Friday, June 25, 2010

Jobs vs. Business

To take a break from my rants of boredom, this is a change for the new... Instead of venting about life, good or [I admit, mostly] bad, tonight, we present a new episode... Especially if nothing really happened in the past day except more house cleaning.

So, while taking a break from the tedious amounts of cleaning that I'm doing (thanks mom; if you'd let me clean it my way I could be enjoying this house or even taking a nice dip in the pool right now), lying on the couch and listening to Road to Nowhere by Ozzy (although not many of the lyrics apply), I set aside the fact that I'm bitter about not going to neither the MonaVie Convention as a jumpstart to a many-month-long hiatus brought on by the ups-and-downs of life, nor the fact that I'm not at a rave that I've been dreaming of going to even before I started raving, the Electric Daisy Carnival and started thinking...

Why would people choose to go to a job instead of going into business?

Call it the fact that both my parents are very entrepreneurial-minded, maybe I just love my freedom, or well, I'm not a big believer in astrology but do find some aspects surprisingly accurate, but us Sagittariuses value the feeling of doing things at a whim and not being bogged down, but I'm only 24, at or close to the age where people are wrapping up their collegiate studies at a 4-year university and already don't see a point in working.

Am I a spoiled brat? Maybe, maybe not, depending on how you view my life. Am I ungrateful to bosses? Sure, I view BOSS spelled backwards "SSOBs" or (Super Sons oBitches), but when I do have a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke, Joker of the Boss, Jarring Opposition of your Bank), even though I grow tired of it easy and quickly find all the injustices (e.g. favoritism, pulling the rank card, etc.), at the end of it all, I'm just glad it pays the bills, and often outraged that I go the extra mile for them and don't see any appreciation.

However, the one thing I DO NOT get is why or how people get to be so job-minded. Granted, some of us have been taught since youth to get good grades to get a good job, some of our friends totally value the job ecosystem and even recommend you work with them or recommend places, and society as a whole seems to put "unemployment rates" on a huge scale, but how many people truly get to enjoy running their own "ecosystem" and even having it on autopilot?

That's where most people who even dare to separate from the herds of sheep (one of my mentors even called it "sheeple") get sharp criticism and violent opposition... It's the same struggles that our greatest minds had to encounter! Columbus, Galileo, Einstein, even "Not Sure" in Idiocracy... OK that one went a bit far, but you get my point. Even recently, a friend even went as far as calling me childish, dreamy, unrealistic and naive when that person hasn't experienced freedom from a J.O.B at its best.

Lots of people think that the days away from a job are their worse; I beg to differ. Even though yes, there are negative consequences like not being able to pay bills or buy food without a backup plan for me, but it just simply means I gotta watch my wallet more... But what does the J.O.B. crowd have to look forward to? 40 years of work, from 25 until 65 (maybe more; I heard they're raising the retirement age), 40 hours per week (if you're lucky... 9 to 5 isn't so much so anymore; I haven't got one since I entered the J.O.B world; it's 10-7, 9-6 and the closest 9-5:30, and so on!); living off 40% of their income (that is, if they're wise enough to save up... There's a surprising amount of people that haven't)?

So, congratulations, you hopefully and ideally retire at 65. Most people usually have the fortune of working at the same job for most of their adult life and there's the gold watch as a gift. Nowadays, you're lucky to stay in the same company for more than 3 years, and you can just kiss that watch goodbye; maybe even just a Wal-Mart watch if the boss isn't stingy or trying to keep his head above water. Maybe there is no watch; who knows? Maybe it's a "thanks for working here" with the sincerity of a disgruntled, antisocial 18 year-old gas station worker whose boss just ordered him to say "thanks for stopping by".

Also, the job scene is getting tighter and tighter; there has been periods where sitting around and idly chit-chatting was acceptable, and the rules weren't as strict, and work was actually somewhat pleasant... Nowadays, one person is doing at least 3 people's work, you can't even check your email on your lunch break anymore, and God forbid if you take a day off to see your son's graduation, it's double the work tomorrow if the boss is somewhat lenient, threatened to be fired the next day if it's less, or actually fired if the person has lost touch of reality, which is my take on a lot of bosses. But when you're working more than 40 hours, do you REALLY have time to do the stuff you want to do?

Also gone is the days of housewives... Just about everybody needs a dual income to keep their heads above water, so we are either entrusting our parents if they still have the patience and energy to take care of their grandkids, or paying a huge amount for their kids to be in a daycare, where you're entrusting strangers to take care of their needs (and usually not right away; like they'll stay in their soiled diaper for 15 minutes before they tend to your kid... I dunno, it's speculation since that's how nursing homes treat our old these days), with parents missing MANY milestones of their children! I mean, for both husband and wife to work, it doesn't leave a lot of time to do stuff... They'll do grocery shopping when they least feel like it; before or after work, perhaps drop their clothes off at the cleaners, do at least 2-3 other errands, then your boss needs something on the way back, check your email if the boss doesn't have any policies against it, then lunch optional during an hour-long lunch break, and then do other errands after work, praying that it's not closed.

Then, enter your health at 65... When you're planning your future at your mid-20s or so... You'd say "I want to go skydiving" or "drive cross-country in a Cadillac" or whatever. Then you look at the fact you had a heart attack last year, you're driving a 15 year-old Corolla and how you seem to have no energy during the day and say "forget it, I can't do this stuff!"...

Is this a life worth living? If a single guy who doesn't even have kids can see this at 24, how come many people live to their 70s still believing J.O.Bs are the way to go and business is simply not an option?

Personally, I LOVE my time freedom too much to EVER go back to a job. EVER. I usually wake up whenever I want to, do what I want, and sleep whenever I want. Doesn't that sound like a beautiful life?