I’m a little delayed on this post, but I liked this WSJ article enough that I still want to write about it.

With all of the economic news, reports of job losses and my own personal struggles at work it’s tough not to closely align yourself with your job. Personally, I put a lot into my work and so when it doesn’t go over as well as I would like or if I were to fail/lose my job – it hurts.

In the personal journal section of last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal there was an article by Kevin Helliker titled, “You Might as Well Face It: You’re Addicted to Success”. In the article he explains the increased level of personal identity that many feel comes from the job and how dangerous that becomes during a recession with increasing job loss numbers.

“It’s like having your entire investment in one stock, and that stock is your job…You’re going to be extramely anxous about losing that job, and depressed if you do.”

The article offers some of ways to counter this:

• Broaden your circle of friends and colleagues
• Disassociate your identity from professional status by taking pride in characteristics that can’t be stripped away, such as virtue, integreity, honesty, and generosity.
• Invest more time and pride in relationships with family, friends and community.

Life is too short to worry about work. You can work all day and night to get ahead, but at the end of the day – or rather at the end of your life – if you feel regret, what was it all for? I need to constantly remind myself that the idea is to work to live, not live to work.

I think one of the most frustrating things about my job is the amount of money I have to churn through the expense report process on a monthly basis.

In my job I’m constantly traveling to meetings, edit sessions and photo shoots (not really as glamorous as you would assume) and each time I do something like that it’s about $20-$30 bucks for parking, etc…

The expense report turnaround where I work is painfully slow and since I don’t want it to dent my monthly cash availability I use a credit card.

This is just a rant and there’s really no point other than to say I hate being forced to use my credit card – it just makes paying down the debt seem that much tougher.

Oh well…

I’m beginning to hate my job more and more each day. I’ve been at this company about three years now and I feel like I’m doing less now than when I started.

I’m definitely not being “challenged” and the pay isn’t even that great. I don’t really see any clear room for advancement. The only thing keeping me is an odd sense of loyalty to a company that hasn’t really done much to earn it and the feeling that I’d like to try something slightly outside of my current industry.

I’m young enough where I think I can pull off a switch of that kind. And it helps that my career so far lends itself to what I’m thinking of trying for. But it’s just sad when you come to a realization that the place you’re at isn’t what it used to be and you may never find something like that again.

It was a great work environment with great people – most of whom have already left.

Too bad.