After six months of unemployment following redundancy, a reader is re-entering the workforce. Initially aiming for a career change, that plan didn't work out.
Instead, they spent time with kids, baking, exercising, and reading. Now, heading back to work for financial reasons feels lacklustre.
Reading LinkedIn makes them feel ill—the AI slop, the bombastic words. They wonder if people really care about that.
They've accepted a role for the money but have lost their passion. Nothing work-related feels meaningful anymore.
Rethinking Work and Meaning
Eleanor Gordon-Smith suggests the way to be a role model is to have a purposeful relationship with work.
For some, work is a source of meaning.
For others, it's a point of pride not to have fallen for the propaganda that work must be fulfilling.
Many people waver privately. They may have kids, took a career break, and returning to work feels like returning to Stepford.
Or after years of toil, they get the gold star and find it only looked valuable when they didn't have it.
It's hard to rethink our relationship to work when social lives cluster around similar attitudes. But most of us have to work.
Being a good role model doesn't mean taking one particular stance.
You do not have to force passion about a role you find boring. A good role model shows that these are stances one can accept or reject.
You can demonstrate that financial necessity leaves room for a range of relationships with work.
Maybe your considered relationship to work is purely instrumental: "I'm doing this for the money." You don't expect or mourn the absence of genuine stimulation.
You are conscientious at work, then go home.
That can restore mojo: once you stop expecting to care about the company's metrics, it stops feeling disappointing that you don't.
You can be cheerfully matter-of-fact about getting through the boring day without resenting it for not fulfilling you.
It gives you permission to save your energy for parts of life that feel meaningful.
The point is to ask whether work has to be meaningful for you.
Your answer might clarify your concrete steps at work—and what you want your kids to consider when it's their turn.
