Everyday Girl Guide to: Happiness (Occupational Assessment)

Let’s calculate your hours worked per year.  Say you only work your 40 hours each week and you get two weeks of vacation each year.  No overtime.  No missed lunches.  No second job.  You work 50 weeks at 40 hours a week, or 2000 hours.  Then you take off a few Federal holidays (companies vary, so I’ll use ten as an easy number to calculate) and lose another 80 hours.  So you spend 1920 hours a year at work.  That’s a lot of time for a place that USA Today says just 30% of people are engaged and inspired to be.

I’m pretty lucky.  I don’t hate my job.  It’s not my dream job and there are other jobs I’d prefer, but, overall, I enjoy where I’m at.  According to the UCR Wellness Center, that makes me pretty healthy:

• Do I enjoy going to work most days?  Yes.  I like who I work with and I enjoy my general job definition.  I’m not crazy about working in the middle of everyone (introvert) and it’s not my chosen sector (construction/retail sales), but the job is good.
• Do I have a manageable workload at work?  Most days.  Occasionally I become three people (covering for others) and that’s not the best.  But my general workload is quite manageable.
• Do I feel that I can talk to my boss and co-workers when problems arise?  Overall.  I suspect this is more a personality issue on my end than a problem with work.  I’m just not good at confronting problems if it sounds like I’m whining.

The assessment doesn’t take into account a sense of accomplishment at work, which I think is important, and using your talents.  My job does tend to skip those for the most part.  So I work a second “job” (largely  unpaid as yet) where I edit and write on the side.  I have more goals for that side occupation than I do for my “real” one.

Short-Term Goals (3 Months)

* Finish writing my novel AND editing it

* Finish editing for my main side project

* Finish the catalog at work

Mid-Term Goals (1 Year)

* Shop out the novel.  If no one has picked it up, self-publish by May 2015.

* Regularly edit and set-up for a professional editing business

* Learn the accounting processes at work

Long-Term Goals (5 Years +)

* Publish at least once a year (novel) and enter short-story contests at least twice a year

* Develop editing business to making money

* ??  at work

 

Like I said, most of my occupational goals are in the writing and editing fields, so it’s obvious where my heart is, but that doesn’t pay the bills, so I’ll stick with it for now and just try to keep it healthy.  How did you do?