I re-read it.
I tried to find the places in the post where I had derided workers, where I had shown my ignorance and lack of respect for workers and their respective professions, but I couldn't find any derision, just curiosity as to why we, in the West, have become lifelong creatures of work.
That is all.
The man who owns the little backstreet tailors shop, I actually feel warm and fuzzy when I cycle past his shop, and have been meaning to mention him for a long time, because it is rare to see such small businesses these days,what with the little shops having been gobbled up by the big ones, and so one day I had wanted to share the little bit of joy I feel when passing his shop, seeing him hang the shade cover on one of his south-facing cabinets, because seeing him there, come rain or shine, warms my heart.
I don't think, 'What a jerk for working', although I do wonder why MOST people DO work till 65, as if it's the only choice we have in this one lifetime of ours.
I don't think, 'What a jerk for working', although I do wonder why MOST people DO work till 65, as if it's the only choice we have in this one lifetime of ours.
How many of your girlfriends, boyfriends, wives or husbands think beyond the end of their noses, feel warmth for complete strangers, as often as I do?
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but I know I feel warmth for people daily, daily.
I don't think, 'Fcking idiot to still be working in the same dry cleaners ten years on'.
No, I think nice things about the lady whilst hoping that she doesn't get sick from working for so many years with such chemicals. Hey, I notice her, dammit, how many Princesses notice others?
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but I know I feel warmth for people daily, daily.
I don't think, 'Fcking idiot to still be working in the same dry cleaners ten years on'.
No, I think nice things about the lady whilst hoping that she doesn't get sick from working for so many years with such chemicals. Hey, I notice her, dammit, how many Princesses notice others?
And I show that warmth to people.
Really, living up at Residence K, and I truly think the K is for Kant now, because all the other residents, all foreign, are cold kants; the Chinese stick together even though I have tried to make conversation - 'Can I help you repair your bike' or 'Wow, that's a cool mini bike with a battery' - but to no avail, they ain't wantin' no friendship wi' me, d'ats for sure.
And the Americans there, a couple of women with long swishy hair, handbags and different clothes for each weekend, don't even make eye contact with me, even though I have tried to throw them an ice-breaking smile.
Like wtf, what became of basic social skills where you are friendly to your neighbors?
So don't accuse me of being a 'Princess' because I actually OBSERVE life and SMILE more than the kants at Resident K, or the miserable fcks walking around Warsaw or Vienna, and smiles sure do make the world a better place.
And this is a reason why I am loved by the man who loves me, because he likes how I interact with people, bringing warmth and laughter wherever we go; in hotel lobbies, on trains, when we run out of fuel in boondock Eastern Turkey, wherever and whatever the fck happens to us, little Miss Princess here shares a warmth and a love for life, with people, and for people, making friends and finding the time for others everywhere we have ever been. I'm far from being a stuck up 'I'm British, fuck off smelly foreigner' princess kant. That is for sure.
But to get back to the point of this post.
What I was thinking about this morning is how we, as humans in this modern age of intellectual maturity (compared to the cave men we came from) have wound up working for most of our one life during this one time offer of a life on planet earth. It wasn't a personal attack on 'the lifetime worker'.
The number of years that we work, that was the only point I was trying to make in the below post.
Forgive me for noticing grey haired people in suits but you have to remember that I am not the 99%.
Even before I met my guy, I was planning early retirement, I was getting all my ducks in a row to get the hell out of work dodge.
Then I met a like-minded person, who had been retired since he was 35, despite having a skill which he still uses for free on people, that he could of instead used daily for the rest of his life, or at least for the next 30 years, but no, he didn't want to work till 60. Shame on him, huh.
Was it bad of him to quit his full time profession for a life of travel and exploration instead?
Is he as much of a kant as I am for not wanting to be the 99%?
Is it any wonder that I fell for somebody who didn't get all guilt-ridden over not wanting to work till 60-plus?
And is it any wonder that almost daily, especially during this time, what with families meeting up for festivities, that I get reminded daily that he loves me for how I think, how I 'get it', how we planned our lives, both of us, individually preparing for our respective freedoms on different continents, how he thanks his lucky stars he met a like-minded person finally, and I feel the same way about him, thank fck I'm not having to deal with swimming up a river that has almost every other fish in it coming the opposite way.
Because I have swum with those people, in that river where people bitch and moan about having to work, could actually jack it all in if they weren't so greedy for the big houses and cars, but won't, and so remain miserable. The people I've met aren't getting all teary eyed and soppy over their careers, that's for sure, but they also aren't seeing how they could change their lives either. So it's bitch bitch bitch moan moan moan, 'you're so lucky', instead. Or in this case, 'Fck you Maria for putting workers down'. I wasn't.
Instead I think it's a damn long chunk of time out of one lifespan to be working, that's all, and that was my only point this morning.
My point wasn't to say that I'm better than the lifetime worker.
It was just to ask why we have become such creatures of labor.
Princess?
I appreciate more than you will ever know.
My heart warms when I make eye contact with garbage truck drivers across the planet, with street sweepers, with so many out there having to do the crap jobs, my empathy is HUGE for this planet, HUGE, and to be called a Princess, well, you've never met me, but if that's how you think I am from reading this blog, then well, that's who I am in your eyes, I can't help that. Hopefully my persona in real life isn't the kant that comes across in this blog.
Unless you're a fork biter, and then you will consider me a kant, but I don't care, I don't like fork biters.
Unless you're a fork biter, and then you will consider me a kant, but I don't care, I don't like fork biters.
You might be better off finding a new blog to read.
One that follows the frantic life of the single parent who is stressing about how her daughter is going to feel about her, now that she's found that her ex-husband is going to spend over a hundred pounds on a Christmas present, and now the daughter won't love her as much because she can't afford to spend as much.
Yeah, why not go and read about that kind of life.
Or the life of somebody devoting their life to their work.
Whatever.
This blog is soon gonna be about non-work related things.
It is going to follow the life of somebody who didn't want to work till she was 60 or devote 20 years of the best years of her life to raising children.
Princessy? Quite possibly.
But this life is just once and I'd feel like crap on my deathbed if I had used up my best years working, to then have maybe 10, 15, or 20 years in compromised health due to age, to do all that I had dreamt about doing whilst working till I virtually dropped.
I'm sorry if having the view that I have - that I don't want to work till 60 - is seen as disrespectful to those who do want to work till 60. I do not mean to offend and if you think little of me because of this choice, well, I can accept your opinion, and at least you have LOTS of people to keep you company while you selflessly work till 60 for the sake of the little children.
That's fine, we move in different circles, obviously.
I guess there's a reason why I balled my eyes out to UP. It was so sad that the couple's dream never came true.
It made me, more than ever, long to be free and live my dreams.
p.s Expressing my opinion on working till 60, doesn't mean that I think I am right or that I want people to change how they live their entire life. Not at all. It's just an opinion that doesn't seem to appear to the 99%.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
11 comments:
Only sometimes?
Call yourself a friend.
Fck you.
Are you gonna add something else or just keep returning to this comment thread?
Phew! I changed from anon just in time eh? hahaha
Bad day in blogland it seems.
Don't worry about it. I'll tell you a story.
There's this bloke Dave who doesn't like me. Actually it's worse than that, he quite obviously absolutely dispises me which I found odd because a. He doesn't know me and b. it's never happened before because, er, well, because i'm really nice. haha
One day I found out why. It was all Franks fault.
You see Dave is Franks friend and all of Daves opinions were formed by what Frank had told him when I first appeared on the scene.
I see Dave rarely at friends events like parties, weddings, family celebrations. At one of these after a few drinks I happened to be next to him and asked him straight out. Guinness has that effect on me. So he told me.
It started with 'who do you think you are'? Then a description followed including words such as cocky, arrogant, looking down my nose at people. None true and I talked him through it until it boiled down to Franks basic summary of me that I retired at 42 and spent large parts of the year sailing a yacht. So my arrogance and cockiness was actually me being happy and living a life that he could only dream of and him being jealous.
So, quite innocently, I was rubbing Daves nose in something that doesn't exist except in his own head because choosing a different path is a threat to him. Choosing a different path doesn't make my life better than his, just different because life still throws problems at you.
You could call your blog Frank instead of 222 because it can quite innocently have the same effect
Frank. He he he. That's such a funny anecdote and it picked me up, because yes, I had just sat in the bath practicing cutting my wrists with some Korean seaweed laver, and thank goodness it goes soft in the water, even though it has a somewhat sharp edge fresh out of the packet.
And wow, congratulations for freeing yourself at such a young age, too. I only have admiration for such people, I don't think, 'selfish buggers'.
It's like my surgeon getting mentioned in a rant at me below....how if he hadn't worked hard at being a surgeon, I'd be dead as a Dodo, and it read as if the surgeon was going to work till the end, you know, to save lives, instead of living his own life, but I have to add that my surgeon was in his early 30's, and had just got back from a 3 week scuba diving holiday in St Lucia, which is why I had to wait for my operation, and I really couldn't see him working till 60, he had more of the air of somebody doing a job, of course to save lives, but also to aid an abet in enjoyable pursuits in his own life. Na, I can't see that surgeon working till 60.
Well done for retiring young.
It's not often done.
M, just gloss over it. Certainly don't let it hurt your feelings.
Fuffy
In 2001 (the year of 9/11 - that's how I remember it) I was working for a well-known aero-engine company. One day, towards the end of my lunchbreak with several colleagues I saw about six guys walking single file, one behind the other, back to their offices. They were all dressed the same - black trousers and shoes, white shirts, ties... I found myself thinking out loud, "look at that - it looks like a line of worker robots heading back to work". Silence. Everyone looked at me and didn't say a thing. Then it dawned on me. We were all dressed the same, and were all about to head back to our offices. That was the moment I realised I had to get out, for the sake of my own sanity.
It took longer than I hoped to make my escape but as I write this I haven't done any paid work for the last two years. I take no money from the government or anybody. I'm 'only' 45 but if I can possibly manage it I won't ever have a 'proper' job again. The thought is just too depressing. My future lies in waterworld, away from the daily grind and the madness of mass unsustainable consumerism.
If anyone can manage to retire young then good look to the them. You only have one life. To spend most of it working for The Man is crazy.
Nice story, OccupyWW.
I've had moments like that, and whilst teaching has been pretty rewarding as a profession, I just don't get the default throw yourself into it for years and years deal.
My teacher friend, Japanese, is spending 26,000 dollars on a course over in Hawaii to make herself a better teacher - she's more than enough already for the kids here - and I already told her, WASTE OF FCKING TIME and your money, because the kids don't give a toss and what you can do already, which is speak fab English and know your grammar well enough to teach it without dribbling with frustration, is enough, and now you're gonna have to work way longer to pay it all off...ya should of just gone traveling for a year and spent at most 5k,or whatever.'
But she'll work till 60, she can't comprehend a life not doing so.
Then again, I think she actually enjoys her work, but the Japanese are different, they all seem to enjoy it, I reckon it's because their curiosity factor is the lowest on the planet, so work for them is an adventure, sick as it sounds.
Not everyone works because they have to, I do, but not some of the people that I work with. They just don't know what else to do with their time. They don't care to travel, can't imagine sitting around watching tv all day, and have naught else to do. Some are older and could retire, others are young and loaded, but they work to have something to do. It's not the choice I would make but I respect what they want to do. It's their life, they should live it however they want to.
I agree, Thor, and nowhere in my pontificating have I said that what they do is wrong, just that what such folks do is a bit weird, especially the ones who don't have to work, but do so because they can't think of something better to do, but I reckon a lot of people in those cases have kids they have to take care of or be around for, so that's another reason why they stay put, and staying at home all day, compared with going to a work place where there's some semblance of a social life, is probably preferable, to just staying at home, and also, you get paid, so you can eat out and so on, so I get it, I just don't wanna do the same thing myself, not having children is the biggest thing that has kept me free enough to be curious beyond borders, I guess.
..and I guess, this recent focus on talking about the WD-40 deal, is more part of a bigger observation on humans as a whole, how we have become trained to work for most of our lives, and not necessarily an attack on those who do so, I mean, it IS the norm, I'm just thinking about why it's become the norm, why folks allow it to be the norm, how it became the norm, and so on.
I think I should order the book that Duder recommended, it would be interesting to read something academic on this subject.
Hope you had a great TG, dude, and see you in 2012, for sure.
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