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I Love My Desk Job, So Please Spare Me Your Motivational BS

I choose this cubicle life.
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Bryce Duffy

I have a gripe, but I'm not sure who it's with.

I guess it's partly with motivational 'experts'. Or business coaches. And with friends who sell stuff via pyramids schemes "multi-level marketing". But it's also with social media in general, because Facebook and Instagram are perfect platforms for these types of people who love to push their intentionally well-meaning but misguided motivational BS.

Well, I have some breaking news: I choose to have a desk job because I like it. It fulfills me.

I follow a lot of life coaches and motivational types on social media because wellness is a big part of what we write about here at HuffPost Australia. More and more I have observed a lot of these kinds of people making reference to people 'following their dreams, waking up, living their lives''... all while either passively or subconsciously dissing those who work in an office or for a large company. Like we can't do anything else. Like we are stuck. Like we are all miserable. Because, heaven forbid, anyone could ever get any sort of fulfillment from sitting at a cubicle.

It's belittling. It's incorrect. And it's none of their business.

A lot of us who work 'for the man' do so because it makes us happy. We have made the decision consciously, by well-thought-out choice. We are not 'stuck' in our office jobs because we're lazy, or frightened, or don't have the capacity to use our brains to work out that there are other options.

There's an unspoken belief system in certain circles at the moment that thinks if a person does not strive to be an 'entrepreneur' then they do not have ambition. A person I do enjoy following who works for herself put it perfectly in the below post (hi, Sal!).

In my day, 'entrepreneur' was a term unsavoury characters would use to avoid disclosing the shady business they actually did. Now anyone who's ever had a business idea whacks 'entrepreneur' on their CV and calls themselves the CEO, even though they're the only employee of their business and are also the mail person. Then they silently pity their pals who work for big businesses because it's seemingly impossible to have job satisfaction unless you've got your own ABN.

Then there's the people who sell stuff via multi-level marketing. It appears, because that's all they bang on about, that they love what they do, love the flexibility of working from home, love their company who gave them a free car. But it's the types that then go on to tell everyone how they can be happy, too, if they quit their jobs and make heaps of cash from selling skincare. This attitude makes me want to show them what they can do with their 'incredible product'.

Of course, not all of them are like this. (I have to put that disclaimer before I receive hate mail via Linkedin from someone who contacted me about selling Rodan and Fields that I am yet to reply to. If I had a dollar...) And there are a lot of great life coaches who are enlightened enough to realise that it's not a rat race for most of us and that we like the corporate wheel.

So please, before you start preaching about how I can 'challenge the way I live', 'live my best life', 'escape structure', 'start living' and 'be free', please realise that some of us don't just have to travel into the city to work in a big building at a desk all day. We choose to. We don't need your advice, or even your opinion.

And just think -- if we all left the rat race, your 11 am yoga class would be full.

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