I’m constantly learning about myself. I mean what is this blog if not a journey of self-discovery, right? So today, I just had to write about this silly thing they call “motivation” and how I am only just now, at the beautiful age of 23, learning what I am motivated by. Or to be more accurate what I am not motivated by.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have known what motivates me…well sort of. Things like motivation were talked about in multiple classes in various areas of study ranging from my Advanced Academic Strategies class in high school to my Organizational Behavior and Innovation courses in college. Motivation, or better yet, what motivates me to trudge forward to success is not a new topic for me.

But recently, I have felt a little…well…. unmotivated… like with anything. I am just here breathing to death, living each day because it arrived not because it was given, living because I am alive. And needless to say, this is an incredibly sad existence. So for the past few months I have embarked on a journey to find my passion motivation.

— Whoops. Hehe. Sidenote—

Passion. I hate that word. It has haunted me from the moment I graduated high school and every adult in my path insisted that working with your passion was that best thing in the entire world. *Insert annoyed face*. Great so all I have to do is find my passion and BAM! found my motivation, career, and purpose. Great….Only, it’s not great because here I am five years later unmotivated without a passion in sight. So yeah, I have scratched that word from my mind and my vocabulary. Instead, I am looking for what motivates me.

You see, passion implies that you enjoy the thing for the sake of your love for it. Essentially, it is your passion because you are passionate about it. Circular thinking, I know. With motivation, though, there is a goal. It’s a straight line. I am motivated to do ABC because I want to achieve XYZ. Motivation is logical while passion is abstract and complex. And since my brain works in an orderly fashion, I will stick with motivation for now.

— End of Sidenote —

That being said, what motivates Kyndra? A question that everyone should ask themselves at one point or another (with their own name lol). In school, my grades motivated me. Getting an A and maintaining my rank was crucial to me, sometimes a little too crucial. I worked hard because I wanted to reach my goal, not because I just loved studying.

Now let’s turn to my current state of M.I.A. motivation. It has been a long-standing belief of mine that my unmotivated feelings and overall disappointment with my current situation stem from what I do, particularly the work I do. My job. *Heavy sigh*. Give me a second to gather the energy that is required for me to breach this subject. Up until this point, I have not written about my job in any detail on this site. However, it has made an appearance in numerous journal entries and conversations with my closest friends.

Before you think I am about to condemn my job (which I’m not), I want to say that my job is nice. The work is okay, the pay is decent, and the environment is laid-back. It’s a good job, and for the most part the work is meaningful. It’s just not that meaningful to me. And I could come up with a million plus excuses for why I don’t really like the job, but in actuality there is only one reason that matters, the reason I just figured out today: motivation.

See my job is kind of different from regular jobs. There is an insane amount of ambiguity and uncertainty in the company I work for. I go in everyday wondering just what I will be working on, because I often don’t know ahead of time. in addition to that, I often finish assignments and find myself twiddling my thumbs wondering what’s next. Problem is: I don’t like being idle at work. I don’t like being paid for doing nothing. And I especially don’t like driving for hours to work to do nothing. I like when I know what I am supposed to do (before I even get to work) and always have something that needs to be done.

Moreover, pay doesn’t motivate me. Being paid for the hours I spend traveling doesn’t appeal to me. Being paid for the time I sit at my desk wondering what I should do is also not fun. I would rather have my time back than money. I want to get paid to do work that is needed, work that moves us closer to a goal.

This job doesn’t appeal to the things that motivate me. I liked school because I was always busy with something and always knew what I was supposed to be doing. I liked being busy. I was only rewarded for the work that I did and when it was done right. I liked achievement. And most of all, my time wasn’t wasted. Everything I did and was rewarded for was essential to the finished product, my knowledge and my degree. Now I am forced to trade my time for money even when the trade doesn’t feel fair to me. I am paid for the time I spend at work or doing work, even if it doesn’t feel worth my effort. I want to do work that makes me feel like it was worthy of my time. My time is way more important to me that a couple of dollars. I can always get more money, but once time is gone, it will never come to me again. My time is one of the most valuable things I have. Yet every day I go to work to spend it on assignments that I do not value, or worse, spend it on nothing.

For this reason, I have been severely dissatisfied with this phase of my life. I feel like I am wasting time. I feel like everyone around me is valuing the money I make over my very precious time. It frustrates me. And in my next blog post I’ll discuss just how emotionally straining this phase has been for me.

If I could leave you with one positive thing, it would be: If you can’t seem to find anything that you are passionate about, at least seek out the things that motivate you, the things to make you work hard even when you don’t “feel” like it. Pursue the things that you value, even if the rest of society doesn’t.

K.J. 9/6/2017