I’m not a conspiracy theorist, in fact whenever I’m feeling low I’ve found that listening to even a few minutes of David Icke can make me laugh so hard all my cares are forgotten, however… I think I have discovered a MASSIVE conspiracy which is affecting many, many people.
It’s called a “JOB”… You’ll have read recently that I got myself a “job” – it’s an office job involving smart shoes and moderate amounts of stress but no real power and the lowest salary possible. But what I didn’t realise when I first started turning up at 9 o’clock every day is that having a job completely RUINS YOUR LIFE!
I now get up at 6 o’clock every morning. I make huge amounts of coffee in order to get my eyes to open, tidy up, bake the bread that’s been rising overnight and then have a bath (no shower at the moment). At 7 I get the kids up, which isn’t easy as they understandably don’t want to get out of bed. They have breakfast, I get dressed and make packed lunches and flap around generally trying to put on eyeliner and feeling terrible. We get out of the house at 8, drop-off at school and then I drive to work.
After 8 hours working (I’m a web-monkey) I get in the car and drive to the school where the kids have been in the after-school club. We get home at around 6.10. I’m exhausted, crabby, pasty-faced and barely alive. I drink some wine because if you can’t have a bloody glass of wine after work then what’s the world coming to??!! Eat, drink some more wine, put the kids to bed and then at 9 o’clock I’m completely finished and can’t go on another second.
I fall into bed with a cup of tea, Ian finds something funny for us to watch on the internet (currently Peep Show, Nathan Barley, the IT Crowd) and by 10pm I am fast asleep.
At the weekend I am so knackered all I can do is have long hot baths and sit at the kitchen table with a pot of tea playing scrabble.
I can’t even imagine how I ever found the energy to dig in the garden, make jams and pickles, clean the house, do DIY, run a B&B? My life has completely finished, from one week to the next I manage to achieve NOTHING except the prolongation of a wage-packet which isn’t enough to live on yet a little too much to give up.
There must be millions and millions of people out there like this, wage-slaves in every sense of the word, and yet where’s the national outcry about the wasted lives, the kids who’s parents spend all weekend hiding under the duvet, all the dreams and hopes that can never be fulfilled because of this socially-imposed norm of going-to-work?
I think it’s time we told the world about this heartless, gratuitous cruelty to adults and put a stop to jobs!
April said
Amen x 1000000
And I only work 3 days a week
redforkhippie said
It gets better. Really it does. This time a year ago, I was “working” — and I use the term loosely — at a very easy editing gig that involved roughly eight hours of actual work and 32 hours of surfing YouTube, taking long lunches, and playing complicated riddle games online every week. Then my section of the paper was eliminated, and I found myself spending 40 hours a week at a secretarial job, plus another 20 hours a week of manning the grill and washing dishes at a little restaurant 50 miles away … none of which even remotely prepared me for what was to come. I started teaching full-time in late September, and I suddenly remembered how incredibly exhausting it is to be responsible for 140 busy teenagers. (I hadn’t taught in over a decade.) It took a few months to find the rhythm and get my energy back.
Give yourself a little time. It gets easier; you just have to settle into it.
Jon in France said
I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve not had a “proper” job since 2002 – appearantly all the work I do with the gites doesn’t count, despite that being 90% of our income – and shall continue to try to avoid one.
Nicky nearly in Galicia said
I agree with you completely. If you get the time please please please read this book by Tom Hodgkinson, its lifechanging but you prob know most of it already.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-be-Free-Tom-Hodgkinson/dp/0141022027/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235999544&sr=8-1
kristen said
I am convinced that full-time jobs should be prohibited. It changes free people into slaves, just like you said (and you live in France – it could be worse).
My first act of freedom, in 2001, was to not replace my TV after a burglary. The year after that, I started working part-time (90%), and have reduced my working time each year since. I am now working only three days a week, and I find it a very balanced life : 3 days is enough for me to remain an expert at what I do. And this leaves four days for whatever I want to do that saves me the money I do not want to have to earn.