Yes, your work is important. But that's not very important.

Although I get a lot of questions as a friend from work, there are a few common themes. Usually people want something different, something more. They want more satisfaction or more money or more respect. They want to feel they are making a difference. They want to feel valued or seen or heard. They want the man in the next cabin to chew less so they have more peace. They want to have access to drinking water outside the bathroom. They are employed in a family business and are ambitious, but there is no opportunity for advancement for non-family members. They work in a very small company with no formal HR department, so there is no recourse for the many work issues that arise. They want to have more time for themselves and interests beyond how they spend their professional life. They want and want and want and worry about never getting the satisfaction they seek.

Most of the time people are worried. They have families and mortgages or rents and student loans and car loans and all the other financial obligations that consume our lives. They're in their 60s and don't know how to navigate the contemporary job market, or they're in their 20s and fear they'll never be taken seriously. They are two years away from retirement and do not have the means to change careers. They just came out of college without a solid resume and can't afford to be selective. They have worked for 30 years but have never had the chance to save for their retirement. They have a disability but do not want to disclose it to their employer for fear of reprisals. They want to bring attention to a terrible wrong, but are the breadwinner.

Most of the time people try to figure out how to navigate the constantly evolution of the workplace. As the ongoing pandemic waxes and wanes, they want to work from home forever, or they miss the din of the office and happy hours with their best work friends, or they want flexibility to both enjoy working from home. home and time spent in the office. They want to unionize for better working conditions, and they want parental leave, and they want to know that they won't be fired just because they are who they are. They want to stop living paycheck to paycheck, but are earning minimum wage and see no other way out.

We all have circumstances different, but most of us face the same harsh reality — we don't have as much control over our professional lives as we want, need and deserve. Most of the time we are stuck. We may be able to leave a terrible job or a terrible boss, but rarely is there a guarantee that the new job or new boss will be an improvement. This does not mean that work and misery are synonymous. The luckiest of us love our jobs and feel valued, respected and well compensated. This should be the rule but in many cases, alas, it is the exception.

A new year brings opportunities, a new beginning, a time for change . But most of us go back to the same old jobs where we face the same old frustrations. I love giving advice, but the real challenge of being your work friend is that few people are able to realistically make the changes that would improve their working life. There's too much at stake.

Yes, you should quit your job. Yes, you should call the bossy colleague who steals your ideas and speaks above everyone else. Yes, you should go back to graduate school. Yes, you should drastically change your career and pursue your passion. Of course, you would have to make risky and terrifying choices with no guarantee of success. But what we should do and what we can do are two different things.

And again. It's a new year. As difficult as a change in our professional lives may seem, we are not just cogs in the machine, trapped in unfortunate circumstances. In these early days of 2023, I've been thinking a lot about how who I am and what I do for a living are two very different things. I'm a writer and a teacher and an editor. I love my job, but it's still work. I am, admittedly, a workaholic. Like many people, I'm overwhelmed and over-committed. I work a lot more than I should, even though my time is limited and apparently I need to sleep. I am ambitious, yes, but ambition alone is not responsible for the intensity of my professional life. The older I get, the more I wonder why. At the end of my life, will I want to be remembered for who I was or for what I have done in life?

I am far from alone. In the United States, we have an obsession with work as a virtue - the harder we work, the closer we are to God. It's a toxic culture...