Working for the soul
I realised this morning that I don't have a job any more.
I also got out of bed this morning and had a flashback to one of the worst jobs I ever had. I was in my early 20s and just started teaching, but was working during the Easter holidays to supplement my teaching salary in order to fund a trip to South America.
I’d joined a temp agency and was being sent wherever there was work. This particular job was in a call centre for vacuum cleaners and I was on the switch board. I had to sit in a tiny room with no windows for seven days and answer the phone. Not conversationally, simply pick up, listen to their number request and press a button.
Whilst I pivoted the experience in my favour and read several novels in between answering the phone, the resonance of those seven long days remains scarred in my bones. Each morning I would lie in bed full of emptiness at the thought of the day ahead – within me there was no will, no purpose, no joy, no motivation, no meaning. Just utter soul-depletion. Time became my obsession; the clock that never seemed to move like a drain on my soul.
But it was a job, it paid good money and I was grateful at the time.
I’ve had lots of jobs over the years before and alongside teaching: waitressing, running a bar; shop and ice-cream parlour; working on farms, in supermarkets, cafés and call-centres – even working for the Tasmanian rainforest commission at one point. All served a purpose but all just jobs.
I’ve also been lucky to find a vocation, working as a teacher since I was twenty-two which gave me so many years of joy and energy, meaning and purpose. And yet, whilst I always happily stepped out of bed each morning, I also exhaustedly flopped into bed each evening, as the role (as all teachers will know) drained me physically, mentally and emotionally.
In 2012 I gave up my ‘career’ and spent time searching for that sweet spot – sometimes called Ikigai – where I knew I could find myself – the place where passion and purpose, mission and meaning meet with enough money to pay the bills.
What I found on my search was livelihood.
One of the most profound recognitions on this journey was that we’ve created the stories around work, around ‘jobs’, around work-culture and the narratives that shape this mindset of ‘live for the weekend’ or ‘retire when you’re older’. Why are we following stories wherein living happens in the margins? Surely living is for every moment not just for weekends? Surely the purpose of life is not ‘to work’. Whomever came up with that story needs to step aside and let some different narratives come on in.
It’s been tough going to carve out a way of life that goes against the grain, that sings to the beat of a different drum and is driven by something in the soul that makes no sense to the brain but is absolutely the way.
I have worked hard to carve out a livelihood but that hard work has been healthy and vitalising and endlessly resourcing. I write (endless) emails, grant applications, run workshops, trainings, write books, create resources, chair meetings. I also take long walks in the middle of the day, have naps, meet friends for coffees, sit in the garden daydreaming. I'm productive, purposeful, mission-driven and doing good in the world but this is not a ‘job’. This is living constantly and continuously. I’m also getting paid and whilst my salary is still lower than anything I was being paid when I left teaching 12 years ago, it offers me an abundance I wouldn’t swap for any money in the world.
Livelihood is a reason to live; a beautiful balance between work, rest and play – a space of purpose and meaning that is so deeply nourishing. The privilege of finding this way of life is immense. And the sacrifices I have made to do so have been immense too. This is not an individual journey, or one person's story. I have dedicated my life to support a systemic shift to change our stories so that these pathways are not for the few but for the whole.
I don’t have a job any more...and I hope to never have one again.