Back to work

Yesterday, I started a new job. First days are always daunting. You don’t know where they keep the coffee cups (next to the water cooler), or if anyone will ask you to go to lunch with them (they didn’t). However, I am more daunted by the thought that work will become the meaning of my life.

It is very easy to define ourselves by what we do from nine to five, or more usually, nine til whatever time in the evening one can pry oneself from the desk without risking long stares and reprimand. There are people who truly do give the best days of their best years to their careers and whose entire focus is upon bounding up the career ladder, or increasing their market share. That is a personal choice like any other however, while as a friend or parent you may be irreplaceable, when you leave a position of employment it will be just a matter of days before another young upstart gets a feel for your role, sits at your desk and reads all your old emails. This arrogant creature may even do a better job than you did. And you will have to live with this. In fact, it’s probably a good idea that you make peace with this idea now.

Work might feel like your second home, but it’s always an occupation with an end limit, even when the business is your own. Call me unfocused, but I've always believed in preparing for the time when there is no work to do and nowhere to go from Monday to Friday. I think that the best way to do this is to share my energies across the span of my life, rather than focusing all my attention upon my career.

I’m trying to keep this in mind as I travel south from the city to my place of employment (which, in ironic fashion, is located in the leafy suburbs). I’m also trying to keep in mind that during these tough economic times, a job is a job and it’s best to smile and keep the head up than drown in the mundanities of working life. And this is the other thing that I have been contemplating since I left the office yesterday afternoon: work is work.

While we often become very close to the people we meet there and enjoy all of the office banter that floats above the heads of the assembled worker bees throughout the day, there are many things about working that are unpleasant (getting up early in the morning for one), but they still have to be done. Other aspects of employment fascinate us and require us to invest ourselves both intellectually and emotionally in projects that we work on. There is a danger in becoming too preoccupied by the fascinating aspects of our jobs, or indeed by the fact that our job fails to stimulate us.

When you return to work after a long absence you imagine that working will give you a useful purpose in life and that between open and close of business you will be called upon to give the best of your intellect and to share the greatest depths of your creativity. This is rarely the case and little gets done without some hard slog.

So, to any of you who are out there searching for work (as I have been in recent weeks) or bemoaning the fact that you no longer have a job to go to, for whatever reason, remember this: most of what the average worker does in any day is utterly mind numbing.

And to those of you who might be considered work-aholics: Get a life, because if you don't, one day you'll be unemployed/ retired/ on extended leave and if you've no extra curricular activities on the go now, then it will be overwhelming to involve yourself in sufficient activities to keep yourself occupied and, crucially, fullfilled.

We are who we are, not what our job title describes us as. Wish me luck in keeping sight of this fact.