Is it a Gemini thing to just be distracted so easily that I don't have anything I've done all my life or is that just a me thing?
Schools are so career focused now that we may as well be asking pet humans (small, young people), as soon as they can hold a conversation, what uniform to order them for when they're job-hunting. I was never really that decisive about careers - or anything, for that matter - but explored many options. I only took Drama at University because higher education was the natural path for anyone clever and I was particularly good at Drama-related things. I still don't exactly know what I want to do for the rest of my life but I'd quite like to try many things. That's the problem: employers don't want you to be adventurous, they want you to stay in the company forever. To move half your possessions in, train like a Labrador at Crufts and sign your life on the dotted line.
It doesn't help that most jobs require experience. The catch-22. I'm an unlikely employee of Mitchell and Butlers because, I'm told, in this 'economic climate' to get a bar/waiter job one has to have bar/waiter experience. It's because I'm likeable that I'm still there, apparently, and haven't been shunted out by someone with a one-track CV. Is it any wonder there's an ethos of being miserable in a loathsome job? Not mine, I actually quite like mine. But in general, I'm saying.
Life is much more interesting than a job. Granted, there are brilliant jobs out there for people who have enough training. For PhD students/graduates, for example. Yes, well done, you've spent a bazillion hours at University. Here, have an excellently paid job that you enjoy and in which you are treated like a God. Also welcome to half-way-up-the-career-ladder.
For those of us who aren't sure yet, there's the beauty of unpaid experience to be had. And even then, you have to have experience to get that. The catch-22. Sure, if you show enough enthusiasm and knowledge you can get most entry-level jobs. But that's on the off chance that you're not in competition with someone who has had that same job already in a different company or city.
So many of my working friends look forward to days off or holidays and cheer when there's a bank holiday. That's because life starts then. Some find life in a lay-in, a huge breakfast and lazing about with a film or a book. Some go off and get exhausted up mountains or on squillion mile walks. Either way, life doesn't include work. I'm moving to Essex in the summer and I'm spending most of my time researching running clubs and scanning the map of the area to spot good lengthy runs to complement my upcoming training. The snow is finally gone which meant that last night/this morning after work I ran home just to enjoy the non-slippy ground again. And I bounded out of bed to stride over to the corner shop in record time to get the Sunday paper before breakfast, grinning that I could finally do that rather than timidly balancing on the ice. The snow/ice was work. Now it's gone, I'm full of life.
The point I'm trying to make, in a very me way, is that employers should really loosen up and see transferable skills as an actual thing. I was taught that they are fantastic and mean that you can sell yourself to any company. Apparently that was just because I was so excited by all of the careers that it was my only get-out-of-jail card. Invest in people, good companies. People are good. People are interesting, happy and have life in them. Career drones are robots, programmed to be so single-minded that there's no room for adaptation. People are so much more fun.
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