Someone Invent Me A New Career

January 27, 2025

I’ve been thinking about my career lately.

In college, I had no idea what to do. I was in an education program for a while, but it didn’t feel right to me. I ended up majoring in English and graduated with no work experience in anything other than food.

At my first full-time job - a marketing job at a small-town local business - I felt immediate dread. I imagined my life as a film strip unrolling, with each frame showing nothing but work until I die. My dread manifested as the feeling of a lump in my throat that didn’t go away until after I quit. The lump of claustrophobia.

I didn’t like my work - I wanted something I could be proud of, and that wasn’t it. My ego was not fulfilled.

But it wasn’t only that. I didn’t like not having freedom over my time. I didn’t like having to mute my real personality to fit into a professional work environment.

Today, my ego is fine. I edit educational books for kids. It’s fun, and I’m pretty good at it. It’s related to my “useless” college major, which gives me the feeling of petty revenge over the people who asked “WhAt WiLL yOu Do WiTh ThAt?” I’ve written a few books, which seems to impress some people. Overall, I’m proud of myself for getting to this point.

However, I still don’t like giving up my free time. Ditto for masking at work. My frustration with those things, as well as my meager pay, made me want to leave this role after only a few years. In 2019, I was casually looking for other opportunities.

Then the pandemic happened. I’ve been working from home full-time since March 2020. For the past five years, I’ve had more free time and fewer forced social interactions than I’ve ever had in my adult life.

I’ve had the time and space to process trauma, be more creative, fully be myself. It’s been wonderful.

My pay has increased a little, and I’ve been more willing to be satisfied with it given the major benefit that is working from home.

And now it’s going away. My work recently announced that we’re going to a hybrid model. Only a few days a week, but still. Back to work. Back to making myself presentable, packing lunches, commuting across the city. All for a solitary job that can be done anywhere in the world.

Suddenly, my work satisfaction is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. The lump of claustrophobia has not come back yet. Will it, when I’m trapped in an office?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d do if I needed to find a new job. It may happen someday, regardless of the work-from-home situation. Can I really picture myself working this job until retirement? Not sure. But I also can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Also, I could get fired. Who knows?

So what would I do? Other editing jobs are few and far between. I occasionally see editing jobs in journalism or marketing. I’d be bad at both. And they’ll probably dry up anyway as the use of AI grows.

Do I go back to school? My student loans from my undergrad are still not paid off.

Customer service? It feels like that’s what will be left when AI takes over.

Really, what I want to do is sit at my desk in my sunny home office and make stuff. Knitwear, paintings, emobroideries. Read, bake, garden. Human stuff that AI can’t do. Human stuff that no one pays for.

Such a bummer, and something I think about every day. Even though I’m at home (for now), I still dream of spending my time doing my stuff.

I suppose that’s all of us, though.