Last night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because I took a nap earlier in the day or because I drank too much caffeine, my brain was simply too actively thinking to the point of where it was compromising my ability to fall asleep. The selling of my house and the subsequent reconfiguration of life was undoubtedly a substantial change, but with the change has come some new lines of thinking as the result of the murky waters of what new paths lie ahead of me in the course of my life.
The one very particular thing that my brain was wrestling with throughout the evening was, something that I haven’t really given that much thought to in the past, other than cursory ideas that never were taken very seriously, resulting myself to fall back into my content little bubble of routine. I’m talking about my career, as a graphic designer. Lately, I feel like I’ve been tapping at the ceiling of my current career path, and unless I want to resign myself to staying dormant and padding years doing what I do, I can do that, but then the result of such a choice leads to a lot of fairly time-consuming and not necessarily very lofty end games, that I’d question if I’d be content with when I’m well into my 40s and 50s.
It’s not so much the career I’ve been feeling some discontent with, it’s also the money that comes along with what I do. Honestly, I’ve never really been that driven by money; I know what I like to make in order to live comfortably within my means, but I’m also not blind to the working world around me, and that there are plenty of other designers with specializations more attuned to the current creative market, that make noticeably more money than I do, albeit with an equally proportionate higher risk of job security than I have. But there are plenty of those in the creative marketplace that make more money than I do, and up until recently, I’ve been fine with that.
But I think I’ve been content over the last 13 years living in a household where the combined income was one that was pretty well into the upper-middle class echelon, and now that I’m basically on my own now, such numbers don’t look nearly as promising or conveying potential for loan repayment when it comes to planning for the future, like another house. Suddenly, I’m feeling like my earning capabilities aren’t just inadequate, but not necessarily conducive to saving at a rate that would make the future not feel like too far away.
Continue reading “The adaptation period, I suppose” →
