Progressive Thoughts - Day 28

Today’s song is another from the brilliant Porcupine Tree called Sentimental.

This is a rather sad song about young kids not wanting to grow old and somehow stay as young as they are but with the added feeling of having wasted their life so far.

I remember when I was a kid that I really wanted to stay young and play forever, but the overriding issue that I realised would remain was the lack of money. As far as I was concerned, with money came freedom and if I had that money I could do what I wanted.

Sadly, a thirteen year old can’t always get the money they want. My parents looked after us but we weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. Unfortunately I went to, what was considered, the best school in Walsall, and consequently a lot of kids with rich parents also attended. The big difference was that a lot of them were pampered by their parents who gave them enough money to buy all the latest gear, whereas I missed out. I could see the unfairness of life and I think that this shaped me politically and certainly changed my outlook.

What I saw was that my own parents immensely proud of what I had achieved but some of the other kids I knew were pushed by already successful parents and really struggled to cope.

I was happy with where I was going but I didn’t like the environment I found myself in, particularly when I was at the mercy of rich kids who showed off their treasures and mocked me for not having the same wealth.

My only option was to get a job to get extra cash and it was the best thing I ever did. It was a simple job, in a newsagent but I was able to buy stuff and fight back against the more privileged kids. I worked at the newsagent from thirteen to eighteen, assisting the manager with delivering newspapers, setting up all the paper rounds, collecting money, stock taking, shelf-stacking and, towards the end, selling stuff from behind the counter.

It was all menial work but I thoroughly enjoyed the job, so much so that the manager of the shop tried to persuade me to ditch the idea of university and consider a career as a manager in the chain of shops.

Sadly that wasn’t for me and I had to disappoint him.

However, what all of this taught me was that working for money was a good thing and while it interfered with my social life a little, it meant that I did have some freedom and the ability to laugh in the faces of the pompous arseholes at school who flashed their daddy’s cash around without having earned it.

The job prepared me for a real career and when I actually started work after university, I embraced it with gusto.

Regular readers will know that I am now sick of the rat race but the truth is that I am not a kid anymore and, having worked in IT for over thirty years, I want a change. Whether I achieve my new goals in the years to come is questionable but at least I am happy being the age I am and looking towards the future as an old man with some pleasure – as long as I am physically able to cope of course.

But that thirteen year old kid is still in my head and occasionally surfaces.

I love that and don't ever want that to change.

The Perfect Person

I recently saw a job advert and it made me laugh at its absurdity. The job wasn’t for anything special but reading the list of desirable performance and competency related requirements you would have thought that the position was for President of a major country. These weren’t requirements such as “Has experience of Microsoft Word” or “Has at least three years of experience managing a supermarket”.

I am talking about the personality and competency requirements or “What kind of a person are you?”

I read this list and started to score myself.

There were far more failures that successes and if I had been the interviewee I think I would have failed miserably had I been asked truthfully if I satisfied the competency requirements for the position. Furthermore, I think I would have had a huge cross through my name because I would have laughed my head off when asked the questions.

What these people are looking for is basically an alien/human hybrid – somebody like Mr Spock – although he would certainly fail when asked if he was a people person.

Worse, I don’t know anybody at all who would satisfy these requirements. I know for a fact that just about every person I have ever worked with wouldn’t.

And that’s not me being nasty to these people – they are human beings not machines. The have all the beauty and warmth that humanity has but also the deep failings.  Everybody is the same.

I suspect that the list of requirements was written by my old nemesis, Mr Motivator. Do you remember him?

He is the man who appears on the Apprentice claiming to be the best of the best of the best and who will give 250% to “get the job done".

He is the man who will work until stupid o’clock, fuelled solely by Monster Raving Looney strength coffee that is actually pure caffeine.

He is the man who will claim to be your best buddy and then brush you aside when the next opportunity to climb the corporate ladder appears.

He is the man who will buy a Porsche but never have time to drive it.

He is the man who will go on the most expensive holidays money can buy but spend the entire fortnight working and ignoring his long suffering family.

Yet there is a deep irony here, dear reader – because the truth is that not even Mr Motivator himself will pass all of these competencies. Yet he will almost certainly bullshit his way through the interview, claiming to be the best of the best of the best with excellence running through his bloodstream instead of blood.

The competency list is too long to reproduce here, dear reader, and I would hate to infringe any copyright laws. But I can give you a brief summary.

Basically they are looking for a robot with the interpersonal skills.

The person must actually thrive when the going gets tough and enjoy working every hour God sends without getting upset and, while working into those deep dark lonely hours in the night, will do so with a massive smile on his face, praising their boss at the same time and, when the smelly brown stuff hits the whirling cooling device will instantly be able to cope without making a single mistake.

The person will be your best friend and will make every effort to be your perfect temporary  spouse, because, don’t forget, you will be working so hard that you won’t have time to see your family.

The person will love their boss and the harder working the boss is the better because ultimately the person will strive to become just like their boss. 

The person will have a 200% grasp of all business practices and will be able to foresee any disasters and act before they occur. If, for some reason (perhaps being tired due to overwork) the person fails to see the looming disaster then he will be able to immediately react and fix it with a huge smile – even if it’s three o’clock in the morning and he has been working for eighteen hours fuelled only by a triple strength caffeine bomb.

The person will be so ambitious that his ultimate goal will be to rule the entire world.

