What was I seeking by working?

Is working about earning money?
Is it about finding fulfillment?
Is it about contributing to someone?
Or is it about growing as a person?

Even though I have worked for a long time, I had never considered the priority of those things.

At my previous job, my boss said to me,

"I am pushing management to raise your salary."

That is what they said.

I was grateful for that.

However, it was not just my salary that I really wanted them to change.

I wanted them to do something about the busyness and the inefficiency of the work.

I wanted to expand the scope of my work.

And above all,

I wanted to gain experience and grow.

But was that not putting my own convenience ahead of contributing to the company or the clients?

While I said I wanted to be useful to someone,

perhaps I was actuallythinking about "what I could gain from this work"first.

Wanting to grow is not a bad thing.

However, there is an order to work.

First, you provide value to someone, and as a result, experience, growth, and rewards come back to you.

Salary, fulfillment, stability, growth, social standing.

Working is not so simple that you can choose just one of these.

I am now, belatedly, relearning "what it means to work."

And that question was also connected to the meaning of my work as a career consultant.