"Get a Real Job!"

For some reason, for some people, it is never enough unless you lose your shine. You’d assume that income would make a job qualify as real, but not even that. Not even when it does give you financial security (and freedom).

Some just want you to be miserable. They are not about keeping you afloat. These are often resentful beings who cannot stand to see you enjoy yourself at a job you love or moving toward it. They will try to bring you down with them. Worse if they have a nice position but are still so insecure that they're compelled to sabotage you and your efforts.

They could start tearing you down with the topic of money. Does it pay as well or more than theirs? And if it does, is it guaranteed to keep bringing as much or more in the future? However, it is the case that you don’t really have to prove anything to them. Perhaps you’re not quite there yet or you’re fine with what you make, so that’s irrelevant and besides the point. 

Yet, even if you check those boxes, they’ll keep probing. They could go for how ‘decent’ and ‘respectable’ it is. They could go for whether or not it is challenging and requires advanced skills. They could go for how much of a difference it makes in your community or in society at large. Feigning concern for your well-being, or merely bragging about their own, they might make it about how much life/work balance it allows. May even accuse you of having little or no humanity if you are intensely devoted to it. Their arguments could go from sensible-seeming to bafflingly absurd as their insistence goes on. Instead of support and solutions, you get discouragement disguised as nobility and good intentions.

But while almost no job can be all joy and perfection, and most have stressful or tedious parts, do you truly have to settle for one that eternally makes you dead inside? You must be smart and wise about your finances, of course, as this is real life and it is messed up enough as it is, but you don’t ought to restrict yourself to whatever this or that person considers a “real job”.

Granted, they might only be misguided, erroneously conditioned, overly pragmatic, and/or trying to nudge you into reaching more life milestones like you’re “supposed” to as you age. And that’s simply how they roll.

But you are the person who has to wake up every day, go through the day, and then end the day with the job that you’re in. Is that something somebody else should decide for you based on their narrow vision and short sight? With a closed mind, too? Selfishness even? If ever, then, hopefully, may it be not for very long.

It is your life. Something that you should begin early on, but are never too late to start, is looking for what fulfills you and becoming somebody who can fulfill that role. A job that inspires and motivates you to do your best (and can pay the bills while you’re at it). If not that, at least a job that you’re content with and leaves you with all you require to live a fulfilling life outside of it (with hobbies, projects, and/or being human). 

If options exist for you to choose from, you are immeasurably fortunate. Don't let that go to waste over unjustifiable limits placed on you.

Maybe there’s something you’d like to prove to yourself, then go ahead. But understand that to grow, mature, and evolve, along with living a full life, being and staying miserable isn’t exactly a requirement. What kind of world are we in, allowing or even promoting, if that is all that is available?