Job Satisfaction Advice

In Marty Nemko's latest column, the career/job advice expert lays down his "6 most important career tips", one of which is:

Don't focus on finding a so-called dream career. Focus on getting your career non-negotiables met. It's extraordinarily competitive to land a well-paying job in most so-called dream careers -- for example, law, investment banking, acting, art, sports, nonprofit work, fashion or TV. And once in, dream careers so often turn out to be disappointing. Because so many people want to be in those careers, bosses can demand absurd work hours, be unkind, etc.

Sure, if you're brilliant, driven, winsome and/or well connected, all options may be open to you, but let's say you're a mere mortal. In a less-competitive career, you're more likely to find the things that lead to true career contentment: a kind boss, nice co-workers, opportunities to keep learning, a reasonable commute and a middle-class living.

As long as the compensation is middle-class, your contentment won't be impeded by a lack of income. Study after study shows that wealth doesn't increase contentment. Yes, the extra income may enable you to buy that new suit or new car, but the happiness derived usually fades quickly. After that, you'll seek another material fix and that too will soon wear off, whereupon you'll need yet another fix. Dan Pink, author of the new book, "A Whole New Mind," calls this, "The Hedonism Treadmill." Ultimately, contentment comes mainly from love and from good work.

Bad news for those who want to follow their dream, believe in doing what they love for a living, or who want to live a middle-class lifestyle that includes owning an average-priced home in many parts of California, apparently:

[T]he California Association of Realtors' monthly affordability report for March saw San Diego County again sink to its lowest level ever. The association said the affordability rate for the county was 10 percent, which is the percentage of households earning enough money, $137,758, to buy the median-priced home [$484,000, up 10.3 percent from a year ago] with a 20 percent down payment on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. Santa Barbara and the Northern California Wine Country had the lowest affordability level of 9 percent.

County housing market decelerates San Diego Union-Tribune 5/13/05

See also 18% able to afford home Los Angeles Daily News 5/6/05 (18% of Californians earn enough to afford a median-priced house: "The median-priced California home -- with half priced above and half below -- cost $495,400, and it took a minimum annual income of $115,910 to buy it.")

What Money Can Buy

Living well is the best revenge. - Gerald Murphy

One man's take on what money can buy:

Socrates was right: ultimately, of course, possessions cannot bring sustained happiness. But houses, cars, artworks, elegant clothes can nonetheless be amiable distractions until such time as one figures out how to attain the real thing, genuine happiness. And for those not in contention ever to receive happiness via truth at the Socratic level, they offer some of the best entertainments the earth has to offer. For those of us not operating on the Socratic heights, possessions can rank high among life's pleasures....

I try to remember when I first recognized that that the world contained superior goods and that I didn't possess them. I half suspect this sad knowledge came with leather. As a kid on the playground, I did not have one of the best baseball gloves, all of which were then, and apparently still are, made by a firm called Rawlings. I had a decent glove, mind you, but not a Rawlings, and I also sensed that I probably could not persuade my father to spring for the extra money, perhaps ten dollars more, that a Rawlings glove cost...

When I went off to college, I didn't have wretched luggage, but I began to run into people who had much better luggage than I. They had tan suitcases, smooth or grainy, often monogrammed... with strong zippers and good locks, a pliant but solid feel. Such luggage hinted at the good things within: soft fabrics beautifully tailored, swell colors, stylish clothes. I have read Catcher in the Rye only once... but in my dim recollection of the book I remember a scene that had to do with luggage. I now discover that I misremembered it, thinking that Holden Caulfield, the book's hero, had poor luggage and that his cheesy roommate Stadlater had splendid luggage. But on rechecking I find J. D. Salinger gave Holden good luggage (Could he not bear to send the kid off to school without those excellent Gladstone bags?). At another prep school, an earlier roommate of Holden's envies it, hiding his own ragtag luggage under the bed and claiming to people visiting the room that Holden's bags are really his....

Mark Cross is now out of business, but I can recall passing its shop in Manhattan when I was young, taking in its unmistakable feel and smell of deep tanned leather; it was pure swank, and then seemed awfully expensive. I now regret that I never went into minor hock to buy something there (a wallet perhaps, or a kery case), but I never took the plunge....

Not much later, in Chicago, I became enamored of a cigarette lighter, a gold, pebbly-grained Dunhill that sold for $45, at a time when $45 represented close to half a week's salary. I was then a professional smoker, a two-pack-a-day man, punctuating everything in my life with a cigarette. I would take myself to Dunhill's, three or so blocks away from the office where I worked; inside, lifting the ligher, turning it over in my hand, I felt its texture, its heft. Flick it open and a spirited flame leapt before one's eyes. I must have thought about that lighter for the better part of two weeks -- thought more about it than I did about world events, my family, my work, even my brilliant future. Enough, I thought, buy the freakin' lighter and get on with your life, friend.

And so I did. The lighter gave me great pleasure. Every time I reached into my pocket to light a cigarette, I felt a miniscule but real jolt at the thought of my owning such a lighter, a small thing but the best and most elegant of its kind. I don't believe I looked down my nose at poor devils forced to use Zipps and other coarser instruments, not to speak of paper matches. But I felt a certain contentment knowing that in one department in life, the lighting of my cigarettes, I had achieved the untoppable sublime. Forgive me -- do not turn away from me as irretrievably lightweight 0 if I say that, in some inexplicable way, this game me a limited but quite genuine happiness.

