Now, I’m just wondering how common it is for people to feel this way. Before I start, I probably would have to provide you folks with more context. Job fulfillment is a very subjective thing, different people demand different things in order to be perceive their work as fulfilling. Personally, I’ve always associated my satisfaction of a job with how much I grow while exercising my duties. This is of course, very tightly related to how challenging the job is. Naturally, a demanding job pushes you to your limits and helps you grow. So, where I’m getting to precisely is that since I just started my new job several weeks ago, things have been relatively chill and I haven’t had the chance to work on anything super exciting yet. Perhaps all this is quite normal and not that surprising, but I can’t help but feel a little unsatisfied sometimes. I have this (unhealthy?) need to learn more, be more, and achieve more. I get back home and I find myself a whole host of things that I want to read and work on. And honestly, I would love to devote what little free time I have to this at the end of the day. However, I am not as young as I used to be and I unfortunately start feeling the fatigue very early in the evening. I see this as the opportunity cost of working1. Well, of course, I would need to work in order to survive, heck even that is insufficient, I want to be handsomely compensated. Maybe I am overthinking the entire thing, and my job will soon become more interesting.

Does the perfect job exist? One that challenges me in the right ways and compensates me appropriately? Should I be searching for it or should I be trying to create it? And if it does exist, am I qualified to do it now or in the future? What exactly would I have to do in order to get there? What would my dream job look like anyway?? Urgh this is indeed quite a headache :) If anyone has any advice, feel free to reach out to me.

  1. Perhaps this is why people seek the intellectual refuge of academia. This comes with its own opportunity costs, of course. I opted not to remain in the world of academia for reasons that I shall not elaborate on for now. ↩