Have to keep up my resolution, right?

I'm a proponent of capitalism, because I like to have nice things and to not have to wait in line for nine hours for a Big Mac. That being said, I think there's a fine line between embracing the American dream and working yourself into an early grave. I'm always sensitive about the pressure that my company puts on its employees to climb the proverbial ladder. There's not really a lot of room there for anyone who just wants to put their head down and do their job, because you start to be looked upon as someone who doesn't want to succeed. Here is a perfect example that made me a bit sad.

We work with a small local web development company who built our website and continues to host it and do development work. My boss loves them, and has been trying to get them various gigs with the rest of our company for the other websites. We've been shopping around for a new company-wide image hosting service and my boss arranged to have them work up a quote for custom software. The problem is that it was his idea, not theirs, so although we had several calls with them and walked through the possibilities, they were slow on the uptake and now the other brands have decided to go with a different company for the service. My boss was pretty devastated and embarrassed, having stuck his neck out repeatedly for this small company that he believes in and champions, only to have them lose the deal. Granted, I believe that if this company has a lot on its plate right now and doesn't have time to build us complicated software on a very tight timeline, they should have been more up front with us and declined the opportunity altogether.

That being said, I tried to explain to my boss that maybe they don't really want all this work that we're throwing at them. Maybe they don't have endless time or resources to devote to these big projects, and that maybe that's okay. He then said with a tone of distaste and disbelief, "You know, sometimes I think they're more interested in just sitting around and being nerdy computer geeks than actually growing as a business." That made me so sad, because it really drove home the idea that there's no room in this country for people who are satisfied with where they are in their career. I love the idea that their company just wants to be a bunch of nerds having fun and getting some work done in the process, that they just want to have enough work to sustain themselves. In this world if you're not looking toward the next big thing and desperately trying to climb higher and higher, you're suddenly a loser with no aspirations. This country really is just a bunch of workaholics that don't consider outside interests to be a legitimate focus. The irony is that kids are being pushed so hard these days to diversify their extracurricular activities, just so they can get into a big important school that will allow them to get a job where they sit at a desk their whole life and kill themselves to advance their career. And for what? I can't quite figure out if we work so hard so that we can make money to pay for the lifestyles that we want to live, or if work is really just a game, and lifestyle is just a byproduct of the excess money you earn during the game. Because really, it seems to me that the people who make enough money to live in a huge house with a plasma screen tv and drive a Lexus and send their kids to prestigious schools wouldn't actually have any time to enjoy these lives that they've worked so hard to create.

I'm not against working for a living or having responsibility, but when is enough enough? My goal is to work hard enough so that I can earn enough money to live a simple but comfortable existence. Of course, once we have kids, we'll have to earn a bit more to be comfortable, but in general I'm pretty happy with where I am right now. We have a nice house, we go on vacation once a year, we go out to dinner at least once a week, we give some to charity, I can take classes when I want...what more is really necessary? Maybe I am a communist.


Speaking of communism, I still love this commercial: