Don’t forget your shovel…

For the last year and a half I have found working life to be quite the necessary evil. I complained about the horrors of getting up on a Saturday morning at 8 o’ clock and donned the uniform applicable to whatever position I was holding at the time. I complained about the arrogance and selfishness of the customers who passed through our doors and the awkward journeys planned around bus times or parking spaces in areas which could at best be described as ‘remote’. But, as is often pointed out to the occupants of the Emerald Isles, are we not happiest when we are complaining? It’s a great way of making conversation and gets our mind off the terrifying possibility that we may, even temporarily, be content with the majority of our circumstances. Along with this, and probably most importantly, it served to facilitate my flippant and erratic spending nature not uncommon among the children of the Celtic Tiger (the Irish Cubs, as it were). While I needed employment in this way, I always looked forward to the time where I could enjoy whole weekends without work. College was for me a far more preferable experience than weekends regardless of social nights out which, if anything, made Sunday mornings even less tolerable. Over the Christmas period I finally saw this dream realised, and became another ‘victim of the recession’. While fellow workmates around me were depressed about their change in employment status, I held a casual optimism that I might enjoy my lessened workload. I found, to my slight surprise, that there is absolutely nothing to do. All the nights out, the house parties and daytime activities of the weeks following Christmas paled in comparison to the hours of (usually hung-over) absolute boredom. It wasn’t that I was doing less than usual, but there was no real content to fill the void work left in my week. That said, I have never been one for structure and organisation in one’s life. I hated the monotony of school, and the idea of your average 9 to 5 full time job is enough to terrify me into becoming a writer of Jane Austen style classical romance novels. I had originally planned to become a psychologist but if someone needs to hear advice from me then they are almost certainly beyond help. Apart from that I had no idea what profession I would like to follow. It was in this regard that I chose Arts to point my life in the broadest direction, then selected philosophy so I could think about the Liberty Principle and become rich somehow. Now, however, I’m finding that the latter part of that formula is something of a weak link. I find myself in a time of a tough economic cutbacks and it seems that nobody wants to employ a prospective philosopher to be a part of their goal-driven workforce anymore. I’ve been listening to the Economist’s podcasts as they emphasise the fact that the entrepreneurial among us will survive these turbulent times, provided that they generate innovative, efficient business ideas. This is good news, because it’s possible that someone of this nature will hire me. Anyone who remembers RTE in the 80’s (or subsequent repeats) will recall the series ‘Strumpet City’ and its portrayal how of Irish unemployment was seen as not only acceptable, but cool at the start of the century (At least I think that’s what it portrayed; I wasn’t alive in the 80’s). It seems that such a thing maybe reoccurring, considering how the term “unemployment” is appearing in newspapers and on television more times than the word “the”, so I don’t for a second think I have it worse off than the multitude of others facing the same problem. What I need more than anything is a pastime, something I enjoy but which I can also make money from. It seems like a mammoth task, granted, but my 10 hour a week timetable (philosophy isn’t looking too bad now is it, bitches?) is nothing if not allowing for me to find such a divine livelihood. So I will spend the remaining year and a half in this quest. Until then, you can just call me “Rashers” Murphy.