Are You Building a Career or Making a Living?

The definition of the word ‘career’ today typically relates to the main stream of remunerative work we do through the course of our lives. If you think about the concept of career in terms of the history of mankind, its a strange little thing that has only been around for a couple of hundred years. It is an aberration. It only arrived with the organization of large corporations.

Given the ongoing development and advances in telecommunications and the consequent decentralization of global workforces there is no good way to tell just how much longer the idea will persist. In all honesty, if you really think about it, it is evident that the only thing a ‘career’ denotes is a person’s meandering through a series of skills and opportunities that another person set forth for them; a sort of dictated notion of where to fit in and what a person’s value is.

It has always perked my curiosity and interest that the word ‘care’ is ensconced within the term career. It seems to imply that these major corporations have taken it upon themselves to care for us throughout our professional lives. They essentially offer to be our babysitters, preventing us from making important decisions or progressing much and determining our own value. It gets at their unwillingness to let us take command of our own development and measure our very own worth. Hence, ‘careers’ enter the picture to help us find our way, only allowing us to proceed when we are deemed to be worthwhile (and only if they’ve got the money to afford it and someone to step in for the position we’ve held up till now).

In light of all this, it is really not that surprising to hear so many people complain about their jobs (or careers). It’s an endless process of hard work that is all shaped and determined by another person higher up, based on their criteria and principles…all of it aimed at securing their future rather than one’s own. Yet despite all that all of us continue using the word ‘career’ as though it represented the pinnacle of human achievement.

I know as a child, when my parents went out for dinner, being baby sat definitely was not the highlight of my week. Living my life through paying with my brothers and friends was. Why do we change as adults? Why do we start measuring our success and life through someone else’s eyes? Why do we let them direct our paths? Why have careers become so important?

Switch over to another phrase, ‘making a living,’ and now you are finally speaking a language I can appreciate. In case you didn’t notice, the focus here is simply on life itself, this is something which ‘careerists’ tend to forget in my opinion. Our purpose on this planet is to live, not to have babysitters. This life is for us to learn on our own two feet, at our own pace: to experience, love, and grow. It’s a life in which we need to set our very own value, and not have someone do that for us. All of which is the essence of making a living, it’s about making life itself.

Which is why I have found the idea of working in internet marketing so appealing over time: though you surely need to learn a lot and acquire skills you lacked previously so as to be able to write successful, money-earning sites that are SEO-savvy, that’s not that hard and can really be done by anyone.

The principal thing I admire and love about making a living online, however, is that the only viable path for an online business is one which arouses genuine passion in you. The reason for that is simple: any topic out there has its own language, to one degree or another; only through being passionate about the topic will you understand the language. And only once you’ve understood that language that you will finally be able to reach those who share the same passion and be able to sell them the true value you are offering. Like it or not, that is the way of the internet.

All of which is what makes this industry so wonderful: success can only be found after one finds a passion. And it is in that sense that I consider myself to be somebody making a living, not pursuing a career. My work is my passion–even including writing this article. I no longer have the early morning blues, that contempt for having to get up in the morning to go into the office, instead I leap from the bed with energy for the new day. No more of the worrying about ‘making it’ in the typical rat race. I measure my own success based on my own creations, how they enable me to support myself, and the lifestyle (rich in family time) I get to live.

In light of all this, I could never see myself working in a different field.