So much of our lives are concentrated around our careers. How many times when you were little did someone ask you: “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” Even more interesting, how many times did the answer change?

I remember wanting to be everything from an author to a marine biologist, a teacher to a musician… a computer programmer. For those that are all ‘grown up’, are your current fields anything you wanted to be when you grew up? Is your current field even what you went to college for? And most importantly… are you happy? You know what, I’m not happy. I don’t enjoy battling traffic to get somewhere I don’t even want to go. I won’t post the company I work for now in hopes that Google doesn’t tag this post with my employers name… but if you dig through a very few number of posts, I am sure it will show up.

I don’t enjoy walking into the overly fluorescent building in the morning. Some day we’re going to find out that fluorescent lights are actually carcinogens, and we’ll all be in very deep trouble. I don’t enjoy going into my very nice and spacious cube, or sitting in my comfortable and ergonomically sound desk chair only to flip open a laptop and go into a coma for eight hours. I am not rugged Paul Bunion… but the majority of days I spend at work I don’t even see a glimpse of natural light between the hours of 9 and 5. Sure some of that may be my fault. I could take two minutes to walk outside, take a big breath and walk back in… but I’m afraid I would taste the fresh free air and make a sprint for the road forgetting about the clutter of papers, emails, and post-it notes my desk has waiting for me.

Yes, it is Monday, and yes, it is my first day back to work after a week long vacation, and yes… I am whining.

I came back to work today and checked my emails. I had 180 new messages from one week of being gone. Who needs that? I have now worked for this company for over a year. My one-year was on 7/5/2007… I have the ‘Happy Anniversary’ certificate hanging in my cube to prove it. I’m tired of it. I get tired of things quick though, it is not a good thing much of the time. I’ll play one video game for days, and then I’ll decide I can’t do it anymore and never touch it again. It drives my roommate crazy!

So here is my dilemma, on September 13th, I am going to Boston to visit my brother and his wife. That will mark the end of my second CoOp quarter… meaning that will end my required term with my current company. My original plan was to keep working part time, 20 hours a week to bring in the cash needed for my lifestyle on top of paying off my flight lessons while continuing to fly every few weeks. I now have another possible option of working at a Dell kiosk in a mall selling Dell computers, for a decent hourly wage and possible commission. I am currently making $14/hour from my current employer and would be making somewhere in the range of $8/hour at this new employer.

My commonsense tells me to suck it up and keep working with the company I am with now, much better money, and when the new CoOp quarter comes around I can find a different company that will also pay me a pretty wage. Maybe I won’t be as miserable when only here for half the time… The rest of my brain and body then screams no and tells me that I’m dying, sitting here surrounded by 6 foot barriers, white walls, white ceilings, fluorescent glows and hums.

Six foot tall cubicle walls, six feet deep in the ground… eh?

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m impressed if you made it through my whiny post. Feel free to leave a comment if you like, but this one was really for me.

Thanks for reading!

• Jason