The person will be the most benevolent human being in the world, caring for all the people he works with, even if they don’t meet his high standards.

And when it comes to conflict, the person will simply end a difference of opinion decisively, even if he is wrong.

The person will be totally creative and will redefine bullshit business terminology like “thinking outside the box” and “blue sky thinking”, perhaps even inventing a new term like “extra-terrestrial creativity” to be used from now on when trying to impress his so-called superiors.

The quality of the person’s decisions will be consistently brilliant. He will rarely be wrong and when he is, he will end the debate and move on.

The person will be the funniest man in the world. His jokes will be the best and the entire audience will spend most of their time laughing at him. Like this guy:

And that’s just for starters, dear reader. There’s lots more where that came from.

As I said, I would fail to get the job.

I didn’t want to stack shelves in the local supermarket anyway.

The Meaning of Life - Sector 7-G

Some people work to live; others live to work.

I am definitely in the “work to live” camp for the simple reason that to me, work is more like a punishment. I have been in my chosen career for almost thirty years and while interesting, fascinating and captivating at first, my job has become a major chore.

As I get older, I want more freedom. Some people want that freedom when they are younger which is why they delay leaping into the rat race for year or so to go travelling and explore the world. I did a little bit of travelling as a student but now I simply have an almost overwhelming desire to pack in my job and simply leave on a huge trip of exploration and self-discovery.

While I may curse my chosen career, I can’t deny that my job has encouraged me to do this.

Why?

Because my job involves travelling the world – not all of the time – but enough to give me a small taste of freedom.

In fact, I am off on my travels again this weekend, my third visit to Oman this year.

You may think that I am a hypocrite; I have a job that allows me to visit other countries and cultures. I love travelling - so why the bloody hell am I moaning?

Allow me to explain.

First of all, I work in IT – basically I spend my entire day sparring with technology. And I am bored with it.

Second, the majority of my life is spent sitting at a desk in front of a laptop surrounded by people who are equally disillusioned and frustrated and at the mercy of decisions and developments governed by Mr Motivation as he does his best to climb to the top of the corporate ladder.

Finally, while I may get the option to travel to wonderful and interesting countries, I am effectively limited to trips between the hotel and the office with very little chance to explore and only tantalising glimpses of what I could be doing if I were free of the shackles.

I am in a Catch 22 situation; I need money to fulfill my desires – and I need to work to get the money – and the work stops me from fulfilling my desires.

And this is true of most people.

The solution is simple; find a career that you enjoy, a career that makes you smile with glee when you wake up and anticipate the joy of work.  It seems to be too late for me now.

Some people may suggest that it is not too late but to those people I ask this: how can I change career when I can’t really do anything else?

I am risk averse and simply giving up what many people would consider to be a thriving, interesting and beneficial career in search of something else that will give me freedom and enjoyment, but with the same financial clout, would be absolute folly.

So I appear to be in a rut – and I can’t escape.

Outside work, I am very content and happy; when I am at work my life becomes a jumble of confusion, chaos and irritation. There are times when I get a buzz out of work but such times are becoming more infrequent.

And it would be just the same if I were to seek another job in IT in another company. At least the one I am in offers some form of sanctuary with occasional trips abroad. That’s what keeps me there.

Through my job I have visited places like Holland, the Caribbean, the United States, Canada, China, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong. I have become so enamoured with travel that I have visited many other varied and interesting places under my own volition, places such as Japan, Thailand, most of Europe and Australia.

If it weren't for my job, I would never have got together with Mrs PM in Hong Kong. I have a lot to be grateful for.

And it is now that I know what my ideal job would be; a travel writer.

There are drawbacks with that career, it has to be said.

First of all I have to be a good writer – I’m not.

Second I have to be able to fund numerous trips abroad – I can’t.

If I could see my time again, I would change my career choice and become a writer, training to actually improve the words I spill onto a page so that they make pleasurable and interesting reading instead of the inane twaddle that finds its way onto this blog.

The problem is that when you are young, you don’t know what you want; I alluded to this in a post about my schooldays last month.

Of course, another option is to work out a way to beat the system and win the lottery. The problem is that I have a logical, mathematical mind with a degree in computational and statistical science – and I know that the chances of my winning the lottery are about as close to zero as you can get.

You can’t plan a career on the off chance that you might win the lottery – despite what the lottery organisers tell you.

So, unless you know what you want to do and are passionate about doing it at an early age, when you can be trained and steered in the right direction before it’s too late, you will end up just like me, stuck in a rut in a stagnating career that provides money to live and perhaps give you a little enjoyment with a tiny taste of what your career might have been had you made the right choices as a kid.

That sounds depressing doesn’t it? And it makes me sound unhappy as well.

However, I’m not unhappy really – on the contrary – I am delighted with life.

I am also an optimist – I can’t help it – and I am still clinging onto the dream that one day circumstances might change in such a way that I can alter my vocation and wake up full of elation because I am going to work.

Anyway, I will discuss happiness in the next post to give you an insight on why I am happy despite moaning about my academic and occupational choices in life.

One day you might see a book on a shelf in your local bookstore with a picture of a grinning Plastic Mancunian called: The World Through My Eyes.

I can dream - can't I?

Don’t hold your breath though.

How about you dear reader?

Are you happy in your chosen career? 

Do you want to do something else?

Do you think it is too late for me to leave the rat race and unleash myself onto the world?

Any tips for doing just that?