I’m one of the fortunate people who gets to make a living doing something that I’m both interested in and that I do well. What people probably don’t know is that my wife and I split school duties with the kids. At 7:30 every morning, I take the kids to school, and every afternoon my wife goes an picks them up. We’re almost half way through the year now and we’ve fallen into a bit of a routine.
Part of that routine happens when I let them out of the car. I always tell them to “have a great day and learn a lot.” This morning, Timothy, who usually just responds with “you, too, Dad”, said something that I originally thought to be kind of silly but that becomes more profound the more that I think about it. He said, “Make money that’s worth it!” as he bounded from the car and toward the door of the school.
Now think about that for a moment. Let it roll around in your head for a bit.
Make money that’s worth it.
You know, we live in a world full of people who are making money and are miserable doing it. And today, as I thought more and more about what he said, I thought more and more about the things that I do and why I’m doing them.
What makes the money that I’m making worth it?
I work in Internet abuse. Well, more precisely, I work at preventing abuse. I work as the Director of ISP Relations for Informz, an e-mail marketing company. A great deal of my job involves responding to incidents where clients are doing something that results in their email not getting through. A great deal of my job also involves advocating for the rest of the Internet within the company.
Now, why get into that? Perhaps it’s because I still remember how I felt coming home to an inbox full of spam.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I can’t stop spam for everyone. But, that’s what makes what I’m doing worth it, you see. While I cannot stop it for everyone, what I can do is help to police one small corner of it. I can make sure that what my clients do isn’t abusive. So, in my own way, I’m making a difference, and getting paid for it. That’s making money that’s worth it.
But, as much as I like that, I don’t want to do this forever. No one really wants to work for someone else forever, and I have this company, Whizardries, that could always use more attention. We do some great things there, too. We started the Stitchery Mall as a favor for a friend. It hasn’t grown to the point that it’s supporting the whole family yet, but it’s growing, it’s not draining money anymore, and we’re able to make a lot of people happy. That, also, is money that’s worth it.
Usually under the aegis of Whizardries, I also do some development work for friends, former co-workers, or even myself (I still need to get around to finishing up this ColdFusion frontend to rbldnsd that I’ve been keeping to myself for two years now). And even though no money usually changes hands, the work is worth every moment that I put into it even when I don’t particularly feel like doing it. Both from the standpoint of helping others/paying forward, and building and reaffirming those relationships.
There are some things, though that probably aren’t worth it. One of those is something that I’ll look back on with pride in two or three years: finishing graduate school. I just finished the fall semester and lack just one more semester of work on my Masters of Science in Computer Information Systems. I started that degree so that I might be able to find some consulting work as an expert witness. But, that was before starting work at Informz. So, now I’ve got all of this other stuff that I’m doing in addition everything else that I do. And it takes up a lot of my time. And this semester I (Carol would probably add “finally” here) noticed that it’s making me pretty cranky, especially toward the end of a term. A lot of that is because I feel like I’ve not been really being a father to my kids. I’m working and going to school and then collapsing to watch some late night TV before starting it all again the next morning. Really, I can’t say at this point whether the money that I’ll potentially make as a result of the schooling will be enough to say that it’s worth what I’m having to put in. But, I also don’t feel that I should just quit with one semester left to finish. But, time will tell.
I don’t attach religious significance to Christmas. As a result, Christmas has always been an “ending the year” time for me, and that strikes me as a good time for reflections like this. And now you’ve seen pretty a whole day’s worth of reflection on this one subject.
If you haven’t done so yourself, let me also encourage you to take some time to ask yourself the question: Is the money I’m making worth it?
