De-Identifying With Your Profession

I've been questioning my sense of identity recently, and the foundation for that questioning was thrown in sharp relief this weekend. A lot of my personal self-worth is tied up in my job and my relative position within the job, and I've had some recent experiences that show me just how unhealthy that is.

Basically, if I had a good day, my ego would get puffed up with an inflated sense of self-worth. If I had a bad day (whether it was my fault or not) I'd feel bad about myself and wonder where I went wrong and what I could do to get back in the good graces of anyone who seemed anything less than 100% thrilled with me. This would seep into the rest of my life.

This last weekend drove the point home. I got a phone call that reinforced my importance to the company. A phone call a few hours later left me in despair. I have the same job today that I had on Friday, but over the weekend I went through an emotional boom and bust cycle.

The reliance on a profession is a terrible base for self-identity, because professions are so subject to the influence of others' whims. Since I'm not my own boss, the decisions my immediate bosses make about my life have an incredible effect. But those decisions are based on factors almost totally, like 98%, out of my control. If I base my self-worth on those decisions, I'm only setting myself up for disappointment.

But I think we're all more or less under that delusion. Our economic value to the world is encouraged as a form of self-identification. We get it as kids with the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and we see it in TV shows and movies when a job is the focal point of the hero's story. A lot of hobbies are essentially jobs in disguise, and a lot of creative encouragement and artist celebration is essentially just job celebration. "Look how important they are. You want to be important too, right?" or "Your current job might not fulfill you but maybe this other one over here will, so you'd better get cracking."

Which is not to say there's no joy in jobs or any kind of job stand-ins. It's the self-identification that's risky. And the sheer fact of the collective effort at this form of self-identification should give us pause. Why so much effort?

One reason I save money is to further distance myself from my profession and to emotionally insulate myself. I want to be able to walk away should someone ever truly emotionally destructive appear at my job.

But should I ever really reach some kind of financial independence where I could leave my job, I'll have to go through a final de-identification, because, despite everything, I do identify with my job and my profession. The day I leave it will be a very strange day. After all, I moved across the Atlantic ocean for it, and that fact certainly means I'm more vulnerable to major identity disruption by disturbances to my professional life.

But I've left parts of myself in the past before, and I'll have to do it again. We all will at some point.

This is the part where I should offer an alternative for healthy self-identification, but I can't. Any external base of self-identification also opens you up to disappointment and forced reappraisal. Some kind of internal mental work has to be done over time, but what shape that takes is individual.

Net Worth Update: March 2019

Our net worth increased by 1.31% to $47,396. In euros it was up 2.34% to 42,037€.

We had some expenses that were unavoidable. We had to pay our quarterly taxes in Germany, and we had to buy some new glasses for my wife. She also took a vacation to the U.S. that cost a bit of money.

The stock market was a big tease this month. In the final weeks, our portfolio experiences wild volatility. One day jumped a lot, and then the next fell a lot. Nothing to be done about it. The market feels very sensitive right now, and I wish I could say that I can resist it, but on big down days it's hard not to feel personally stung. That's especially true if the weather is bad, which it often is in Germany.

I'm noticing a trend in our early year savings rate. Usually, in the first few months of the year, there are a bunch of expenses and adjustments that eat into our ability to save. The German social security and health insurance adjust, and we have to make our new - usually - elevated tax payments.

Lastly, whatever costs for vacations and things like that tend to cluster around this time of year as we make final decisions about what we want to do with our free time in the summer.

We're going to continue having to make big spending decisions over the next few months, so I'm expecting our savings rate to be depressed for a bit. I have gotten some extra work at my job, which will help elevate my earnings, so I'm hoping that can offset some of our savings inefficiency.