Voices

This story was submitted by Andrew T. Mathew to the Work it! Working to Live and Living to Work collection as part of the October SEEQ sessions.

“When we came to this country, we didn’t have enough money to feed our family or even put shoes on our feet. Everything you have right now is because we sacrificed so that you could have the chance we never had.” “Make sure and sign up for the correct courses as you head into the next semester. If you don’t choose the right amount of credits you may risk losing your shot at a major, then at graduation, then finally at finding your lifelong career.” “You’re young! You’re not married and you just graduated from a university. Why don’t you just go see the world? Take your money and go spend a year working in the fields of an Italian vineyard, or go study Art from a local painter in France, or go to the country your parents were born and learn to live how they do.” Voices. Each unique but all producing the same result. Fear. Fear of absolution. The freedom of choice or fluidity drained from experience, leaving nothing but the fear of absolution.

While each of these voices is neither fully right nor wrong, they appear to be, as the weight of work lays on my shoulders. How then am I supposed to choose how to spend my life working when all of these voices seem to create major tension in my decision-making process? Giving back to my family, choosing forever, and exploring my identity all hanging in a seemingly unreachable pedestal. I try and find release through the music playing in my ears: stories about depression, decision, choice, and identity. Yet I can’t help but remember that each of these artists has either then recorded or now recorded these songs I find release in from a penthouse studio in LA. So I find myself alone again.

Work has molded from a tool used to impact communities into a force of nature bent on tearing my identity from its seams. But am I being too dramatic, I wonder? Maybe, work is just work. I should show up to work, clock out at 5 and then spend the remainder of the evening with the ones I love. I’ve worked terrible internships, yet even after the worst days of not being valued, an evening with family turned my day from horror into joy.

But I still feel this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me there is more to the equation than just giving in by clocking in. As I look at my current situation I see the effects of these different voices on my process, on my soul. I find myself again, looking for a new job, for work.

Yet in all of that, I’m happy. I’m truly happy, for once, with the work I’m doing. I feel like I’m making an impact, I like the people I work with, and even though I’m not the best at it, I’m learning. So part of me says that life and work just seem to always figure itself out. Maybe we don’t play the role we thought we did. In fact, I didn’t even apply or interview for the jobs I have now, I just showed up.

Yet, I can’t help but still hold on to the hope that maybe there is still something left to be unlocked here. That there is still some lock hidden away in my heart, head, or in the world that I’m still yet to find the key for. Regardless, I have come to better understand work through better understanding myself. The times I’ve felt most confident with my identity and finding it, I’ve been able to truly examine my life situations. Maybe, just maybe, work is more of a process of finding out how to turn the outside voices off. Maybe my search for work is more about learning how to replace those voices with my own.

So I will choose then, for the first time on my own, to spend this next stage of my life seeking out not work in the way I’ve come to define it, but rather seeking out my own voice.