Sometimes, I've often looked at a mushroom and thought a little too hard about how it came to be sitting on my chopping board. For the moment, we'll overlook why I'd bother thinking about mushrooms instead of simply eating them. What I mean by this, is that they must have been cut by someone from wherever mushrooms grow, and then packaged. It's this person whom I think about. I mean, most people will tell you (while they're still young enough not to be dragged into that realm of scepticism and mis-trust that we call "being grown up") they want to be a fireman/doctor/lawyer/policeman. One of my friends actually wanted to be a bus. No, not a bus driver, or anyone who works on or in a bus. I mean, she wanted to actually be a bus. I know, right? Anyway, that aside, the person who cut my mushroom must've had these dreams about what they'll do as a dream job when they were younger. And now they're cutting mushrooms. What happened to the dream?
Now, that's not a way of saying that it's inferior being a mushroom cutter at all. I mean, it's not going to walk to my Bolognese, so their job is valued greatly. However, I'm willing to bet that they didn't want to do this when they were younger. Why do people end up doing any old job? Well, let's look. What about money? Well we all like money. Even if we're not the sort to buy something electronic because it's name is proceeded by the letter "i", having money means that paying the bills is less of a worry. You can even give it to charity. However no amount of iPhones, iPads, iTVs, iBeds or iTrousers will convince me to spend more than 60 hours a week doing a high-pressure job that I'd loathe. Why would you spend more than 150,000 hours from my whole life doing something you massively dislike? I don't care how much money a foot-doctor makes, the income difference more than makes up for the fact that I'm *not* looking at feet all day. The days of doing a job for no reason other than your dear ol' Dad did it (and his Dad before him etc) are mostly gone, and huge advances in mobility around the country (and the world, for that matter) means that you're not restricted to whatever work the local steel factory can offer.
So why are people still doing jobs that they hate, for reasons even they don't understand?
I think I know. It's fear! Fear of the unknown, fear of not getting a regular payslip, fear of it all going spectacularly belly up and you have to do the walk of shame back to your old boss, to ask if you can continue picking mushrooms. Now, these are all understandable, but at the end of the day, not good enough really. I'll explain why with a cold, hard fact: You're not important. That's not to say that you don't mean anything to anyone, oh no. What I mean by that, is that whatever little action you do at any given point in your life, whether it's refuse to let someone out of a side turning or start a nuclear war, the world will continue hurtling through space. The universe is so unfathomably vast that we could literally blow up the whole world, and the solar system, and most of the stars near us, and the universe wouldn't even notice that anything was amiss. It would be as significant as bending a blade of grass in Lincolnshire is to the Middle East peace process. So why are you scared? What have you got to lose? Nothing, that's what. We're totally irrelevant to the grand scheme of the universe, and we're only around for a few decades. So why waste it doing something totally mind-numbing? It's not like your stab at true employment happiness is going to damage the fabric of time and space now is it?
As you may have spotted (I hope), I write these blogs as part of my job. As (again, I really hope) you can tell, I genuinely take immense pleasure in sitting down and clicking away at the keyboard the millions of daft and pointless ideas that hurtle through my brain. I find it so enjoyable that I could use it as a way of relieving stress, or calming myself down if something really annoys me. I worked in retail for a while in the past. Can you guess which job I'm far happier doing? So why are you so hesitant in doing something you love? The last thing you want is to reach retirement, and feel that you've missed out by not even taking a shot at what you want to do.
So, now you have to decide what do you want to do then? What could you do all day, every day, that you can not only get paid to do but that will bring you more happiness every time you do it? Do you like helping others? Expressing your creative side? Cutting hair?
Hell, it could even be picking mushrooms. Someone's got to enjoy doing that.
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