Chapter Two: Why Don't You Get A Job?

Dear Reader,

Learning what to do in life. Do we ever find the perfect job or do we just bounce constantly from one to the other until we find one that we hate the least? Or worse, just give up looking all together? I look around at people in offices, shops, or people just walking on the street and wonder whether they really like their job, LOVE their job. How many of us can say that? How many people are there out there who are doing the job they have always dreamt of?

And how do you know when you’ve got the perfect job? I’ve only really known one job all of my life, does that mean it’s the one for me or does it mean that I have just accepted that it’s all I know? I believe I’m good at my job, I enjoy it, but I question whether there is something else out there that might be better, that I could be really good at.
How do we know when we’ve reached our full potential? And how many of us really try? Do we just get to a point where we decide that we’ve probably got it as good as it’s going to get and give up? It’s often very hard to get a job in this day and age, especially the interesting and well paid ones (forward slash the coolest and least available). With often thousands of applicants for one job role the whole debacle feels mildly impossible. And what about when you have to have experience to get a job but you can’t get experience without having had a job...which you can’t get without experience. Does anyone else feel dizzy?

I think it’s easy to feel lost. You get stuck into a job, you think you’ll just keep going until your perfect job comes along. Either way you stop looking or it never appears.  

We shouldn’t give up.

We should all be in search of that perfect job, whether it’s something that earns you £100 a year or £100,000,000 a year. The perfect job means different thing to different people. Some want more time to spend at home,  some want to travel. Some want an easy job, some need the challenge. Some do it for the money, some want to make a real difference.
And then there are some, like myself, who have no idea quite what they want from a job. Maybe it’s a mixture of all the things I just mentioned.

Who remembers Baz Luhrmann's hit 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)'? In which he says;

“Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life.

The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives

Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't”

If you haven't heard it, give it a listen. It makes me feel better. It almost stops me from questioning what I'm doing with my life...but possibly not quite yet. 

I'm 23 and I'll be the first to stick my hand in the air and say 'You know what...I don't have a clue. I thought I did but right now...I got nothing...and you know what? I think that might just be okay.'

We should all have jobs that make us happy, possibly not every day, I can’t guarantee you that I won’t wake up every Monday and think ‘Why God, why not one more day off?’. But if we all felt a little happier at work, wouldn’t the world seem a little brighter? And don't even get me started on the five day working week...that's for another time.

I’ll admit, there are a hell of a lot of rhetorical questions in here dear reader, maybe one day I’ll be able to come back and give you some answers.

Here's hoping.

SP.