I'm getting older again soon and this has made my brain think about my life and stuff and things and I was sat at work today, typing a hugely amusing email about my upcoming birthday celebrations (drinking heavily and dancing like a twat, in case you were wondering) when I suddenly realised I didn't wish I was dead. That may sound a little dramatic but anyone familiar with previous posts on this here blog will be acutely aware that I haven't had much luck not wishing I was dead during periods of employment. In fact, every other job I've had has made me want to expire immediately or, alternatively, to destroy everything in the vicinity, living or otherwise, with my bare hands. The only reason I didn't do that is because those jobs had also made me lethargic with self loathing and apathy and so I tried to passive aggressively make everyone else do something about it instead. Didn't work.
Right, yes. So I was writing this brilliant email and caught myself smiling involuntarily, which is weird because existence is pain and humans are awful and the world is falling apart. But I was. Smiling. Smiling like a big, smiling prick. I stopped immediately, obviously - I'm not mental - but it had definitely happened and in dissecting the reasons behind it I realised I don't hate my job. Drink that in for a second. Gulp, gulp, gulp. Ahhhhhh, nice that. Actually, I think I might even actively like and enjoy my job. Christ, it was weird typing that last sentence, the muscle memory kept kicking in and I had to keep deleting 'despise and detest' and start again. Now, I don't enjoy every second of it because, again, I'm not insane. If I'm totally honest, what I'd like to do with my time is whatever the hell I want and just be given money for that, but that isn't how the world seems to work currently, so I can't. Most of it though, is rewarding and challenging and all those other words that people use when they can't really describe what it is about their job they like. Or if they're lying. Or if they're the employer and trying to get you to accept the offer, which is usually just lying again but from the other side.
I'm not going to tell you what my job is, where I work or any of the related particulars, because if you know me you already know, and if you don't it's kind of irrelevant and also, I can't get in trouble for anything this way. I'm growing and learning. How old? I'll be thirty six, thanks for asking, and yes, I suppose I am a late developer and fuck you too. I say the information is irrelevant because it is, and that is what words are for. It's not pertinent because everyone's Not Make Me Go On A Killing Streak job is different, and yours won't be the same as mine and if it is I don't want you strolling in with your nice hair and experience and better interpersonal skills and taking it away from me. Yes, you. I see you. Bastard.
What I'm very slowly getting at is that there are occupations out there that won't stir you up into a frothing, impotent rage. For a long time I thought that maybe - just maybe - it was me, and actually it absolutely was a bit, so that's not a great point. It might not be you though, and if it is maybe you've grown and changed over the last little while and now you'll fit with something you wouldn't have before. You probably did it before your thirties too, so well done you. Or perhaps that thing was always there but you've been scared to move on from the thing you're doing now, thinking it wasn't out there, so you just sit there imaging Deborah from accounts without skin, being flung through a window, landing on the shards of glass and hundreds of pre-squeezed lemons, then being eaten by those pigs that eat people in films.
Just me then.
Turns out that if you think all your jobs have been shit and the one you're in is dreadful, they probably were and it almost certainly is. Good, healthy, possibly even inspiring (if you can use that word without a bit of sick coming up) work places are there if you know what to look for, what to value and that sometimes you can be a bit of a self sabotaging dick. So don't settle for working for a bunch of cunts but also, don't be one, yeah? You could be writing a beautifully crafted, massively entertaining and comical email of your own one day and think, 'you know what, only about seventy percent of everything is a waking nightmare', and if that ain't joy I don't know what is.
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