I think we can all accept that it is hard to get a job these days.
But, we rarely talk about whether a person can live with having a job anymore. More and more people just cannot submit to the strictures of a typical job. The fixed hours. The facetime. The brown nosing. The endless meetings. And worse of all the contemptible goals and the tiny narcissistic focus.
I know in my case that I would do anything to avoid having to be that obedient anymore.
I had to leave the job. My job was killing me.
What I am noticing is that I am not alone and that many of my kids generation just cannot stay in Jobs. They are not lazy. They are not stupid. They have great skills. They, like me, just cannot put up with the strictures and rules of how jobs work.
Here is my good friend Cynthia Dennis - one of the smartest and hardest working people I know - aged in her early thirties - on why she cannot submit anymore to having a job.
And more important at the end of her podcast - why she has no desire for all the stuff that the job is meant to get for us. Warning - The Recording is only 17 minutes - I have a glitch that tells you that it is 34 minutes long. Don't worry - when it ends after 17 minutes - it's over - I will get better at this - promise.
More on this in my new book - You Don't Need a Job
Cynthia's talk focuses on two elements of the Job question. The first is the Strictures and the Structures of the Job and the second is that what the Job offers her, she does not need or want. In summary these are:
The Strictures and Structures
Time- Having the time that she works set as if she was in a factory - 9-5 or fixed hours does not fit how she and many of us work. She is best early and late in the day. I am best early. How about you? The idea of flipping a switch and being productive is inhuman. It's not that she is lazy, it is that a set of fixed hours is not using her best.
Minutiae - The focus seems mainly to be on the little things and endless process - all those meetings that really are all about power and role and not about getting important things done. Few jobs are about anything that has any reral meaning. She needs meaning. Do you?
Being herself - In the Job, we put on a role. We are not allowed to be who we really are. She needs to be herself and finds acting out a role all the time numbing.
The Rewards?
If Cynthia, or I or maybe you, had a job, we would earn more money. That would enable us to have a mortgage, a car loan, credit card debt to enable us to have lots of stuff. It would give us stuff but limit our freedom.
With a job, we have no time. With no time, we lose touch with ourselves, with those we love and care for. We make keeping the debt to keep the stuff going the centre of our lives.
Do we need the big house? Do we need to own our own car? Do we need all the stuff?
Cynthia feels not. She has the things and access to things that she really needs. AND she has the time to invest in her network that gives her all that she really needs. This I think is the aha that I got from listening to Cynthia.
The Job - takes away our humanity. It replaces it with stuff and with stress. It takes away the time we need to invest in the people that are important to us. And so it makes us helpless and dependent on the system. For we have to buy everything we need and we often have to medicate ourselves to keep us going in this inhuman system.
Anyway - she says it all much better than my simple synopsis. Listen to her!
