Skilled and unskilled.
I've discovered that I feel guilty because I don't have a real job.
That doesn't make any sense. I have responsibilities, outcomes, paydays, reviews, co-workers, projects...all of the things that make a job.
But I've realized recently that I don't FEEL like I have a real job.
Now I think I know why.
I am white-collar. Decidedly. But I don't have any white-collar references. All of my frame of reference is blue-collar, and bitter blue-collar at that. I grew up in a place where you don't trust men in ties. They have the money, and they don't want you to have it. They don't get their hands dirty. They don't work for their money, which makes their having it all the worse. They are pencil-pushers, or schmoozers. They won't be useful after the nuclear apocalypse. They won't be able to weld things, or build things, or fix things...or anything.
But that's me, white-collar. I have a degree, but feel as though I have no skills. Not the skills that the paradigm in my mind finds valuable. I'm soft.
So, I rail against my white-collar job. I sabotage myself. People like me (paradigm-me, blue-collar me) don't have to dress up, so I don't when I should. People like me don't have to shave our ratty beards because we're REAL, not like those pretty softies in glass offices. People like me, people like me, people like me...
It's weird to realize that you are not who you feel you are. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with what I am, intellectually speaking--I just don't quite know how to be that. I'm not inauthentic, I'm just out of my own league.
So here I am, white-collar. Weird.
You're a "stradler." I used to use this book in class...I found it interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-Dreams/dp/0471714399/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287484995&sr=1-2-fkmr1
Well, whatever you are, we like you.
I will read that!
ReplyDeletePerhaps you just ENJOY your job and therefore, it does not feel like work. When I have great days I don't consider my job to be a real job either, and then there are crappy days when I FEEL like I'm working.
ReplyDeleteI think that's true, Suz. But it's also very true that the paradigm of most of my formation measured "work" in a very specific way; a way that my environment now doesn't mesh with. I recognize that these are only conflicting definitions. It's just that they are inconveniently conflicting in my head. :)
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