Meaningful Work in the Digital Age
Online stuff gives me a bit of a dopamine hit.
Though I get bothered a teeny bit that I don’t understand manufacturing, because in comparison, digital stuff doesn’t really feel real. It feels like if digital didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be very useful.
You need to care about what you’re doing, then you’ll do well in it, be present in it and live a happy day-to-day life. If you don’t care about it, you won’t do so well, won’t be present and will go through your whole work day anticipating the next time you can do something enjoyable. For many people, this just means going home and watching stuff or eating.
The modern world makes it hard to listen to your heart and to follow what you want to do and to only work when you’re happy to, rather than make you work almost all year if you don’t want to lose your job or suffer financially. So doing work you don’t overly enjoy and then distracting yourself with consumerism is inevitable for most people. Now you’re barely living life. Sucks.
Meanwhile other people are living a different reality:
Getting up whenever they want.
Engaging in enjoyable hobbies regularly.
Doing work they enjoy. They find it easy to be present there and feel at peace doing it. Thoughts in their mind are things like, “I feel no need to be anywhere else right now”.
They feel like who they really are is who they embody. For some this means self-expression is a part of life. Like for me my Instagram is kinda something that makes me happy, having basic captions and occasional photos and videos of stuff I actually give a shit about. The pinned posts are stuff I feel are aesthetic and cool. Yes I want people to see my Instagram, but there is a degree of “this resembles me and people seeing this, to me is a good thing. They can see who I am”. The desire to be seen.
Even me writing posts or making some posts public - that to a degree is me wanting to be seen. I want people to see some of the ideas I care about and value, the way that I think, the thoughts I have, the interests I hold, read about the experiences I’ve had and see what I like to research.
What’s the purpose of me writing this post?
I want to feel like I’m getting closer to a meaningful life while making money too. That’s why I titled this with the inclusion of “Digital Age” because I know how many ways there are to make money online. But the thing is, like I introduced, you must give a shit. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how many techniques and advice you take on, if you don’t give a fuck about it, you won’t successfully do it. Or even if you do, you still won’t be happy. All the achievements and yet you have nothing.
So start right now. Have meaning right now. Stop. Start. Enjoy.
Stop what? Fabricating desires, ways of conducting and emotions.
Start what? Feeling, then following those feelings.
Enjoy what? You’ll know.