Wednesday 25 March 2009

Working to live, or living to work?

The observant among you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in a long time...

The last post was in support of my application to the best job in the world. I have long since discovered that I failed to get that job, so my continued lack of blogging isn't down to that...

So, I hear you ask, "Why haven't you been blogging then?"

Well, the clue to that question is in the title of this blog. I found a job eventually. It wasn't the best job in the world. It wasn't even the second best... I suspect it may be among the worst jobs in the world in fact....

So, the reason that I haven't been blogging is mostly because I have been working 6 days a week until 8pm every night. So this brings me to the point of the post. I've always been the type of person that works to live, meaning that work isn't the most important thing in my life. It is something that I do so that I can have enough money to get on with the real business of living... Spending time with friends, spending time with myself, appreciating the world generally.

The problem with this new job that I've found is that it is taking over my life It is the type of job that makes itself into a job that you have to live for. If you aren't giving it your life it makes you feel like you should be, and because it is in sales, the people that are running the job are extremely good at convincing people of what they should be doing/feeling/saying...

Luckily I'm a very strong character. I'm resisting their attempts to brainwash me into a sales machine. I think I'm going to give them a portion of my life for a month or so, then I'll get out of their and hopefully I'll never have to sell anything again. The training has been useful though. Once I was considering paying good money to have the sort of training they have been giving me for free (OK, so it wasn't the same training, but effectively the same...). Always finding the up-side, that's me.

Maybe there is even an up-side to giving your life up for a job... If there is, for sure I'll find it!

4 comments:

the blogger said...

so glad you finally blogged again.

for the company work for right now, i have given most of my time for it. i hope it will pay me back more than what i have dedicated to one day. However, every day I learn sth ...even though sometimes it's boring. At this point, I've become sth ppl called an expert in xxx thing so I think that's a treasure that has been settled in me.

anyway, if you have seen the film, The Devils Wears Prada, sometimes I have to ask myself whether I'm selling my soul or not because I wasn't born as a luxurious person.

So I understand your feeling that you don't want to be brainwashed to be (really) in sales field :-)

Anonymous said...

I think a finite period is a good idea. Those kind of sales jobs can get soul destroying after a while.

Good luck with things (and nice to have you back)

Miss J said...

First of all, you didn't blog cos you're lazy! :P
And yea sales jobs can suck you in if you do it for too long.
But I disagree with work to live or live to work. I think one should enjoy and love their job and also enjoy living. Of course, sometimes sadly it's hard to love your job depending on what you do...

Ying Ying said...

Find a new job already!