As I've mentioned here many times, my father spent most of his adult life working for the Internal Revenue Service. It was a job and here were the good things about it:
The weekly paycheck was an absolute certainty. He and his family received very good health insurance. If he didn't do anything stupid, he would receive tiny raises from time to time and be able to retire when he reached 60 years of age. And when he did retire, he would receive a modest pension until he died and if his wife survived him — which she did — she would receive that pension until she died — which she did.
I cannot tell you how important and wonderful that health plan was for her. Without it, she would probably have died 5-10 years sooner, suffered more while she was alive, and worried constantly about medical bills costing her that lovely house he'd left her.
Those were the good things. Note that none of them had to do with what he would do each day when he went to work. All that, he hated. He especially hated answering to unqualified or bossy bosses. Obviously, I am giving you his description of his workplace here. He believed many of the policies he was ordered to almost blindly enforce were foolish, pernicious and unfair. Particularly during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, my father was sent forth to wring every possible dime out of poor people (especially single parents) but to kiss the derrieres of wealthy folks and to not make too much of a fuss when a rich guy didn't want to pay what the law said he was supposed to pay.
According to my father, some of that was a matter of certain people in Washington rewarding their friends and campaign donors. And some of it was because affluent people could afford good lawyers and accountants. It was simply easier to collect from folks who couldn't…even when they didn't have the money.
The single parent thing really got to him. He did not have the power to waive or prune the tax bill of a delinquent taxpayer. At most, he could negotiate payment plans within predefined department guidelines and he needed the blessing of his superiors to go beyond those guidelines. More than once, he went to his bosses and said something like, "I'd like to forgive a part of this woman's tax bill and give her longer than usual to pay the rest. She was recently widowed. She has five children to feed and clothe and her husband left her in serious debt, above and beyond her taxes, and she has no source of income at the moment."
The reply to that kind of request was usually along the lines of, "Denied. Tell her that if she cares about those kids, she'll hurry up and find a new husband who can support them." Single male parents fared a little better but not by much.
That was one example of many reasons he hated to go to work most mornings. Even though he blamed the stress for causing his bleeding ulcer and many sleepless nights, he did the job. To men of his generation — he was born in 1910 — there was nothing more important than providing for your family both in life and death. He provided well when he was alive. There was never anything I really needed we could not afford, though I recall wishing when I got braces on my teeth, that my orthodonture had not been affordable. He left my mother a home, a pension and that all-important health insurance.
It was around 1951 when he married the one and only love of his life. And it was no coincidence that was the year he committed to the I.R.S. job for the rest of his life.
Prior to that, he had worked in a number of different jobs. He worked as a copy boy at the Hartford Courant, then as now the largest newspaper in Connecticut. He worked as the Night Clerk at Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford. He worked on and off for the I.R.S. division in Hartford. He was originally hired, in part because of his limited experience at the Courant, to work in Press Relations. That was not a bad position, he said, but then they reorganized the division and moved him, much against his will, into being a Revenue Officer. He didn't like it but he did it there and later, he signed on to do it in Los Angeles for the rest of his working days.
Notice I use the word "job" here. My father had jobs. He never had a "career," at least the way he defined it. Once I began to work steadily as a professional writer, he'd sometimes say to me, "You've got a career." He always had a big grin on his face when he said it.
Don't write to me about the real definitions of these words. Around my father, the difference was simple: A job was something you did to buy groceries and pay the mortgage. A career was something you wanted to do. Not one child in all of America has ever said, "I want to grow up to be a Revenue Officer for the Internal Revenue Service."
In '51 when he took that job in L.A., he not only abandoned any hope of ever having a career, he gave up one other important thing. He gave up the dream of ever being rich.
He would henceforth receive a steady paycheck and a pension but the amounts involved would never buy much more than the necessities of life and an occasional vacation. You could not get rich working for the I.R.S.; not even if you took bribes. His best friend at the office tried that and even if he hadn't been caught and sent to prison, he would never have owned a mansion and a yacht. My father, who was so honest he returned found wallets with all the cash intact, would never have even tried it.
Most people in my line of work (writing) never achieve anything even vaguely resembling a steady paycheck. A good many never earn half as much money as my father did at the job he hated. But in writing, there is at least the theoretical possibility of wealth. It may be unlikely but it's not utterly impossible that your next writing job will lead to you publishing a best-selling novel or writing a screenplay that will bring in millions.
That's not why most of us do it. I do it because I never came across any profession that seemed preferable or within my limited skill set. I sometimes pause to consider that fundamental difference between what I do and what my father decided to do. I've never had the job security he had but I've also never had a cap on my potential earnings. There's the trade-off.
As you might imagine, I know a lot of writers. I know writers who are unsuccessful and happy. I know writers who are unsuccessful and unhappy. I know writers who are successful and happy. And I know writers who are successful and unhappy. That last group is generally the saddest of the four.
I suspect some of the unhappy ones (successful or otherwise) would be happier if they had a job instead of a career. Not knowing what your income will be next month — or even if you'll have one — can cause stress and bleeding ulcers and sleepless nights. My father's problem was not that he had a job. It was that he had the wrong job and was never able to find a better one — and once he had the responsibility as the Bread Winner, unwilling to risk the security he'd found.
He retired at the age of 63, just in time to watch and cheer the televised Watergate hearings. There were many revelations in them about how the Nixon Administration had used the I.R.S. to reward its friends and punish its enemies and he was so, so happy to see much of that exposed even if it didn't lead to total reform. Mostly though, he was happy to be out of that damned job.
His last few years at it, he looked more like he was in his eighties than his sixties. The day he retired, he dropped the extra twenty years from his face and maybe five or ten more just out of sheer relief. He lived another 20.5 years in fairly good health. They were not free of stress as he could always find something to worry about but it was never as bad as his years at the I.R.S.
Which is not to say retirement did not have its downsides. The main one was that he was bored out of his mind.
He followed a couple of stocks he owned, more for the hobby than for the money. He rooted for the Lakers and never understood how it was possible for them to win a game if it wasn't televised and he wasn't in front of his TV yelling at the screen. He prayed for jury duty, got it a few times but discovered that his past profession disqualified him from ever actually getting on a jury. At times, I would find busy work for him, giving him errands to run for me. They usually did not turn out well as I've explained here before.
He never wished for a second he was back at his job. But he did wish he had something to do all day and really feel like he was doing something.
I turned 63 last month. Only about a week ago did this dawn on me: I am now the age my father was when he retired. It has never for a second occurred to me to do that.
I consider myself fortunate that I have a career and that every morning, I not only have something to do…I have something I want to do. That's another difference between a job and a career…and it may be the reason I don't feel 63 except sometimes around the knees.