Sick and (re)tired?

It’s never easy going back to work after a four-day break, but so many people clearly hate their jobs I wonder: would it be wiser for folks to change careers or attitudes?

On Saturday night, I surprised The Love of My Life (aka TLoML), buying tickets for us to see irrepressible Masshole Bill Burr in concert at The Moore Theatre. If you’ve never seen nor heard Burr, imagine a stand-up cross of  Brian Regan and David Caruso. Burr’s a testosterone-fueled wise guy who does some very smart stuff (his reappraisal of the pit bull) and some very gruff bits (his dismissal of Tiger Woods‘ “whores”). Burr followed up  the latter line, by reasoning that if he had as much money as Tiger, he’d “tap out.” Like so many fellow Americans, Burr spends more time fantasizing about retiring than actually working. Clearly, he’d rather bang on the drum all day. Not to beat a dead bishop, but considering our jobs consume the majority of prime-time — that is, our youth, not our nighttime tv — shouldn’t we make peace with our paychecks by appreciating something more than the numbers written on them?

I’ve got my step-father’s number, he is a good man. The son of a butcher, he followed his father into the family business, promising himself that he’d make enough and save enough to retire by thirty. When he turned thirty, he revised the plan to quit by forty. At forty, he added another decade. At fifty, he was on pace to retire with his peers. Now, near 80, he still works at a job he’s good at but for which he never expressed any particular passion. It saddens me that so much of his life has been spent pursuing leisure time yet to materialize. You can see the disappointment in his labored gait. But, at the very least, he has a strong work ethic and that, arguably, separates him from younger generations.

In Brendan O’Neill Kohl‘s wicked short film, DAY LABOR, a Generation-Y bike messenger discovers… he can hire an illegal immigrant to do his job for less, thus farms out his trips, whistling while his street-side hire pedals. Soon, those around him follow suit. Even the suits. The movie’s brilliant coda condemns us all. We are quick to blame corporations, conglomerates and captains of industry for global outsourcing and they do deserve their share, but maybe we’ve made it easier by relegating work to one of life’s unbearable necessities like death, Texas and political punditry.

I have no secret for happiness, just a tip. Find a way to mesh your vocation and avocation, remembering the original connotations of both words. Be called to the work you love or develop a love for the work to which you’ve been called. I know this seems even easier undone than said. If so, read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience which instructs one how to find joy in the mundane. It’s an idea easy to chide, and yet, some of my fondest work memories revolve around low-paying, brain-dead gigs like, say, packing mints or sweeping sawdust for which the compensation may have sucked, but I had found my flow. That is, in the author’s words: “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.” (Not smooth jazz, mind you, the real deal.) If that doesn’t help, remind yourself that there is always someone out there getting paid less for a much worse job. Watch CHINA BLUE, Micha X. Peled‘s bitter-sweat doc that exposes working conditions in a blue jean factory. Trust me, they’re not good, though better than the pay — 6 cents per hour, not guaranteed. Prefer your guilt delivered in fictive form? Pick up James P. Othmer‘s brackish Holy Water, a Catch-22 for our global economy. Othmer, a veteran of the ad trade, sends his own mad man packing to the third world to tout the bottling of liquid fool’s gold. It’s the toxic American dream exported for satirical consumption.

Granted, our jobs can be hard to swallow, but no one is force-feeding us. Yes, we must eat, but you can sweeten the pot simply by enjoying the meal before you, or,  by learning to cook for yourself.

What do you think?