Better Living Through Capitalism

Damn homo liberals!I’ve got two posts up on SFist this week, one about an iTunes promotion and the other advertising the WonderCon. Which means that in just a few short months I’ve gone from any pretense of thoughtful opinion and commentary on tech stories, to being a shameless corporate shill.

As I find myself working for big corporations, and more and more often defending other big corporations online, I have to live in constant fear that I’m turning Republican. At the moment, I believe I’m still safe.

My friend and ex-college roommate John found this website recently and commented he’d read the archives, which prompted me to read the archives, where I discovered a couple of things:

  1. I can be a really whiny little bitch.
  2. I’ve been remarkably lucky to get the jobs I’ve gotten.
  3. My last job was really unhealthy.

At the time, I wrote it off as sacrifices you have to make for the sake of working for a big corporation that gets the A-list titles the proper amount of exposure, and it’s the price you pay for working for something that you feel passionately invested in. Well, I’m working for another big multinational entertainment consortium at the moment, and I’m on a project that I’m emotionally invested in, and I’m making enough money to live comfortably. And it’s like night and day.

There are still hassles and frustrations and overtime, and the bonus of working from home has the concession of having no solid structure, no benefits, and no social network. This is about as close to a “perfect” job as I’m ever going to get, and it’s still not perfect because there’s no such thing. But it’s a billion times better, because there’s none of the debilitating stress episodes. Where you’re sitting in the dark at four in the morning and the walls are caving in and you’re wondering what it all means. Or, as the HR department liked to call it, “work/life balance.”

I haven’t really hit on any big epiphany yet, other than I really think it’s possible to have a job that’s rewarding and doesn’t totally consume your life. If I knew what it was, exactly, then I’d be able to write self-help books and leave this weblog bullshit to the amateurs.