After a year or so -- try to hold back your tears here -- I lost the lighter. But the pleasure its possession conferred determined me henceforth to be extravagant, in a selective way, in minor things. I could not and cannot now afford the grand things: the second home in Tuscany, the small but perfect Matisse over the fireplace, the $2,000 suit. But I have boughtt the $300 fountain pen, the occasional $70 bow tie, the cashmere jacket. A little voice within says "let 'er rip," and I do. Piker stuff to some, I realize, but the element of petty extravagance somehow lights my fire even now.

Joseph Epstein, Snobbery: The American Version (2002)

Epstein also notes in his excellent book that, for those into such things, it is quite difficult to be with-it, trendy, hip, up-to-date, fashionable, or whatever one calls it, without a certain accompanying inve$tment:

Exhibit A: My old Burberry. I owned a tan, single-breasted Burberry raincoat, in good condition. One day I put it on and discovered that it was no longer, well, quite right. I hadn't outgrown it, but suddenly this excellent coat -- not inexpensive when I bought it four or five years before -- seemed a bit tight, skimpy, slightly yet definitely inadequate. I hadn't changed -- grown no heavier, surely no taller -- but fashion had, and raincoats, including newer Burberry raincoats, had grown longer and fuller, giving the look and feel of greater amplitude. My old raincoat felt somehow off, wrong, and because of this -- you'll have to take my word on it -- uncomfortable. Not long afterward I bought another raincoat, not a Burberry this time around but an Aquascutum. Does this make me a slave to fashion? Probably. ....

The expenses -- the outlay of cash -- of being with-it are never low. Once cannot hope to achieve with-it-ry in comtemporary America on an income of less than six figures, probably the middle to high six figures. Consider real estate. Can one claim to be anywhere near with-it and live in, say Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, or Tulsa? With-it American cities today include Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, New Orleans, Key West, Santa Fe, Princeton, Jackson Hole, maybe Austin, and above all and primarily New York....

Within the with-it cities one then has to find the right neighborhoods in which to live, those SoHos, NoHos, Tri-BeCas, none of which comes cheap. Moving on to wardrobe, one has to hit this just right, too: wear that $200 Prada T-shirt, the right jeans, jacket, shoes, eyeglass frames. Probably best also not to walk around with too droopy -- that is to say, too old -- a face, for which, in cosmetic surgery, remedies, also not cheap, are at hand.

Money Not Important, but...

On today's Laura Ingraham show, the popular conservative talk radio host(-ess?) remarked that her recent breast cancer surgery served to put money in perspective for her -- it's not really that important, she said.

Ingraham, whose show regularly features "but monkey" soundbites (replete with cartoon monkey sound effects) from journalists and politicians who start to say one thing, then insert a BUT big enough to change the meaning of their thought entirely, then added:

'But you do have to have health insurance, that's for sure.'

See also:

New hope against breast cancer Kansas City Star 4/28/05 (Anti-cancer drug Herceptin effective, but typical treatment $120,000, in addition to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation)

New Cancer Drugs Are Driving Up Cost of Care Los Angeles Times 5/14/05 ("[The two drugs that Mary Vaughan takes to specifically target her breast cancer cells (unlike chemotherapy, which also targets healthy cells),] Avastin and Herceptin, would cost her nearly $8,000 a month — more than Vaughan says she can afford, even with her insurance.... The average life expectancy of [colon cancer] patients has doubled to 22 months ... but the cost of treatment has swollen 500 times to $250,000.")

Cost of Cancer On the Rise American Cancer Society 4/19/02 ("'Everybody's talking about cost controls... But the consumer needs to be sensitive to the idea that certain types of cost controls may impact the ability to keep your cancer from growing.'")

Update January 2007: Rich, young, educated women get better breast cancer care than poor, older women, BMJ, 1/27/2007: "Three US studies show that the treatment of breast cancer is influenced by a woman's education, income, and age."

Cartoon: Women

Just for fun on this Friday the 13th...

http://www.wimp.com/smooth/

(includes cartoon violence and other non-PC stuff)

Africa the Worst Contient for Mothers, Children

According to a recent Save the Children study, Africa is the worst place on Earth for mother and children.  As reported by ABC News:

Scandinavian countries sweep the top rankings for the best places to be a mother, while countries in sub-Saharan Africa dominate the bottom tier, the report said.  Out of the 10 worst countries to be a mother or child, seven are in Africa.

In Sweden, which tops the list, nearly all women are literate.  In Ethiopia, only 34 percent of women are literate.  A mother in Ethiopia is 37 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life than a mother in Sweden.

The United States ranked 11th. ...

"The Mothers' Index clearly shows that the quality of children's lives is inextricably linked to the health and education of their mothers," MacCormack added.  "In countries where mothers fare well, children fare well; in countries where mothers do poorly, children do poorly."

The low-ranking African countries identified by the study are of course poor and the Scandinavian countries that outrank them are comparatively wealthy.