This is about something that is seriously on-topic for a list like futurework, but you all know me well enough already, don't you! It's going to come from an unexpected angle! It's the only angle I know!
Public school, insurance education, draft service. With all that out of the way it's January 1967 in my life. I signed up for a 2 year high school course starting in August, but at least until then and maybe getting a student loan of sorts I needed to earn some money to support myself. The physical life of the draft service had made it clear to me that I was not going back to office work, which makes it silly that I would aim for university entrance via high school. But then I was silly, so shoot me, I was 21 and hadn't found my own feet in life yet. Anyway, I needed something quick and dirty, you go in through the door, you're hired, and you've got yourself a job. Newspaper man! A company here that distributed morning newspapers. Requirements, a bicycle and stamina. I had both. Little did I know that that would be my job for 17 years. 1 route per day. That wasn't quite enough to live on, but after a few weeks I was asked if I could take extra routes, so there it was, now it began to look sensible moneywise. However, it was mostly during the winter months that they needed it, and one route per day was a workday shorter than 2 hours! See what I mean? I still remember how it was for me to have all those shorter-than-2-hour workdays in the beginning. It's so close to fulltime unemployment, and even I sat with my morning coffee after work with the full load of the rest of my life literally on my lap and felt the desperation creeping in on me. That's a lot of time to fill out with something yourself! Sure, I couldn't know anything about the rest of my life, but the feeling of desperation was there nevertheless. I simply don't remember how I got over it. I guess it was just the power of habit, as days went by. I have no other explanation. For 17 years my average week was 25 hours plus 2 out of 4 years as a night watchman 20 hours, the other 2 fulltime. In the end it destroyed what is called the "circadian rhythm", and I had to go on welfare in 1988. The night watchman job, obviously, was night work, 12 hours workdays. The newspaper job was from 4 A.M. 6 days a week (including Saturdays) with a workday anywhere from a couple of hours to 7-8. Only after I had stopped working did I realize that for 17 years I had not had 24 hour days, but 12! Because your sleep periods define it, and I had twice a day, before and after work with workdays that didn't even have the same fixed length. Don't do that, not for 17 years, it's madness, but I didn't know it, even if I could see clearly afterwards how much I had abused myself and neglected my basic needs for sleep and regularity in order to manage the job. Especially the weekends. Sundays, I didn't get up at 4 in the morning, when I didn't need to get out the door for work, who would ever do something like that. So the weekends were the absolute breakpoints of the whole thing. I "crashed" into those days and somehow nevertheless got out the door for work on Mondays at 4 A.M. However, as my posts up to this one should indicate I could and I did go from a worklife to jobless from one day to the next with no problem at all, and it has continued to this day, because the centre of my life has always been outside of school or work, in my spare time. And that is where it should be! I don't know how I do it, I just do it. Most people don't. They can take a few weeks or months at best of unemployment, then they get bored and desperate for a job again. Never mind the money. It is secondary to this issue: Where do you have the centre of your life? So it is not true what is commonly thought, claimed and supported by unemployment research about unemployment and its bad, bad consequences for your self-esteem and what not! It's not what you do, it's what you are! And if you are what I am, *then* money might be your primary worry, but also the only one. The researchers know the truth. It's in their results. The much talked about bad consequences of unemployment are about many or most unemployed, but not everybody. Not someone like me. So how come they are not curious about what it is about people that causes the difference? They could just ask me. I know everything there is to know about it after 23-24 years without a job and counting! Viggo. P.S. The high school course was dropped after a few weeks. It bored me like hell! When I was at the school to return the books I talked with some of my now former classmates. They agreed with me, but as one of them said to me they had just ripped those 2 years off the calendar to get their graduation and continue with a university study. Even now it makes me shake my head in disbelief. That is dumber than anything I have ever done in my life. I have never regretted my decision to drop that wasteland of boredom. I have paid dearly for my worklife, and I'll do it for the rest of my life, I can't manage normal daily, regular rhythm and haven't had such a life since 1966. It's like a straight jacket to me. 3-4 days at a time, if I have to, then a couple of days later my day is turned upside down with daytime turned to "night" and nighttime to "day". But seeing what I got out of it, then it also rewarded me with life experiences and insights that I would not have wanted to miss out on for anything in the world. Professor title, fatcat salaries etc. Not me. I don't give a damn about such things. It's not where the centre of my life has ever been. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
