I'm currently going through a period of similar introspection and want to share my thoughts. My introspection has been brought on not by dissatisfaction with my job; quite the opposite. I am an IT consultant for a large firm. I get paid very well and the work is challenging. My coworkers are excellent--competent, friendly--and even my management is essentially made up of good people. I'm 26 and have achieved what many try to achieve in the IT field for their entire careers.
I've become too satisfied with my job. It took me a while to realize it, but while reading Kafka recently I came across the concept that struggle is what gives meaning to our lives (obviously nothing new but poignant for me at the time). I realized that I could look back on the past 2 years of my life and remember almost nothing but meaningless crap. In the end, it's not your job satisfaction that makes your life meaningful, it's the struggle to achieve something that you care about.
Most people delude themselves that their career-related struggle is to reach a certain point in their career where they can be happy. But I'm telling you, I'm at that level, and once you get there "coasting" is no fun. It's meaningless, and it leads to boredom and depression.
So what am I doing about it? I'm rediscovering what I care about. I set out on a mission about 6 months ago to figure out what I believed in and what I could do to help. I've been reading non-stop, I've been networking with useful people and I've been trying to figure out how I could fashion a career that would allow me to be passionate about the end results, rather than "job satisfaction". Most likely I'm going to go into project management with a green developer, building environmentally conscious homes for middle-income families. After a while there, I may develop software for local artisans and farmers to help them bring products to market.
A critical point--you don't need as much money as you think you do. Two reasonable incomes go a long way in many locations and devoting your time to something you love will reap much larger rewards than the monetary ones you left behind.
I recently decided came to the exact same conclusion as the article supposes some people will--Vista was not getting on my computer and I didn't want to continue patching XP for the next 5 years. I have almost no Unix experience and the command prompt is something that I have never been comfortable with. But I had a lot of faith in The Community since I'm a regular/. reader and I figured that I could learn.
I use my computer for a couple of things:
Most importantly, media server, synchronizer of iPods and center to my home entertainment center.
Email, browsing, messaging.
Office documents.
Warcraft III.
Setting up Linux was difficult, I won't lie. I went with Fedora 6 after not really finding any distro review sites that I could understand what they were talking about. I don't "blame" the setup difficulty on anything--I expected it to be difficult for me. Configuring a dual-boot system took me 4-6 hours to figure out, setting up the right partitions (making sure nothing on my windows partitions got erased) took me wayy too long (screwed it up twice). Figuring out how to move from firefox 1.5 to firefox 2.0 was surprisingly difficult. I don't really understand why that particular thing isn't part of the yum update process but that's just an outsider's perspective. The other thing that was surprisingly hard was the browser plugins--I have an x64 chip and none of the plugins have x64 versions that I could find. So I had to install some firefox extension that creates cross-compatibility.
I haven't figured out Samba yet--this seems like it should be easy but so far it's not. Honestly, I'm inclined to believe that this is the fault of Windows Networking. Regardless, it's hard. As for Warcraft III, one day I'll set it up to run under Wine, but for now I'm happy dual-booting. It encourages me to play much less, which is definitely a very good thing.
Everything else has been pretty reasonable. It hasn't been easy, but it was more or less what I would expect moving from one platform that I've been using for 8 years to a totally new one. After 2 months, I'm now up and running and can use my computer for basically everything I want. I love the feeling of security I have in the system. File security is so easy and I love the fact that everyone doesn't log in as administrator. And I'm no longer terrified of viruses.
I'm very glad I invested the time and would encourage others in my position to do the same. Just keep at it--the answer is always there on a message board somewhere:)
The question directed at usage of www.allofmp3.com was, I believe, attempting to get at the specific legality of that site. It was answered in a more general sense, which is fine, but still leaves me wanting to know: Is there any legal risk associated with using their service at the moment? Perhaps 6 months ago I read that a Russian court had ruled that it was legal under Russian law...
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm currently going through a period of similar introspection and want to share my thoughts. My introspection has been brought on not by dissatisfaction with my job; quite the opposite. I am an IT consultant for a large firm. I get paid very well and the work is challenging. My coworkers are excellent--competent, friendly--and even my management is essentially made up of good people. I'm 26 and have achieved what many try to achieve in the IT field for their entire careers.
I've become too satisfied with my job. It took me a while to realize it, but while reading Kafka recently I came across the concept that struggle is what gives meaning to our lives (obviously nothing new but poignant for me at the time). I realized that I could look back on the past 2 years of my life and remember almost nothing but meaningless crap. In the end, it's not your job satisfaction that makes your life meaningful, it's the struggle to achieve something that you care about.
Most people delude themselves that their career-related struggle is to reach a certain point in their career where they can be happy. But I'm telling you, I'm at that level, and once you get there "coasting" is no fun. It's meaningless, and it leads to boredom and depression.
So what am I doing about it? I'm rediscovering what I care about. I set out on a mission about 6 months ago to figure out what I believed in and what I could do to help. I've been reading non-stop, I've been networking with useful people and I've been trying to figure out how I could fashion a career that would allow me to be passionate about the end results, rather than "job satisfaction". Most likely I'm going to go into project management with a green developer, building environmentally conscious homes for middle-income families. After a while there, I may develop software for local artisans and farmers to help them bring products to market.
A critical point--you don't need as much money as you think you do. Two reasonable incomes go a long way in many locations and devoting your time to something you love will reap much larger rewards than the monetary ones you left behind.
I recently decided came to the exact same conclusion as the article supposes some people will--Vista was not getting on my computer and I didn't want to continue patching XP for the next 5 years. I have almost no Unix experience and the command prompt is something that I have never been comfortable with. But I had a lot of faith in The Community since I'm a regular /. reader and I figured that I could learn.
I use my computer for a couple of things:
Setting up Linux was difficult, I won't lie. I went with Fedora 6 after not really finding any distro review sites that I could understand what they were talking about. I don't "blame" the setup difficulty on anything--I expected it to be difficult for me. Configuring a dual-boot system took me 4-6 hours to figure out, setting up the right partitions (making sure nothing on my windows partitions got erased) took me wayy too long (screwed it up twice). Figuring out how to move from firefox 1.5 to firefox 2.0 was surprisingly difficult. I don't really understand why that particular thing isn't part of the yum update process but that's just an outsider's perspective. The other thing that was surprisingly hard was the browser plugins--I have an x64 chip and none of the plugins have x64 versions that I could find. So I had to install some firefox extension that creates cross-compatibility.
I haven't figured out Samba yet--this seems like it should be easy but so far it's not. Honestly, I'm inclined to believe that this is the fault of Windows Networking. Regardless, it's hard. As for Warcraft III, one day I'll set it up to run under Wine, but for now I'm happy dual-booting. It encourages me to play much less, which is definitely a very good thing.
Everything else has been pretty reasonable. It hasn't been easy, but it was more or less what I would expect moving from one platform that I've been using for 8 years to a totally new one. After 2 months, I'm now up and running and can use my computer for basically everything I want. I love the feeling of security I have in the system. File security is so easy and I love the fact that everyone doesn't log in as administrator. And I'm no longer terrified of viruses.
I'm very glad I invested the time and would encourage others in my position to do the same. Just keep at it--the answer is always there on a message board somewhere :)
The question directed at usage of www.allofmp3.com was, I believe, attempting to get at the specific legality of that site. It was answered in a more general sense, which is fine, but still leaves me wanting to know: Is there any legal risk associated with using their service at the moment? Perhaps 6 months ago I read that a Russian court had ruled that it was legal under Russian law... Thanks for any help anyone can provide.