Lotteries were invented as a hopeful means of escape from everyday drudgery. The downside being the chances of winning it is as plausible as world peace. For research has shown that people who won the lottery were no happier than others after awhile. The reason was simple – they tried to make for all the lost time in a short time. Remember that red shiny car Dad never got m? Let’s buy ten of them. Remember all the lost holidays? Let’s take all of them. And so on and so forth. In a short while, they make up for their humdrum existence with a slew of debts and few bad habits to boot. Of course, they’ll be an unhappy lot at the end of it all. Importantly, most of them give up their jobs and attempt to settle into a life of leisure that they haven’t truly earned.
More than anything, the day job has become the nemesis of the white collared worker. Like a necessary burden we all have to trudge through. Everybody is seeking an escape from them. It is the most common refrain at water coolers and single biggest cause for getting drunk on Friday nights, chasing the under aged secretary, using gossip to further your career and driving a sledgehammer through your boss. But if you look closely, a day job has its positives. Allow some explanation.
When you ask someone what they would do if you didn’t have to work, the answers are almost always definitely vauge. ‘I’ll travel the world (so who is going to sponsor your trip, the missionaries of charity?), ‘I’ll learn a new instrument (Sony is waiting to hear from you Mr. Sinatra jr.)and I’ll take up gardening (why didn’t I think of that). For starters, accept the fact that the perfect job exists only in our collective imagination. Secondly, ask yourself if your job entails any of the following:
a) Performing neurosurgery
b) Working toward nuclear disarmament
c) Finding a cure for Aids
d) Developing a vaccine that eradicates violence, bigotry and moronism
If your job doesn’t entail any of the above, chances are you aren’t shaking things up much. That doesn’t mean you treat your job with disdain. It means you need some more perspective before pouring out your grief and boring the rest of the world with your woes. Be grateful that the world has need for people like you.
Bill Watterson once remarked that a real job is one you hate. He should know. He spent 4 years designing car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store. His only salvation – doing his strip (Calvin and Hobbes as we know it) in his spare time. If Scott Adams hadn’t sought inspiration from the duffers he encountered in his job, the world would have been deprived of Dilbert. That’s the purpose of a day job – to amuse you and open your eyes to the banality of mankind. A day job inspires you to think out of the box. You try everything in your power to make it tolerable and somewhere down the line, chance upon that elusive rainbow that has been eluding you. It forces you to use your leisure time constructively and makes you take to weekends like a kid would take to a box of candy.
Learn time management and you can juggle what truly matters to you to a reasonable extent. This includes travel, growing tomatoes in your backyard and playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band and making porn. A day job gives you a routine, however predictable and boring. It offers you a certain degree of financial security. If you spend a sizable chunk of your life in a day job, you are sure to make some steadfast friends, go on paid vacation and heck, even fall in love.
And when the day does finally arrive when you stop fantasizing and call the hardware store to ask how much a sledgehammer costs, quit. Because only when you reach this end can you truly value the freedom that comes from walking away from the rat race. Till then, paste this on your bathroom mirror and attempt to begin each day with cheery disposition - ‘You hate your job ? Why didn’t you say so ? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar. – Drew Carrey
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