“If you want to get time off you go to work for a bank or the school system.”
Interesting perspective. I suppose it is all about trade-offs. True, when you work in a bank, as I did for many years, you are basically there nine to five and rarely on Sundays. On the other hand, banks don’t have a lot of extra profit anymore to live the high life. Instead, every minute of those hours is worked hard. As well, with the increase in the number of grocery store banks, traditional banking hours don’t actually apply much anymore. And, while it may be sort of true that if you work for a school you get the summers off, it is also true that during the school year your work lives with you everywhere. And I am not simply talking about taking home homework to grade. Being in charge of a classroom full of young children is a responsibility that keeps you awake at night unless you are very good at compartmentalizing. So, what is a dream job? Maybe the point is not to avoid work (as I mentioned in my blog last time), it is to enjoy the work you need to do. Few of us can afford to not work at all. So assuming we want to eat, wear clothes and sleep someplace warm, we have to get a job. But this doesn’t mean we have to hate it. It used to be that Europeans thought we were crazy for working so much. And I will admit to enjoying my six weeks of vacation when I lived in England. But on the other hand, perhaps we work so much because we value choice in what we study and where we work. Unlike the historical model of nepotism in England, where your line of work was so much a part of your family that it would become your last name, here we have tried to create a system that allows for choice. Sadly, we don’t always hit it on the head. Since education is the key, and schools are taking a big financial hit right now, our children’s choices are increasingly limited… even more so in lower social-economic systems. In truth, the Starbucks customer should have said; “If you want time off you invest in education.” Working hard at the right job is the best way for all of us to enjoy our vacations. Because, as my father always said; There are no free lunches.
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“You would hope she would act like a grown-up.”
It was difficult to keep the smile off my face as I watched the two twenty-somethings discuss how to get his items back from a girlfriend he had broken up with over the summer. I had heard about this girlfriend off and on since April, and the relationship reminded me so much of something I would have gone through at that age that it always made me laugh. As strange as it is to think about… these kids are closer in age to my daughter than they are to me. And yet, they consider themselves ‘grown-up’.I suppose it is what every child waits for, that time when they can make their own decisions, be responsible for themselves. I am not sure, though, that this is enough to qualify as ‘grown-up’. Certainly, many of the decisions I made at that age did not look anything like maturity. There were, of course, the stupid activities performed on the weekends and usually involving parties with friends. But on a deeper level there were also many moments when I bought into the drama and emotion of a short term perspective. A boyfriend would dump me and I would cry and mope for a month. Negative feedback on something I had done at work would send me into a tailspin of shame and anxiety that would ruin my otherwise perfect summer. It is not so much responsibility, then, that marks our passing age; more the degree to which we let our life run us, rather than the other way around. Recognizing that I am responsible for my life means that I can choose not only how to live it, but also how to feel about it. This weekend I received news that my book, UNTANGLING THE KNOT, will be released in digital format on February 13th. Certainly this is something to celebrate and enjoy. Instead, though, my life has become one big to-do list. I am overwhelmed by the many activities I want to do to promote the release. Rather than focus on the reason for these activities, their very existence seems like a chore. When my daughter was complaining about going to school today I referred to these jobs I had to do, saying I wasn’t really looking forward to doing them, but I had to anyway. “But Mommy, you love to write.” And I was reminded of the basic fact that these are actually things I enjoy doing… as long as I don’t become overwhelmed by the stress and anxiety of whether they will all work out as planned. Lesson learned! Apparently being grown-up has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with perspective. |
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June 2020
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