Instead of going to school this fall I’ve started working full time. I thought I was doing what I liked, but getting up every morning, being on someone elses call, deadlines, etc. sucks the big one.
No way can I do this for the next 50 years. No way can I do anything like work for the rest of my life. If I don’t win a lottery or something I’m gonna go mad.
Why is it that leisure, relaxation, having a good time, etc., takes a back seat working? People are expected to work 5 days out of the week for 2 days off. Why not the other way around? People work their butts off for 2 and 3 crummy weeks off a year. People work away their youth, and, if they live long enough, get the end period of their life to not work. The end period, yeah, is when they’re old, sick, tired, unable, etc. Who wants to work towards that?
People who kick back more than others are called lazy, bums, goldbricks, whatever. Yet no matter what one does, we all end up rotting in a grave anyway, right? So why shouldn’t we enjoy our stay here as much as possible?
After 10,000plus years of human existance, why haven’t we evolved a society/economy where relaxing and having a good time consumed more of our time than work, worrying about work, looking for work, getting ready for work, blah blah blah?
I could not agree more. Work is a constant torture. Not the work itself but the endless politics, being at someone elses beck and call and the damned repetitiveness of it. Please someone come up with an answer. :smack:
Ah, I know what you mean. I sometimes think I was meant to be the lady of leisure, but alas, we all must work.
I’ve learned that it’s not working that’s the problem, but workinig where I am unhappy and stressed out. I’ve had brief moments of liking my work, and then it’s fine. More than fine. But when things go bad, I turn miserable.
I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way. I think everyone feels this way!
It’s also true that when you don’t get time to do the things that are important to you during your off-hours, (this may be some creative hobby, pastime, family time, etc.) then you become more miserable. So the secret is to find a way to make time for the things that really matter, if at all possible.
I wonder who will bring up labor reform of a century ago first…
Instead of just going to school this fall, I plan on taking up a part-time job in order to pay for my higher education. I’m in the website industry.
(That should sound tragically funny.)
I hear that this is almost an American thing. At the very least, Europeans supposedly get more time off. …wish I had a cite for some of the things I say.
Hear, hear! And why aren’t I - or anyone else - getting paid to post our deep thoughts on this board, either! I demand the universe to compensate me for my expended efforts. Why not?
From my own experience, I lived the lazy life for quite some time and I’ve realized how much I’ve not-gained by not working a little harder toward my goals. I could be in the middle of grad school now; instead, I’m starting my second year of undergrad studies. I spent my time between casual work during the .com boom and video games, and the money is pretty much gone. I regret it.
And what I’m saying is, you might regret not doing more, too.
Geez… I sound like my parents.
Here’s something else to consider! If you were doing something you loved - say, trolling the SDMB at 4:23 am, reading up on interesting topics rather than getting sleep in order to finish differential equations homework in the morning - you might end up loving it so much that you’ll work yourself dead. I always read about mathematicians, physicists, scientists and so on working themselves ill, and I have the sneaking suspicion that if I did just what I wanted to all the time, I’d knock myself out. Like what I’m doing now, only more extreme.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s some way to live without working as much as we do. I’m just as sure, though, that such a life won’t be extravagant at all.
I heard that many Europeans are only working 4 day weeks. However, it just doesn’t seem to want to catch on here in the US, where many people are working 80 hours a week, especially those in the technology sector, and perhaps the construction business.
There might be a time when we have to give up everything.
Personally, I take comfort in the fact that workaholism is voluntary if you simplify your wants enough. Should I ever have to take a job that doesn’t (heaven forbid!) offer summer vacations, there’s nothing to stop me from doing the work-and-save thing for two years and then take a year off, repeat as necessary.
Quote: “TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is a nationwide initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.”
From a song by Jesse Boggs:
I’ve seen you people give away your lives
for a chance to do nothing when you’re sixty-five.
when therre’s nothing left but the TV shows
those golden years get a certain unearthly glow…
If you assume a standard 40 hour work week then only about 24% of your year is taken up by work. Of course, roughly 25% of the remaining time is pent sleeping but that still leaves you with 50% of your life to yourself. Also, that 24% is somewhat lower as it includes your paid vacation time.
What’s more I find that not working drives me nuts. Having recently been unemployed for six months I was climbing the walls. I can’t have nearly as much fun if I haven’t been working. It’s sort of a payoff that I worked for and enjoy that much more. It seems that the juxtaposition of work with leisure throws the leisure into a more pleasing realm than without the work behind it.
Besides, in the end you work so you cna pay for the leisure. If all you need is food and shelter you can live off the government tit indefinitely. Your leisure activities will be restricted to pretty much how you can amuse yourself but at least you won’t be working. If you want to do things like go to the movies, out to a good meal, drinking with your buddies, scuba diving and so on you will likely need a job to pay for it.
Whack-a-Mole, I agree. If I didn’t work, I’d be pulling my hair out. It helps that I like (well, tolerate) what I do.
It should be said that the benefits of our society–clean water, good music (relatively speaking), tasty foods, convenient transportation, easily-accessed information, protection in the form of police, firefighters, and hospitals, etc–are the product of hard work. In order to maintain these things, people have to work. If people didn’t work so hard, our quality of life would probably drop. Services that we’ve come to take for granted wouldn’t be as dependable.
Work is optional, though. If you don’t want to work so hard, get a part-time job. The trade off, of course, would be a lower quality of life for you relative to that enjoyed by your harder-working friends and family. If your number one priority is happiness over keeping up with the Jones’s, then this shouldn’t be a problem.
