Yesterday I was told by a reliable source that I am over-qualified for my current position at work. I had suspicions that I may be over-qualified when I the general reaction to my credentials was, "Oh, wow! Really?". Until yesterday I tried not to dwell on the idea that I may not be moving forward in my career at the given moment. I did not want to get overly confident about my background, nor did I want to admit to myself that I may have mistakenly taken a step back in my career (I would prefer to regard it as a step to the side, not a step behind), so I just assumed that the impressed and somewhat confused reactions of my coworkers was because I don't look the type to have letters behind my name. Tearing yourself down is not the recommended tactic for maintaining humility, but sometimes it works. Yesterday when one of my coworkers whispered under her breath that I am over-qualified for my current position I felt a sense of validation. Unfortunately, on the tail of validation was confusion about what to do with the fact that I am spending hours each day doing something that does not showcase my bag of tricks. I feel like a magician who has agreed to only doing basic card tricks all day. I would also like to use an analogy of a ninja, but I don't know what a very basic skill is for a ninja. So, basically, I feel like a ninja who is asked to only engage in white belt level movements.
There is a lot of press about underemployment. I am not sure if my employment counts as underemployment. I have pondered this for a bit. My salary is higher than ever - which is spectacular for this economy - but my skill-set is not being used at full capacity. It's all about the capacity level of the skill-set for me. On paper the position I am in requires my skill-set. In reality, not so much. Is this discrepancy between my skill-set and position considered underemployment? I think true underemployment would be if I took a job making less money than I have before, or if I worked in a position that required no degree whatsoever. Sometimes I think true underemployment would be exciting. It seems like a number of recent authors choose underemployment for research purposes. Maybe I should start telling myself that I am researching the affects of staying in a 6x6 cube (I estimated this measurement by stretching my body across the cube) for 8 hours a day. I'm confident that any such research would go only as far as an email forward that would circulate amongst office employees across the nation.
My thoughts about whether or not I can classify my employment as underemployment have led me to wonder if my preoccupation with living out my passion is a generational thing, an American thing, or just a Faye Black thing. I know I am not the only person who wants to spend my career doing something I really enjoy, so that scratches that it may be a Faye Black thing. I once sat next to a trial lawyer on a plane; he said his dream was to coach Little League. Somewhere along the line he got way off coarse from his passion. There are so many books about finding passion and living out your career dreams (I should know what color my parachute is by now). I'm not sure how much folks in other cultures care about finding and living out their passion. It seems that some cultures are naturally more in tune with passion; I doubt that folks in those cultures wrestle so much with following their passion. I have wondered if people decades before now have spent so much time trying to find a career. It seems that so many people were born into whatever career they chose. Was it easier to accept a career that was predestined? Did folks generations before now ever feel like they were underemployed if they were born into a career that did not match their parachute?
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