The Curse of Having a Job

It recently dawned upon me.

Since I graduated from University, the obvious aim was to get a job. That's just how society works; you get an education, you get a job, you earn a living. Some people also get a further education, then a better job, and so on. But thats a restraint society has placed on us. Its not a formal restraint; nobody tells us we HAVE to do it. But we all know we need to, otherwise where on earth would we have the money to survive? And the thing is, this job kills us, whether spiritually, creatively, or any other way, it does something to us.

A few people make it out of this situation; whether they are born rich and don't need to work, whether they manage to open up a business and something they love, or whatever it is. But the reality is that most of us are stuck in this frame of mind of having to have a normal job.

Don't get me wrong; i'm not the kind of person who is a lazy bum and wants to do nothing all day - that's not the point of this blog, and I don't want to promote hate for your job. After all, it pays the bills.

But..

Here's the thing. Back in school and in college, I was probably the most creative person there. I had a wild imagination, and would start thinking of ideas to come up with things like my own movies (home-made of course), music production, remixes, books, whatever it was. Stuff most people can do if they had any free time. However, since I graduated, consecutively each job I took was more stressful and time consuming than the previous one. And slowly, with the long working hours, the stress, the dying brain cells, the hair loss (from pulling it out of course), any creativity and imagination I had started to slowly drip away.

I didn't directly realize this of course. You just get sucked into the job world and it becomes your priority. Not family, not free time, not you hobbies, and not anything else. You live to work. That's how it becomes. You have no accomplishments in life besides, oh I did this at work, I did that at work.

So anyway, if you read the blog below this, you will realize that I decided to leave my last job on a whim. Went to the US and stayed there for a while with my wife, doing nothing much in terms of career, but a lot in terms of reworking my creativity, bringing my imagination back. It's not like I did it on purpose, it just happened when I had nothing to fill up my time and mind 24/7. So I came up with ideas of filming my own movies, creating my own music, etc etc. All sorts of things people would enjoy doing in their free time, but would never have a chance. You leave work tired and don't feel like doing anything.

At first I was pretty upset at not doing anything, no job etc. I did in fact get a job but it wasn't working out too well so I just left. I felt useless. And my wife kept telling me, you need this, think of it as a vacation, calm down. But I kept kicking myself for not doing much. All through this time the ideas started coming back; I can do this, I can do that etc.

So now i'm back in Bahrain 6 months later, and applying for jobs. Obviously there is a lot of free time to fill, so through the creativity and with my mind refreshed, i've managed to come up with a bunch of ideas. I'm actually directing a movie right now; me and a few friends started filming a few days ago, and these aren't any useless old movies. No. They're movies with strong messages hidden under the comedy and acting. And i've started making music again. I've been writing this blog for a while now. All this since i've left my work.

Don't confuse the fact of being bored and having nothing to do with not working. Work kills your creativity. Being bored is just, well, being bored. I've gotten a lot of free time, and time away from work to engage my mind in other things, things I haven't thought about for a while. But you know what, it feels good. I feel a bit younger now, and I feel a lot better.

Stay tuned, i'll post my movies and all of my other productions here in the near future, as they are completed. This does feel good. Its a much better feeling than coming back from work after a long day of stress, and slumping down in bed, or on the couch, and not wanting to do anything for the rest of the day.

My next job won't be so stressful. Just something to bring in some money. It won't take over my life, even though i'll work very hard at it. Just keep a look out for my other accomplishments.