-Albert Camus
Webster's Dictionary defines work as "the occupation for which you are paid". It stands to reason that if you figure in Camus's above-mentioned view, you should damn well be performing work that is soulful and vibrant or a great repression can and will blanket your life. This blanket is wholly smothering and will affect every corner of your existence, even -- and especially -- those corners of your life that are far away from your place of employment.
Webster's Dictionary defines work as "the occupation for which you are paid". It stands to reason that if you figure in Camus's above-mentioned view, you should damn well be performing work that is soulful and vibrant or a great repression can and will blanket your life. This blanket is wholly smothering and will affect every corner of your existence, even -- and especially -- those corners of your life that are far away from your place of employment.
I don't hate my job. That's my problem. Hate is a strong motivator, and for me, when I hate a situation I'm in, I do everything in my power to get the hell out of it. I have a tremendous respect for and sense of self-preservation. But while I don't hate my current work, while it's not sheer torture for me to show up in the mornings, I don't love it -- or even remotely like it -- either. For some, it's a dream job. For me, it's not, for the simple yet frustratingly complicated reason that it's just not what I want to be doing.
Herein lies the Great Dilemma of My Life. The two occupations I've ever felt born to do (italics are vital here) are not traditionally "easy" professions. They aren't jobs you just surf the classifieds, submit a resume, have an interview, and show up on your first day in a dandy new pair of slacks with a Dilbert coffee mug in hand. The fields of acting (film, television, theater) and writing (books, journalism, copy) are terrains one must "break into". The number of actors who won an Oscar for their first role are minimal; the writers who publish their debut manuscript are virtually nonexistent. I tend to look at people like Marlee Matlin (who won an Academy Award for her first movie) and Margaret Mitchell (who never published anything before or after "Gone With the Wind") as unicorns or Santa Clauses. They can't possibly be real. For the rest of us, a lifetime of 40-hour work weeks, water cooler gossip, and monotonous drudgery are the standard until we just might happen upon a break of some kind.
40 hours a week. That is such a huge chunk of our lives. That's well over two thousand hours every year that we devote to work that isn't at all rewarding. Most people can do this, and, given my yen for the stage, you'd think I'd be an old pro at walking into crappy jobs with a crappy smile. And up until now, I've always been able to pull it off. But lately, as I get older, I realize there is an inherent danger to keeping up these appearances. Camus's stifling is very real. In the past, what I only sensed on the periphery has now become physically and emotionally manifest in my life. It bleeds into everything I do.
Two thousand hours+ per year. Think about that.
Herein lies the Great Dilemma of My Life. The two occupations I've ever felt born to do (italics are vital here) are not traditionally "easy" professions. They aren't jobs you just surf the classifieds, submit a resume, have an interview, and show up on your first day in a dandy new pair of slacks with a Dilbert coffee mug in hand. The fields of acting (film, television, theater) and writing (books, journalism, copy) are terrains one must "break into". The number of actors who won an Oscar for their first role are minimal; the writers who publish their debut manuscript are virtually nonexistent. I tend to look at people like Marlee Matlin (who won an Academy Award for her first movie) and Margaret Mitchell (who never published anything before or after "Gone With the Wind") as unicorns or Santa Clauses. They can't possibly be real. For the rest of us, a lifetime of 40-hour work weeks, water cooler gossip, and monotonous drudgery are the standard until we just might happen upon a break of some kind.
40 hours a week. That is such a huge chunk of our lives. That's well over two thousand hours every year that we devote to work that isn't at all rewarding. Most people can do this, and, given my yen for the stage, you'd think I'd be an old pro at walking into crappy jobs with a crappy smile. And up until now, I've always been able to pull it off. But lately, as I get older, I realize there is an inherent danger to keeping up these appearances. Camus's stifling is very real. In the past, what I only sensed on the periphery has now become physically and emotionally manifest in my life. It bleeds into everything I do.
Two thousand hours+ per year. Think about that.
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