Chase Happiness Not Money

One of my favorite blogs has a feature called FGOTW, Fly Girl of the Week, where they acknowledge women of color who are pursuing their creative aspirations. One of the gems that I garnered from reading the feature was the title of this post. Though simple, the spirit could not be more appropriate in these times.

Anyone who knows me is aware that while Lord knows I am thankful to be employed, I do not really find my work all that fulfilling. However yesterday's coporate chronicals take the cake. I had a meeting that really succeeded in murking my spirit. My job entails measuring and tracking compensation and force data for a financial company. I have no direct input into whether or not a person gets a raise or gets fired but I hear some of the insight into those decisions. In yesterday's meeting, high level managers spent hours ranking employees in the company. They gave virtual sililoquies on the achievements and accomplishments of their favorites(though they had no scripts in the form of concrete performance measures and data). I had two gutteral reactions; (1)financial services companies have sucked big time so no one's performance was outstanding last year and (2)employee ranking and compensation is unfair and arbitrary but I'll leave that insight for another post.

While the bonuses issued by my employer will not be as egregious as those being distibuted elsewhere in the financial sector, that people that earn (using the term loosely) more than twice the national income average will be granted bonuses at all given the company's performance was quite astounding. That I spend hours of my life doing something that I could absolutely care no less about is even more morally and spiritually bankrupt.

I have however gained insight into several areas of interest around the current crisis due to my career choices. Fiat based financial systems are inherently big circles of nothingness supported by people's belief in the system. Group think supports power contructs, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So I will be proselytizing on the social hierarchy of expertise, group think and other issues to keep my mind off of the mundacity that surrounds me--I have a mortgage, and while I would stop paying if I could convince about 10 people to stop paying with me, right now I'm trapped in the group think of I better pay my bills on time or be homeless. All that to say thank goodness I have a job to complain about but I'm working my way toward happiness.