For a while now I’ve been onto
the sham. You may be familiar with it. You see it all the time from experts.
Particularly people who have business degrees and go to seminars. It’s this
idea that you really love ‘what you do,’ that by being an expert in something
it automatically makes you love it. I am a grocer, I stock shelves at a grocery
store, I do not love it. I could tell you anything you needed to know about the
grocery store I work at, you could call me an expert, but I don’t love it. I am
also a student studying Forestry for a Bachelor’s of Science. I wanted to get
the degree because I like camping and hiking. I do not like forestry. I do not
like being a student even. What I like is going to parties, playing disk golf,
making friends, trying drugs, etc. I find some of the subjects I have learned
in school interesting, but when I am asked to do a project I resent it, just as
I have resented any job I have ever had. The reason for this dawned on me
recently. It’s not the content of what you do that is the problem. It’s whose
work you are doing. If I am working to complete a project assigned to me, or commanded
of me… I am against it. Anything that is of my own volition, I love it. I
consider myself to be exceptionally good at drawing things: people, horses,
animals, cars, scenery, even cartoon characters, I can re-create with a pencil
quite well. This is not because I was taught this. This is because I really
enjoyed drawing as a kid and spent a lot of time doing it. I have been taught
to try to learn to love things I don’t like. To “learn to love your job!” selling
useless products that are bad for people to people who don’t really want them
anyway, “after all it’s what you do!” I was taught to self-propagate enthusiasm
for shit jobs with low pay. It’s just a coping mechanism to pretend you like
what you do. I say fuck that. I don’t need much money to live happily, get
along fine, travel wide, and have meaningful relationships. Food is cheap, possible
friends are everywhere, housing is attainable. None of this requires you commit
your life to 40+ hours a week of slave labor for 40+ years just to buy cable, internet, Starbucks,
Netflicks, Panera Bread, H&M clothes, shoes, fucking DVD’s and BluRays,
insurance and cars and clothes and clothes and clothes.
Free your life
