I’ve walked through the office for the last few days with a different perspective. I started my first job when I was 14 and nine months (the moment many cash-strapped teenagers start in Australia because it’s first chance we get) and almost 17 years later I find I’ve worked a mix of challenging, exciting and just plain boring days. Just like anyone else of course. It started in a pizza shop, I worked my way through supermarket and telemarketing jobs while attempting to study and found my way to staring at a computer screen for most of the last 12 years. And here I am still staring at the screen, mac of course, I’m only on a PC when forced.
I’m sure I’ve reached this moment a hundred times before but this time it is more significant, more poignant. I look around me everyday and see a room of people staring at their screens, most of us with earphones in, either to avoid human contact or at least allow a familiar beat to liven our days. We are all working on real tasks, real opportunities and challenges but somehow when you stand in the middle of it, the idea seems pointless. We see the screens for the best part of the day, the time the sometimes sun appears, is spent in these rooms, with these computers, with our emails and database programs. Where is our life here? I am torn between a mind that finds it exhilarating to complete the task list, strive for perfection and growth in my job, reach new levels, beat new targets and become something more and the world outside of it all. It’s not a place where we don’t work, it’s just I wonder if it should look like this. A part of me craves to throw it all away but the desire is futile because I need it to have the good things... and part of me wants it too.
Now I am sitting in a café, I have a coffee, some sparkling water and a cigarette. Why a cigarette? Because it seems to fit the feeling of this moment – possibly it represents a life trapped behind a computer most days that wants to sit on a porch, drink red wine, smoke cigarettes and breathe in real air – yes, I see the juxtaposition.
I’m stuck on how to move forward but I like the feeling. In it’s strangeness it is liberating. It means nothing is really needed, because nothing is completely wanted. Nothing that is but the people I love and know I will come to love in my lifetime.
The picture...it's my friend Lorren hiding under her desk from too much work to do. :)
jejeje, I already put a comment but it doesn´t work and now to be honest I don´t really remember what I was saying, jejeje. ah, yes....
ReplyDeleteEverybody knows that people who stares at computers don´t really work, jejeje. something like that.
Ah but alas, work is a necessary evil. For sure there are jobs out there that don't involve sitting at a desk day in, day out - but they too must come with their own drawbacks and pitfalls otherwise we'd all be doing them wouldn't we? As you say, there are too many other aspects of our lifestyles that would be too difficult to give up. Of course I am generalising here, but finding a job that is away from an office, is rewarding every day and allows you to sustain a life that you have become used to is a pretty rare thing (adding the requirement for the employment to also guarantee your citizenship and we're looking at some pretty long odds now).
ReplyDeleteI think one of the conclusions you came to was a pertinent one. Take comfort in the better things in your life - spend time with your friends and loved ones, and that is probably the key to your overall happiness. Your job may not be the best thing in your life - but it's not the worst job and it allows you to have the other things you want.
Or not. I dunno.