the world according to Will

kathryn-sander:

Lake Tahoe, California

When are you going to get a ‘real job’?

A ‘real job’ is a cliché; a colloquialism that portrays a dominant ideology in a taken-for-granted kind of way. A cliché that has become static carrying with it a uniform definition which people (well many people) perceive to be the truth.  It is a box. A box that was created to both promote and undermine personal choice and fulfilment.  It is a box used by parents as a tool for encouragement, by some adults to justify their lack of stimulation and unhappiness, by those who are biding time in their current jobs, by young Australians to use as an excuse to leave what they know and travel the world, by backpackers to avoid going home.

The social philosopher Adam Smith argues that jobs are less valued when they are enjoyable, easy or non-skilled, temporary of unstable, have low probability of success, require little trust, are not conducted in their natural time (a soldier in war time as opposed to a soldier employed in a time of peace), underutilize the worker in terms of duration and intensity and are not the primary source of support for the individual. Colloquialisms like this one are like splinters of potential narratives: moulds of previous stories. Somewhere along the lines we shaped and reworked Smith’s ideas into one convenient saying which forces the listener to weigh up the different aspects of their employment against these values. 

The cliché ‘a real job’ has been thrown around a lot lately. I’ve heard it more in the past 4 months than I heard it working my 4 years at McDonalds. In fact I think I’ve referred to the saying myself since leaving Australia more times than I have in my life time especially when you consider that this entire blog was based on me avoiding full time employment what I believed to be the real world. To me a real job (full time employment in an Elementary classroom) meant stress. It meant responsibility I wasn’t ready for. It meant no time to travel and being tired all the time. When telling the school I worked at temporarily before heading overseas what my plans were many of the teachers told me to do it while I was still young, while I wasn’t in a relationship and before it was time to get a real job.

One of my mentors even joked that she couldn’t ‘Contiki’ with a real job and a child at the age of 22 and that I had to do this because she hadn’t had the opportunity. The same teacher loved her ‘real job’. She took pride in it and embellished the responsibility that came with it. Her definition of a real job did not revolve around the job itself rather the timing in one’s life of that job. In fact the only time she spoke about a certain criteria for what constituted a ‘real job’ was when she spoke of giving back to her community something that she believed could come outside of one’s job but was best focused on fulltime.

My cousin Mike built his own business. He started and ran a company that produced wire. It was highly successful and whilst provided him more than enough money to live happily and for those around him to live happily it brought him no intellectual stimulation and certainly no enjoyment. It was repetitive and boring for Mike. Mike’s life revolved around his hobbies and his ‘real job’ was simply a means for support. When Mike sold the business to his brother this year I called him up to not only talk about the extravagant parcel he had sent me in the mail the previous day but to ask him “what now?” He said he was searching for work. I asked what type of work? He said it didn’t matter what type of job it was, in fact it didn’t even matter if he was paid, all he wanted to do was wake up in the morning excited to go to work.

My brother completed a communications degree at the University of Technology, Sydney. He refused to be a teacher like his parents. People often asked him what type of ‘real job’ was he going to get from a communications degree? In fact with my lack of knowledge about his degree I often found myself asking him the same thing. Then he told us about his honours topic investigating how government policies affected climate change and we thought ‘oh man he’s getting really obscure now’. The ‘real job’ box starts building itself early on. A wall at a time goes up around us. We have a choice though. To sit there and play along or step out of the confines of what we are being told to do with our lives.

My brother found what he believes to be a ‘real job’ in a ‘real city’ which he loves. He works in a company of scientists and environmentalists. A climate change consultancy agency which has worked closely with big businesses and government groups including a Tri-generation project for the City of Sydney. You ask him what he does and he will tell you he takes the research of his company and turns it into a language which the politicians will understand. He works for an honourable company which values him highly as an employee and a partner. He could make more money working within a government department but that’s not his definition of a ‘real job’.

I’ve met a lot of people travelling who have accidently found themselves in ‘real jobs’. In Panama City I met a 26 year old guy from New Zealand who had been living between Colombia and Panama for the past 6 years. He had come over travelling, built a boat and started transporting backpackers between the 2 countries via the beautiful San Blas Islands. What he thought was temporary employment was now evolving into a ‘real job’ with the creation of a new business model, employees and the building of their own hostel. He said he no longer felt the pressure to return home and maintain substantial employment because simply he was happy where he was living, meeting who he was meeting and doing what he was doing and that for him was real.

Taylor who currently lives in Tahoe and who I had conveniently met due to the fact that he drives my bus at Northstar told me he guides rafts all around the world. I didn’t think twice about his choice of employment mainly because I was currently following a similar career but also because he spoke about it with such passion and excitement. He leaves in April to guide rafts in Norway after which he will head to New Zealand to do the same thing. I met his cousin a couple days ago. His cousin told him that his Mum didn’t mind what Taylor did because Taylor had never asked her for money. So his Mum’s definition of a ‘real job’ was one of independence and self-reliance.

I could over analyse this further now to discuss whether I believed Ski Instructing to be a real job but I won’t. Mainly because I would have to admit that I am not self-reliant in my current position due to the amount of money I have had to borrow from my parents and my brother but mostly because I don’t want to attempt to fit what I have loved doing for the past 4 months into that clichéd box. My definition of a real job has shifted. I still use the cliché but for me it now holds a different meaning. My own personal interpretation of an tired saying.

Silly Sally told her Dad that for her 4^th birthday all she wanted to do was go ski with Kat. Her Mum and Dad didn’t think twice. The day after her birthday I had Sally turning through the “princess cones” on her skies. Something she hadn’t been able to do for the past 3 days of lessons because she felt more enjoyment flying straight on her skies and eating snow than learning to ski the way we wanted her to (tearing down the walls at a young age). I literally screamed with excitement as did the other instructors and teachers assistants who had been highly entertained by Silly Sally’s antics over the past 3 days. Mum and Dad couldn’t have been happier to see their daughter enjoying and excelling at something that they so dearly loved to do as a family.

The saying a ‘real job’ needs not be static and archaic it needs to be something that is dynamic and evolving. It needs to encompass multiple perspectives and most of all it need not be set by society’s pre-dispositions. I believe in striving towards a goal of finding one’s ‘real job’ but that ‘real job’ needs to be based on a criteria set by the individual’s personal beliefs and values for what is real and what is life. Ski Instructing may not be considered a ‘real job’ to some but to me on that day, teaching Silly Sally how to ski, I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be or anything I’d rather be doing. To me that was real.

Amazing post by my friend Kate.