TL;DR Work is as important as you make it, and if it has little importance to you recognise that and make an informed decision about how you use your time.
For some people work is their outlet in life, and it makes them feel fulfilled and content. It gives them a reason to get up in the morning, a place to socialise, and goals to achieve. I am not one of these people.
I am 35 and have spent half of my life in a anhedonic, depressed, morbid state. Since my late teens when it dawned on me that I was to become a wage slave I have not enjoyed life. There would be occasional and ephemeral glimpses of happiness; temporary relief from the feeling that life is pointless. I had some jobs when I was at and straight out of school, and hated them all. Ok, they were shit jobs, so no big deal. Then I began my career. I hated it from the very beginning. I am a proactive guy, so I began studying to leave that field of work, and midway through my study I took a year off a travelled. When I returned I finished that course and began my second career. Again, I hated it from the beginning. A month in I was looking for jobs online in my previous career.
This dislike of working has lead me to reflect on life. Is this all there is to life? Working for a living wage, missing many of the things we enjoy in life, sacrificing for ephemeral and material things that are quickly forgotten? Work is contradictory in nature: you have to go to earn money and pay for the costs of living, however in most jobs it doesn't matter if you turn up or not. Most occupations are pointless and have been created by society but aren't really needed. Any job in retail (sorry if you work in retail, but self-checkouts are becoming more common and replacing your job). The service industry is built around perceived demand and societal pressure to impress others, or what is peddled as a good time and as a way to reward yourself for going to work. Manufacturing, including food production, will be largely automated soon. The list goes on. Even doctors. Most of their patients could wait it out and get better, some might need some basic drug to get over their common ailment, leaving a small minority with conditions requiring them to be there.
So if there isn't a job that I could do that is needed, and I don't find any intrinsically rewarding, then what is the point of going to work? The answer is money, right? That's what I kept being told. But what if you reduced your cost of living? What if you were frugal with your food budget, lived in an area with lower cost housing, and reduced your consumption of everything? Then what? I started analysing what parts of my life were rewarding and got rid of them if they weren't. The list was pretty short. So if not a lot is rewarding then what is the point of them, and if there no point to most of the things we do then what is the point of life. Ultimately everyone dies, along with everyone who will remember them, and no-one can have a meaningful impact on the world. Yep, that's where I ended up. What started as a general feeling of lowness and mild depression looped back and concluded with this.
Then I decided to not go to work. I took this year off. I am doing some more study to transition my career again and merge it simple and sustainable living. I've been at home reading the course work, doing some jobs, spending time with my kids, but overall not doing much for three months. I am the happiest and most content I have been for a long time. The burden and stress of work is off my shoulders. The grind of going somewhere I hate every day has been replaced with whatever I feel like. Not working is frowned upon (go get a JOB you BUM...), but it is unhealthy to live the way we do. We go to work at jobs we hate, largely with people we would not socialise with otherwise, to pay for a house in places we cannot afford, run a car to get us to that job, and buy shit to make us think all of those worked hours were worth it. It is all driven by money, and only the top 1% get to see it. That same 1% make the decisions in society and everyone else has to sacrifice their time to live up to a standard that has been created for them but not in their interests. Why would it change when it is in the rich's interests to keep everyone working and obsessed with consumption. When you are old and reflecting on life are you going to be glad you bought that new car or TV or whatever, or glad you worked less and did the things in life that you wanted to. It is a balance, and I think that it is out of whack for most people, to the detriment of their physical and mental health.
Submitted March 09, 2018 at 05:48PM by iheartchemtrails http://ift.tt/2ts2LCo
