hope

It’s kind of hard to get past the first line here. I don’t know where I’m going wih this really. I suppose I need to write some form into and around everything – make my situation more concrete and visible so that I can get on with it all, whatever it is.

so, work. The full time supermarket endeavour continues. I’m currently leading a team of 5 people in running and maintaining a department doing >$70k of sales per week. All orders and rostering are my problem, as well as a decent share of the heavy lifting. I’m responsible for this thing. Which is strange because, due to a sort of watershed moment of disillusionment last week, I no longer want to be. I can barely be bothered lifting a finger.

Nor is it simply the realisation that I work in a supermarket. I don’t mind that bit. It’s just that (and I’m only just now really coming to grips with this) I’m surrounded by people who aren’t as commited to doing a good job as I am. I was in a position to rely on other people for a bit of assistance and over the period of 2 weeks was let down spectacularly. Have subsequently been pretty checked out. If working slowly were an olympic sport I’d probably take home a medal, eventually. Hasn’t stopped me from going in on all of my days off so far, but needs must, I suppose.

This disillusionment has tied in nicely with a new career type idea. Career, as in ‘job I might willingly do for an extended period’. I think about this shit now. Anyway, I sort of sat back and took stock of my current job, sifted the things that I enjoyed and didn’t. I like being responsible for a positive outcome, managing stock and rosters and budgets – I like being behind the curtain, making the damned show run. I do not like customers, active selling, customer service or meaningless presentational bullshit. I do like designing and implementing changes to the work process to improve the outcome. I like solving problems on the fly. I like having the capacity to ensure the job gets done well without even having to be there.

which all boils down to (and I’m cringing a little here thinking about it) project management. One of the many middle man non-jobs that, along with lawyers, accountants and assistants, kind of rounds out my list of jobs that are largely unnecessary. In a perfect world, people would sorth their own shit out. They’d see an inefficient process and tinker with it ’til they got something better. Exposure to large groups of people in a work environment has brought me to understand that in this world, the real and significantly flawed one, any group of more than 5 people require management to decide what they’re having for lunch.

it’s all upside though. Creative, lateral thinking and problem solving, responsibility for bringing about real and useful change rather than perpetuating some insipid status quo ad infinitum et nauseum. (It’s so nice to have occasion to lapse into latin). Always being stuck into the high stress, high complexity, genuinely challenging stuff, rather than footling about with the mundane. Having the ability to bounce around from job to job every 6 months to a year, never having time to really get bored before moving onto something new, and having that look good on a resume rather than bad. The potential for travel that’s more stable – less actual travelling, more time to get settled in and enjoy the place you’ve travelled to.

And when I’ve spent 5 or 10 years doing this, education will still be there if I want it. I’m not my father, I’m not going to get bogged down in the financial and practical complexities of mundane life. I will have a life that I enjoy, that I am proud of. I refuse to plod along at the bottom of the heap, spend what I earn, finish where I started. Despite what is perhaps the least auspicious start to an independently led life ever, I will go on to greater things. (I hope)

There’s a lot that needs doing – getting my head shrunk, my teeth fixed, relearning to drive, doing my tax for the last 2 years (gulp). Finding an online course and ploughing through it. Putting together an actual positive and professional resume – for the first time perhaps ever, I feel like I do have value, that I am potentially the best candidate for a job. I imagine this will do wonders in interviews – and hunting down an entry level position that I can actually reach and / or taking the risk of moving myself to it. I want this, I want the progression and the bigger challenges and hopefully, eventually, a bigger paycheck. I want to build a reputation for being good at things. I want skills that I can use to help people (at the moment, I can’t stop thinking that doctors without borders must face significant practical and logistical problems in getting into and set up in some of the less hospitable parts of the world. That could be fun, making that happen.)

I worry a little that this sounds like desperation, or me trying to talk myself into a thing. I don’t think that’s it though. I think I’ve got a new plan. Like the others, parts of it will work and parts of it won’t. Like the others it may not work all the way through to it’s arranged end. More than likely, life will somehow intervene. But for now, I wanted all these thoughts somewhere, to remember why I did this. As usual it boils down to "because I can, and I might enjoy it."

A bit of hope, is what this is.