Happiness: Restricted

Okay, so there are a few things that I have learnt about myself and the universe as this arduous job hunt continues.

1. I’m the epitome of impatience. In fact, I would legally change my name to ‘impatience’ if the process didn’t take so damned long. I honestly didn’t comprehend how impatient I was until I experienced the whole ‘waiting period’ between sending out a resume and getting an interview etc, etc.

2. I’ve become surprisingly good at rejections. Yes, this will most definitely come back to bite me in the ass when the pile of rejections become too tall and high. However, at this stage I get over the rejection quite fast. By fast, I mean I go through that stage of a relationship turned sour (except in job terms) where I grab a friend by the collar, and with snot dribbling down my face yell, “WHY WON’T THEY JUST LOVE ME FOR MEEE?! WAHHHH!” Then I proceed to go home and lay in bed thinking about all the things I could’ve and should’ve said and did that might’ve made them love me a little more. However, give or take a day or two, I’m back on the prowl.

The shit thing is, I’m probably becoming so good at being rejected that it’ll bleed into other aspects of my life and I’ll be approaching men in the bar just like Carrie-May from House Bunny.

 

3. This final one is the actual reason I wrote this post. These past couple of months has made me question why I feel so strangely unfulfilled and why my life seems to lack purpose because of the mere fact I don’t have a job at the moment. Then I realised it’s because the majority of people raised in a Western culture place a sick amount of importance and value on careers and success. Their life is their career, and money is this twisted motivator that consumes their lives.

The reason why I think this is twisted is because I realised how much importance we put on money, and it’s become this thing where we can’t actually live a good life without it. Everything we want to do in the future needs money to be done. Such as travelling, going out, buying a house, going to visit relatives overseas, fine-dining etc.

We’ll need a job that will predominantly take up half our lives to get the money, which then goes towards fun things that might only satisfy us for the smallest portion of our lives. On top of this, because we know that we’ll be spending a great portion of our lives in these jobs, we’re forever looking for a job that will satisfy us both financially and mentally. Which is sad, because in my opinion, your life and your career shouldn’t be in the same league, but apparently it is now. I feel that we go through life being told we should improve ourselves, we should do something that will give us an edge in life. To make us more employable – but not necessarily to make us better or happier people.

This is the reason why I find it shameful. I feel restricted from doing things that I used to be able to do when I was still working – but, it shouldn’t be that way. I shouldn’t feel that only money will let me be a happier person who can do more things in life. I don’t want to be the type of person who spends their whole life in a job just to be able to snatch a few moments of fun at the end. I want to be able to enjoy the greater things in life everyday of my life without having to worry about that stuff.

After a conversation with one of my best buds, I was alerted that people in other parts of the world don’t have this same mindset. It isn’t the cultural norm to spend their whole lives planning and planning for the moment they get to do stuff. They just do it. In life, you’ll either have no money and heaps of time, or money and no time. This is the way that we’ve been raised. Time ticks away quickly as you work, it ticks and ticks so you can pocket some cash to use later on. But when it’s later on, you’re already too old. You’re not as agile, and you’re bordering on senility. It’s a crappy way to live, but it’s the only way we know how to live.

So, I’m not going all anti-capitalist and all that on yo’ asses, but don’t let money consume you. Know what the important things are in life, because there are so many other things in life other than jobs and money. There are so many smaller things that can fulfil you rather than a job. I guess what I want to say is; I want a life that will satisfy me. Not a job.