeks when I can't string a sentence together. I often have the case of imposters syndrome but I'm learning to be kinder to myself.
Currently, my career makes me feel a mix of emotions which I can only summarise as: contradictory.
I find myself stuck in a frustrating cycle of feeling my most engaged while working, but somehow I also simultaneously feel disengaged, too. I love my work and I'm more than happy doing it, but also I’d rather be doing ~anything else~ but work. It’s an exhausting feeling that leaves me pretty frustrated.
On the plus side, however, I’ve taken solace in learning that I’m not the only one who feels like this. The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, best known for coining the term “flow”, found that most people enter a flow state while working (compared to while at leisure), however they’d rather be at leisure than at work! (See here for the summary of the paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-27920-001)
This question appeared in my inbox seconds after I had very emotionally sent an email to someone who is helping me apply for an arts council grant. In that email I’d admitted that the questions around ‘your work/creative practise’ that involve digging into my CV had left me feeling a sense of shame/uselessness. For context I’m currently pursuing an ADHD diagnosis and as I’m processing that I’m beginning to understand why my approach to my career has been chaotic, disjointed, flaky and in truth, a bit amateur rather than professional/smooth/targeted. I’m an actor and a writer. The acting part involves so much of being at the mercy of others that I’ve blocked out large parts of my own work. I can’t remember the name or venue of any of the fringe plays I performed in in my 20s and trying to has made me feel like a huge failure, because they’re not memorable. But on the flip side I have had a brief dip into freelance journalism (ultimately didn’t fulfil), copywriting (same), a pretty solid voiceover career (that I’ve also let slide) and written and produced two solo shows for the Edinburgh fringe, created blogs, newsletters, live blogs, filled notebooks with the bare bones of (at present) 11 different projects, performed at comedy nights, made two short films and starred in four more and I’m currently flirting with performance art, dance and installation work. Yet I feel useless and ashamed! What is that instinct?
At the moment I am taking time away from my career, as I don't have the free time or right frame of mind to devote to it at the moment (for example in the last week 3 (or was it 4) medical appointments and an all day judicial hearing (my wife had previously been representing me). Emotionally losing my wife was hard, but we also worked together. Going through a Coroner's inquest hearing earlier this month, then organising her cremation was tougher on me than I realised and I've recently been referred for bereavement counselling.
On the plus side - I'm signed off work until late April 2022 with a GP's fit note (albeit it being self-employed that doesn't really count for much) and there are no expectations on me to resume my previous activity at the moment - financially I'm ok and luckily I can easily take a month or two off so that I'm not overwhelmed.
I’m going to answer as a before and after. Before I left the corporate grind, I felt like I was trapped in the bullshit machine, endlessly producing data to fit the corporate demand for ratings of people, sucked into ceaseless meetings, always glimpsing but never participating in “real” work. But after, which is to say now, as I pursue a career reset built around what I love, I feel energized, constantly tantalized by cool things I can do. I’ll stop there!
My career feels like a battle with myself and my own values. I write about the climate crisis and this year my focus is on rejecting capitalist 'hustle culture.' But I'm also a young and new freelancer and find myself overworked and overwhelmed with the gravity of the crises I write about, on a weekly basis. Being a freelancer is exhausting. Being a climate activist is exhausting. Being both is a recipe for burnout. But I feel like I can't do anything else and I don't want to. This is where I need to be.
Frustrated! Based on a lot of other people's comments, I'm not the only one. I really feel for those of you who're struggling and are experiencing a lot of shame or embarrassment about their careers, at the moment. I'm right there with you.
I'm a writer. To me, the life of an artist consists of two parts of an equation. On one side is pure creation, and on the other side is connection--where the audience actually sees and appreciates what the artist made. Without both sides, the art doesn't really become art, if that makes sense.
I'm very heavy on the creation side, but my audience side is nearly nonexistent. I wrote a book and unsuccessfully pitched it to several agents. I thought I'd build an audience by writing smaller things, but I'm so overwhelmed by the process of submitting to publications that I've submitted very little. About two months ago, I started a substack newsletter and have been disappointed in the engagement (maybe prematurely, I don't know).
I find myself feeling hurt, but I'm not hurt by the editors and agents who've rejected me or the people who don't subscribe to my newsletter. I'm hurt by the universe that made me want this thing so badly, but didn't also give me the talent or luck or whatever a person needs to move forward.
Anyway, that's where I am, right now. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get this off my chest, Anna.
I'm only a few years into my career, and am simultaneously feeling hindered but also in a dreaming place. I basically work as a Restorative Justice Consultant for school districts and local colleges. We go in, teach teachers/admins/students how to host and keep 'Circles', and then help them implement Circles across the school in order to create better communication between colleagues and eventually work towards whatever systemic change people want to see. The day to day of my job is really rewarding, and I enjoy that I interact with people so much. However, I do this work for a non-profit, so the pay is honestly not a living wage. If I weren't able to be on my parents health insurance or live with one of my best friends as a roommate, I wouldn't be able to sustain myself. Furthermore, despite working in conflict resolution and teaching these skills to others, the executive director of our agency is rather draconian. I've only just started dreaming of perhaps going freelance and doing this work on my own... but I have a lot to learn between now and then. (It's actually part of why I subscribed to this newsletter, I wanted to have more perspective from folks who are freelancing to make ends meet.)
Anyway, since starting to dream this dream of doing this on my own, and running the preliminary numbers, I feel incredibly energized. I know I'm good at what I do, it's just a matter of figuring out how can I do this without working within the very limited non-profit setting.
Answering this thread makes me want to be a paid subscriber!
I am in limbo, but at least I’m not stuck. After a twenty-year career in social work, I stepped away into the unknown. I thought I was immune to burnout, but it snuck up on me and got me good! Now I’m using my savings to look at other options. I’m writing an entertainment newsletter about the sillier side of life - celebs and pop culture. I insert my social work analysis when and where I can. It’s okay not to be okay with what you are doing. I think (and hope and pray) that there are other ways to live and make money. Love and good wishes to all who are struggling.
My career makes me feel free but it took me a long time to get here and is still a work in progress. I've been working for myself for the last 6-7 years and now know that I can never go back to work for other people. What started as experimental contract work led to a successful business as a freelance project manager. Two years ago I started creating content in the form of courses, tools, blogs, and resources for other freelancers and it has made me feel fulfilled in a way I never thought possible. Right now I'm struggling with the relationship between success and money. I feel like I'm getting closer everyday to doing my Work in the world, but I've also been pouring my heart and soul (and time and money) into content and writing that isn't yet breaking even. While I don't need the content stuff to make money because my client work pays the bills, I've still been defining my success in terms of money. So I've been in a process of redefining success. I remind myself that I succeeded because I made something that I was incredibly proud of, something that felt like the culmination of everything I had learned in my professional career, something that was 100% MINE. I never would have had the opportunity to do that without the freedom that came with working for myself.
As someone who is 20 years into her career, I have struggled the last few years with my identity. Especially after studying for a degree at 30! At at 39, I'm finding myself look back on all my career decisions and only now I'm realising that it's okay to feel unfulfilled. Even as a blog content writer, I have amazing productive weeks and then weeks when I can't string a sentence together. I often have the case of imposters syndrome but I'm learning to be kinder to myself.