Don't We All Hate Our Jobs?

So what is it that finally makes us say, enough's enough! I wonder about this because I seem to have a particular facility at saying that. Some (nice people) have called it courage, but when I look around at others who have scaled all the difficulties and reached that level of acceptable comfort, I see that they got there only by gritting their teeth, paying their dues...in short, not saying enough's enough when their work or (very likely) their colleagues are driving them bananas.

It occurred to me what a strange and cruel accident it is that we spend so much of our days - in my case, all but an hour or so, because of commute and classes - around these accidental people who mean nothing to us, and more often than not, whom we can't stand. I'm talking about colleagues and coworkers. Human socializing is so odd and irregular that we find we get along - even the most amiable of us, I believe - with a select few kindred spirits. The rest of the people we merely tolerate. But this becomes a different challenge when we have to collaborate with them, and their personalities or idiosyncrasies or whatever have an appreciable impact on our own work - which, presumably, is very meaningful to us, since we spend more time getting it done, at the exclusion of time spent with loved ones.

People have commented about how I have a visible chip on my shoulder - a comment I don't quite understand, since I think I take great pains to hide it, but which I've come to accept as more or less true. I'm wondering how my chip can be any different from the garden variety chip that we all must have: does it manifest differently, and does it rub other people any worse? If yes (and yes), I have a problem. I've noted before how I have this knack for, or at least a pattern of, burning bridges. Working situations somehow get sullied for me because too much of my personality comes out to quickly, and too unapologetically. I have a theory that I let it happen because for me personally, these clashes of personality mean very little; they are small incidents that shouldn't have any long-standing consequences on future tangos. For example, I could hate something that a person does (like going camping and hiking all week, while others are waiting on him to greenlight their projects), without necessarily hating the person - at least for a long time, until these small incidents accumulate and marinate and solidify into a personal dislike (e.g. VJ). Or I might blow off a certain convention (often sartorial) because I think it's bullshit, and not care if I offend someone because I believe that it's no big deal; and if someone does take the time to care deeply about stuff that's none of their business, I sort of shrug it off and say it takes all kinds of people to make a world.

I'm wondering if this is a flawed approach. Certainly it has resulted in my having to say "Fuck you" more often than I'd like, and common sense dictates that it's impossible that everyone will share my evaluation of what constitutes a forgettable "small incident." Maybe other people take my impersonal dislikes personally. Maybe that's why I'm frequently surprised to look back and find the bridge-burn damage to be worse than I would have anticipated.

On the other hand, my "que sera sera" philosophy has brought some benefits. I have a relatively easy relationship with my bosses here because my time in academia has taught me (perhaps in exaggerated relief) that there is virtually no professional relationship without the personal one. And that's how people act, even if it's not how professionals act: sometimes you mess up, get angry, but eventually you forget and go back to being normal.