Dad spent most of his adult life working in the financial sector. He's held several important positions that provided him an office, a predictable paycheck and required him to wear pressed clothes, a tie, and work in heavily air conditioned facilities lit by fluorescent lighting. He had a "real" job.
This morning, I watched an interesting video about a musician who, early on, chose to make a living by being a street mime dressed in white. She made a few bucks doing it and found she was able to connect with people in her own particular way. In short, she enjoyed what she was doing but often endured the screams from passers-by telling her to "get a real job." She has a great story and while I don't listen to punk-cabaret, that's not the point...
What is a "real" job and who gets to decide what makes it "real?"
When I was growing up, a real job was something you did predictably, every day, for someone else in order to get money. Predictable money. Typically the hours were 9-5, Monday through Friday. You got weekends off and sometimes a couple of weeks for vacation. It was also assumed that the more education you received in the form of various graduate and post-graduate degrees, the more money you'd make and it'd be less likely that you'd have to work around heavy machinery.. If you didn't have a lot of paper certificates from schools, you'd generally be expected to work in construction or at a factory making left rear car fenders or something that required you to sweat a lot in July or freeze all day in December. Funny how starting a business was rarely, if ever mentioned.
Enter the 21st Century where companies are no longer loyal to their workers and blue collar jobs are now located in Asia. Factories are shuttered and large corporations continue to outsource jobs and cut workforce in an effort to increase profitability to appease fickle stockholders. Today, a "real" job often comes in the form of something part-time...like a barista at a Starbucks. White collar jobs are increasingly difficult to land and our society finds itself awash in a sea of college graduates with few positions available for them. About that "real" job thing....?
I had two "real" jobs in my life. I hated them both. Really. Hated. Them.
I distinctly remember not wanting to get out of bed in the morning...loathing what I did to earn money with every shred of my being. The same thing. Every single day. Again and again and again.
Within a few years I'd had enough of the "real" job torture and decided I'd go back to grad school while I figured the whole thing out. I'd had a taste of doing things on my own early on. In middle school I sold coins and baseball cards at the local flea market and in high school I started a little enterprise with a button making machine. My schoolmates would order personalized buttons from me and I'd deliver them to school the next day and collect $2. My materials cost was something like a quarter. I went one step further in college and started conducting fundraisers for campus organizations. Members would set up at the college union and hawk personalized buttons to their friends and passers-by. They'd get half the revenue and I'd get the other half. I found it afforded me the ability to hang out all day with cute college girls while doing something I enjoyed... and I got paid for it. Now I had beer money without having to scrub floors at the local Pizza Hut...which I suppose was more of a "real" job. Inside, I felt a little guilty... as if I was breaking some rule about what work was supposed to be like. You weren't supposed to enjoy it.... were you?
Fast forward a quarter century. I still don't have a "real" job. Some might be appalled at the fact that I'm an auctioneer, I sell items online and I buy and sell coins as a "career"....but I wouldn't have it any other way. The job market is terrible and only a few lucky people I know have any income stability. There's a lot to be said for doing what you love, even if it makes you little. Like the gal who collected 60-90 bucks a day being an 8 foot tall mime painted white....She got something out of it. To me, that makes it just as "real" as a job can get. Even better is that she used her imagination to come up with a creative way to feed and clothe herself. I think our society needs to redefine how we look at what a job is. A job doesn't necessary have to come with fixed hours, fixed pay or even result in something tangible created. A job doesn't have to provide anything specific as long as the people on both ends of the transaction get SOMETHING out of it....even if that something is hard to quantify.
So what does this all have to do with minimalism? A lot. If you can be happy with less, you can do what makes you happy without worrying about whether it pays enough for you to afford all the things you think you need. We only get so much time. Wouldn't it be nice to do something interesting? Something that pushes the envelope? Something that creates self-satisfaction? Wouldn't you like to create your own day, every day and be in charge of how its used? You can. My dad calls me a "hustler." But he sees how happy I am...and he's told me that he wasn't brave enough to not have the steady paycheck that the corporate world provided him. Luckily, it worked out in the end, but he traded a lot of life for that. Hopefully, we'll all see that we don't always have to make that trade. Screw a "real" job. How about a "real" life? If you can make enough to take care of yourself and be content with what you have without relying on anyone else (or the government) and you are happy with what you are doing for your income (as long as it doesn't take from anyone else's happiness), that's all that counts. That's all I believe you need to make your job "real."
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| Explain to me how this would not be a "real" job if it makes people happy, makes the performer happy and creates enough income for her to take care of herself? Are we jealous that we didn't "think outside the box? Don't know about you, I think it's awesome! |
