"Job" in Korean is a very simple sound ("Il") that sounds just like the number "one" in Korean, and for many people the job is No. 1. It takes up the No. 1 most amount of time on weekdays, it is our No. 1 way of attaining income, it's our No. 1 source of stress when we do have a job, it's No. 1 source of stress when we DON'T have one.
1.) Try not to let it be a measure of one's self-worth or value. I made the mistake of succumbing to that, and it's natural: my parents so thoroughly emphasized the need to have a job, I thought it was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and when I didn't have one I felt like a loser. Society does that too, there's a stigma of being unemployed or "fun-employed." Don't get suckered in! Many people who do have a job are awful, many people who don't have a job are great, or they're not working for other reasons.
2.) I get very excited about sending out resumes for jobs or going to interviews as the ads seem so cool. Great opportunity! Apply now! Excellent work atmosphere! The grass is always greener on the other side, but then I actually go the interview or start working somewhere and realize, it's not my dream job. I'm stuck at my desk again. Until I make a drastic change in profession (suddenly they need actors who speak English and all 3 CJK languages!) that sitting-at-a-desk thing isn't going to change too much.
3.) There are truly a LOT of jobs out there in the world. That's not to discourage or encourage job seekers, but just an observation of how many people are out there in the working world. I don't get out of my little cubicle or social bubble much, but when I do find myself in new places during working hours (for interviews, visiting friends, other occasions) I realize how many offices there are in the world, how many buildings in cities are full of occupied floors and rooms with people working in them, how many people are working at the stores and restaurants (not just the servers in the front but the kitchen staff you don't even see!), construction sites, even our apartment building has full time staff working the front! And I haven't even counted all the people working remotely from home/ self-employed! I guess it makes sense, as many age 18-65 people there are in the world, there's gotta be enough jobs for almost all of them, society's way of keeping everybody busy.
4.) Still a lot of office jobs like you'd see from a set of The Office, despite all the modernization and technology. Travel agencies, phone companies, etc. that you could have seen from the 1980's. Hell, 4 billion people don't have internet access. So despite what I hear (and desperately dread) about computers taking over everyone's jobs, that still hasn't arrived, if only because society needs to keep people busy and positive contributors to society.
5.) I might have talked about this already, but it'd be really nice to space out shifts for going to work to space out rush hour, having some people arrive around 7AM and leave by 3PM, and some people come from 11AM and leave by 7PM. To some extent this already happens, but the 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 creates way too much of a bottleneck for traffic and even elevators going up floors. (I work at a 15-floor building with SIX elevators and it still takes a while for the elevator to come.) Maybe schools can do the same? The most wondrous time for commuters is during the holidays when schools are out and some people have gone on vacation, it's a world of difference in the commuting time and stress.
6.) I still get surprised sometimes by unique jobs that I didn't know you could get paid for. "That's actually a job?" is something I ask frequently, and sometimes when I scroll through Craigslist. This coming from someone who didn't really know how a Youtuber worked (btw, the most fashionable job that kids want to have when they grow up nowadays). I KNEW when Youtube first came out in 2006 and the lonelygirl15 videos become a sensation (but then was revealed as a hoax) that Youtube was going to be big and a creator of jobs!
7.) Not having a job can seem like the loneliest thing in the world, I know from experience (I once described it as being in a room full of people at first but then others gradually being called out for this awesome opportunity and slowly the room dwindling down to just you, and you're left behind). Well, after having been there I can say that actually getting a job isn't THAT great, I sometimes wonder at work whether I'd be better off back on the other side spending my precious life "living my life" than just pursuing the money, most people don't necessarily like their jobs (some lucky few like me kinda do, the ultimate goal for everyone is to do something that they love!). A job makes one emotional like that: it's like chocolate: you want it desperately when you don't have it, but once you have it you wonder how much more of it you can take.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
No comments:
Post a Comment