I was working in the office this week and it’s definitely more tiring than working at home. The transport time, dress code and ambient noise does get to me at times and it takes me a while to get used to it when I switch between the different work arrangements. But it’s easier to catch up with my colleagues and feels nice to be part of a team again. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m starting to feel the urge to move jobs again. If you look at my jobs history, I have never stayed past 3 years at any of them.
I don’t move to get a salary increase and this is probably why I have an average pay. I move because I like working in different environments with changing job scopes. Keeps my career interesting and I get to meet more people along the way. I don’t like feeling comfortable at a job that I have gotten used to doing. It makes me feel stagnant and lazy. Not the way to go if I want to have a long corporate career. I don’t have dreams of retiring early and finding something of my own to do. I like the engagement I get from working with people at a job and it keeps my mind active.
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I can see my wife feels the same way so neither of us plan to retire early. We like this shift into flexible work arrangements at our jobs and it would go a long way in ensuring more work-life balance. Our drive towards achieving financial independence is not coming from wanting to quit our jobs and do our own things. It’s just to give ourselves more options later in what we want to do with our lives. Takes the financial pressure of us having to push harder at our jobs to get more pay. Though we do that to ourselves just to see how far we can go.
I know we complain about issues, problems and difficult people at our jobs to each other. But that’s a part of how we connect to each other as well, by having the feeling that we are in this together. This is why my wife has little interest in our progress towards financial independence. She wants us to be happy with what we are doing now. Not striving towards an imaginary life that we have no idea what we will be doing. If anything, we can actually do more of our own things now that flexible work arrangements are in place. During the weeks we are working from home, it’s not like we are chained to our desks like in the office. So why not make use of the opportunity that’s right in front of us?
I enjoyed this post very much. Way better than most financial posts about wanting to achieve FIRE because they hate their jobs. Most people realistically can’t achieve financial independence before 50 or even 60. So to live almost their entire life hating their jobs is really sad. Smarter to find something you enjoy doing NOW, then to dream about the distant elusive goal of financial independence.
Thanks! Yup, better to focus on building a life that is enjoyable now and that should involve being in a job that we don’t hate. I just don’t see financial independence as the solution to anything if I’m hating my life on the journey to attain it.