So who should work? Who should bartend the bars you “kick back” at or build and maintain the cars and hotels and boats for you to play with? Who should grow and prepare those fine meals you plan to eat? We live in a civilization that is the results of millions of people’s daily labors. Yeah work sucks but if everyone decided to just play all day nothing would get done.
Not true. People can do whatever is within their means. People become bums, goldbricks, etc when other people have to pick up their slack.
Sounds like someone needs a taste of working in an 19th century factory.
They also lived in grass huts and went to the bathroom in holes.
Wait. You mean they didn’t surf the net? Or go places in airplanes or read books or take medicines?
Well, geez. No wonder we work. All that stuff is pretty cool. As you say, it doesn’t seem fair to take advantage of all that work all those people did without doing a little onesself.
It’s called France; 35 hours work + over seven weeks paid holiday (starting). More after time.
It’s also called making capitalism work for you, rather than you work for it.
It’s also called not getting sucked into some weird macho and/or capitalist/consumer debt-driven culture.
Its also called ‘post-consumerism’; which won’t be coming to a US town near you anytime soon. Instead, you get to submerge in all that ‘American Dream’ thang. Have a nice life!
Yeah, I suppose we shouldn’t be whining. It still doesn’t stop me from wondering whether it’s a waste of life to be working so much, though.
It occurs to me, then, that the amount of work is not the issue - as I said, I could work like a madman if it were for something I love - but rather the quality of the work that matters.
Maybe we’re not happy with our work lives because we’re doing what we’re not good at, making the wrong career decisions. Maybe Hayduke shouldn’t be doing whatever he’s doing. Perhaps it would be best if we all do what we love. But, perhaps there are not enough people with affinities to the services we need to facilitate this.
So why DOES America work so much more, with less vacation, than most other Westernized countries? It can’t ALL be because “time off is for sissies,” can it?
Hayduke- I understand exactly where you are coming from, and all the posts so far have raised good points. I believe people do indeed work too hard in this country. IMHO, in an era of multi-million dollar ads to get us to buy more Doritos, we need to fight the good fight to keep spending in check, thus reducing our need for wages. Many of my friends who are in law school just completed thier first internships with firms, making good money and working 70+ hours a week. What irks me, however, is that the big wigs at the company constantly wine and dine the interns to get them used to spending and leading a certain lifestyle. I would imagine it is a tough chain to break. Next thing you know, you’re 55 and wonder where your youth went as you kick back on a $8000 couch with a glass of cognac. I should hope I find a better way to do things, and right now (at 23) I’m finishing school and keeping the overhead low enough so I can spend my funds on “life experiences”
I will need to work however, because as Whack-a-mole pointed out, leisure is expensive. I would like to earn about $5000 to take a long trip to Africa, I just hope I’m not conned into spending it on snack chips or a down payment on an Escalade first. As I said, consumerism is easy to be sucked into.
Fretful Porpentine- that’s really an interesting idea about the “2 years on, 1 year off” concept. That might be something for me to consider…
It should be noted that there is a reason work is called ‘work’. You don’t wake up in the morning to go to ‘fun’ (except for a very lucky few). The reason your employer pays you (or anyone) is because no one really wants to do whatever job they have (again excepting a very lucky few).
I think there is a lot to be said that a person should do all in their power to find a job they like. ‘Like’ in this sense is a loose term and more equated to ‘tolerable’ at the low end. If your job is better than ‘tolerable’ then great…you’re on the right track. In the end however almost any job has its shitty aspects. My dad is an attorney and LOVES being one. Nevertheless there are aspects of that job he hates (accounting for his time comes to mind…figuring his taxes and payroll is another).
In the end you take the good with the bad. If you want to be philosophical about it to some extent the ‘bad’ makes the ‘good’ more distinct and sweeter. Kinda like how a beer (or whatever your favorite cold beverage is) tastes after doing something like building your deck in your backyard versus the beer any other day.
Sounds to me there are a lot of people who need to find an occupation which they enjoy. I used to manage several hundred employees in the hospitality industry. I had a few ideas by which to work by one of them being “If you don’t like what you do, then quit!” I live by that rule myself. I left jobs which did not appeal to me regardless of the pay. The trick is to take what you make and invest it WISELY.
I work for myself now. I don’t just like what I do…I LOVE WHAT I DO! I also know what I do for people makes a difference in their lives because they tell me this.
I don’t punch a clock and I don’t have to report to anyone but myself. I still work hard in my occupation because I know to do so will reward me with the fruits of my labor. I also know if I slack off I will rue my laziness sometime down the road.
Another great thing about working for one’s self is you can choose who you want to work with. In my profession if someone wants to be my client and doesn’t want to put forth the effort I politely tell them it is not going to work unless they do.
If they persist then I tell them they need to seek help elsewhere. It’s truly liberating to be in the position to do this. I only work with people I enjoy being around and send the others packing.
You will never truly be free in your occupation while working for another. But, remember this freedom comes at a price. Its up to YOU to make things happen and when you quit the only person who is hurt is YOU.
In my industry for every 10 people starting a career only 1 is left after a year. You take that 1 person and put them into a group of 10 1-year survivors and after 3 years there will be only 1 left. In 3 years take the 1 person and place them into a group of 10 3-year survivors and by the time they reach their 5th anniversary in this business only 1 will be left. I am on my 9th year in my chosen field and I will surpass my combined previous 8 years production this year. It comes from shear determination and witts with a wee bit of luck.
So you can either choose to try and work for yourself or play it safe and work for someone else. Either way you have to face yourself in the mirror each day and choose to lie or be honest to yourself.
