F**k 2.4

"Nobody is forced to do [a] job and if they don't like it, they should do another one.”  The iconic Karl Lagerfeld’s careers advice hardly affords a nod to the current economic climate, but happening across this statement as a recently-unemployed graduate just a couple of months ago, I confess I felt a sort of affinity with Karl’s seemingly cavalier philosophy.

Whenever anybody asked me what I was doing at the time, my response was always met with ‘the face’.  The ‘never mind, I’m sure something will come up soon’ face.  Pained expressions and sympathetic tones in abundance.

That's alright for him to say.

I graduated from University in 2009 amid the height of the economic recession.  Before I had even sat my finals, I spent months applying for jobs regardless of industry, job title or level of responsibility.  Even with two years administrative experience (an advantage I held over most new graduates), I found the job market extremely hostile, with most applications remaining unanswered or rejected.  When eventually I was offered a modest sales support position commencing the day after my final exam, I didn’t hesitate to accept.  Shrouded in the reassuringly snug blanket of employment, I resolved to worry about the rest of my life when I got there.  The fact is that it was a full-time job with prospects.  And that’s what everybody wants, right?

For a while everything was fine, and the joyous monthly appointment universally recognised as pay day reliably delivered.  But as time rumbled monotonously on, I began to find myself wondering about certain aspirations.  Specifically, the aspirations I had possessed as a child, a teenager, and as a young woman.   The blanket that had once felt so reassuring now just felt suffocating, as I became increasingly aware of stirrings of something bearing an alarming resemblance to disappointment.   

Unfulfilled, uninspired and unconvinced that there shouldn’t be more to life, naturally I decided to give up my job, relocate to the city, and start again.  All sensibility out the window, I waved goodbye to my box factory (literally) job, and headed off in pursuit of a fresh start.

But it ain't easy, and it certainly ain't pretty.  The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that from the age of about 14, we’re almost corn-fed an ideal.  We’re ushered into careers advice seminars, interview ‘workshops’, and lest we forget the dreaded P.S.E days, which would feature regularly throughout high school, offering guidance on how to bound comfortably through the assault course of hoops laid out for us; university, career, house, marriage and children.  Preferably in that order.

2.4

I’m not suggesting we should all throw caution to the wind in the name of some terribly lightweight romantic notion of following our dreams.  I think that most of us can safely acknowledge that that simply isn’t how life works.  There are only so many Adele's in the world, and if you ain't got it now you're never gonna, sister.  One of the most inspiring women I know lives for her family.  She’s worked the same job for over three decades, Monday to Friday, nine until five.  And that suits her just fine thank-you, because her success story is the family that she has devoted her life to building, and that she is proud to call her own.

I just can’t help feeling as though the unwritten framework is rather too clinical to recognise that people develop and respond to different motivating factors in life, whether that be money, family, stability, creativity, or something else entirely. 

My point is this: if you care enough about achieving something, and it’s financially viable to try (no matter how many months beans on toast feature as the tea-time staple), then don’t you owe it to yourself to at least give it a go? What’s wrong with wanting a coveted career and being prepared to work for it, sometimes for very little in the way of recompense, and sometimes for none at all?  If it means that in five years, ten years, or even twenty years I’ll be doing something that I believe is truly worthwhile and that inspires me to produce the best work I can, surely that’s worth more than sacrificing precious time to a half-hearted 9-5 slog in the name of exalting others’ expectations.  No?