Give the people what they want...

...but what if people is you, and you have no idea what you want? What then, smart guy? And why the stupid questions? Well? Are they going to stop?

One of the problems I find myself facing in the midst of whole thesis-finishing exercise (I say 'exercise', but if we can start a metaphor up here, at this point, tonight and over the last couple of days, it's really been more of a 'sitting in an obese state on the couch watching TV while eating 3 pies, thinking I should consider joining a gym to maybe do something about those pesky instructions the doctor gave me about exercising immediately or face having my heart explode' sort of a situation) is that I am confronted with the fact I have to think of something to do post-thesis, if there indeed really is such a state (LIES I tell you). This causes me a few problems as truly I am the man sans plans.

I really have little idea what I want to do with myself. OK, I have a few ideas of what I would like to do with myself, but an annoying personality trait I like to call 'making occasional concessions towards reality' prevents me from looking at any of them as well, realistic. It's all very well to list 'movie star', 'film director' 'internationally successful author or screenwriter', 'heir to a giant fortune', 'James Bond' or 'The Pope' as your preferred career choices, but these are the kind of things that can be a bit of a tough sell to the old guidance counsellor (what do you mean, the Pope has to be Catholic?). Go for your dreams by all means of course, but traditionally you're meant to do something else during the day as the 'struggle' part of your initial efforts as a struggling director / writer / world religious leader, so you can, you know, eat. The day-job, in other words. And unfortunately you don't scroll through The Press classifieds finding a lot of ads that say "Wanted: next M. Night Shamyalan to write and direct 150 million dollar motion picture project starting next Tuesday. No experience required. Own car essential." In other words, without a driver's licence, I'm going to find it difficult to just waltz into the old dream job, or contract, after next week. Even worse the thought of more average and gettable jobs tends to disappoint if I know I'll end up doing something less than cool. People hear I'm doing journalism and say 'so you're thinking of maybe becoming a journalist?' and the answer is 'Yes', but the full, unspoken answer is 'Yes, if I can be a journalist like Spider Jerusalem, or better yet, Tintin'.

So I'm faced with coming up with something to do while I try and work out what it is I want to do. It's a puzzler. Having worn the Mail of the Mindless Pleb Job (+2 to Drudgery) and waded into combat to do battle for over a year at Armourguard, I would have to concede that it wasn't all bad. I would say at least 3 percent of the total time I spent there was mostly bearable. In a 40 hour working week that came to about an hour and 12 minutes. So 38 hours and 48 minutes a week I was having a crap time. Every two weeks Armourguard would pay me compensation for having such a crap time. It's a near perfect system, but if I feel that had I been in the American legal system, I could have sued them for mental damages for the disruption to my social life, billed them for the lost time I could have been using to do something more enjoyable, received a payment covering the inconvenience of regular bedtimes, etc...and yes this is the whining of a spoiled brat who should realise that in today's society you should earn your keep, but do you know what? Even when you're being paid for it, revolving your life (and don't give me that; you do revolve your life around your job, or at least the fact that your job gives you money) around spending a lot of time doing something you don't really want to be doing at all, really sucks. Hard. And having discarded the cumbersome Mail of the Mindless Pleb Job, changed character classes to something a bit more dexterity based, and spent the last 2 years wielding the Dagger of Thesis Writing (+5 to Freedom, +3 to Good Times, -15 to Work Ethic), I've got no real desire to get back in there and slog away at the Demon of Life (Special Attack: Death), or should it be the Harpy Queen of Western Consumer Capitalism (Special Attack: Marketing Campaign), in such a crude and totally unsatisfying fashion again. I'd rather hang back at the periphery and throw things.

That was a genuinely unplanned series of Dungeons and Dragons weirdness.

Anyway, the solution to this problem seems to be: find something you enjoy that people are willing to pay you to do. This isn't the perfect solution either, until you're at that previously mentioned pie-in-the-sky '7 people in the world have this job' level, as these money-supplying bastards will still get to decide how you will spend a fair chunk of your waking hours for you. But given that this is the world in which we live (I suppose I could opt out and go live on a commune somewhere, but I suspect such communes rarely have PS2, and the thought of being number 4 in someone's series of 7 'Husband-Friendbrothers' is not really appealing either) the best of a bad business is to find a job that is going to take that 3 percent 'OK' to 97 percent 'godawful' ratio, and change it to more of a 75-80 percent 'really rather fun, and as an added bonus, they're paying me, too!' to 20-25 percent 'can't really be bothered today and this client / technician / Protestant Reformation is currently a pain in the arse, but a job's a job, and they give me money'. I have quite a few friends that have found this ratio in their jobs pretty successfully. And good work them. Literally.

But I don't really know what field, or job, will produce the what I like to call (as of just now) the Fluffy Kittens Ratio, as opposed to the My Life Sucks and Everyday I Pray To The Cosmic Forces That An Eagle Will Rip Out My Pancreas and End My Suffering Ratio, for me anyway. I can think of many of the jobs that would fall into the latter category. I might in some cases be good, or competent anyway, at them, but I severely doubt I would enjoy them. The other problem is that if I want to travel next year then I won't be in the job too long, which lends itself a bit to getting a less serious (and therefore probably more crappy) job where both your nose and soul are pressed to the grindstone. I found one of the scariest aspects of working at Armourguard was the way in which their systems and 'ethos' and all those other aspects you can imagine at a workplace that actually had motivational posters of people rowing that said 'Teamwork' underneath them, 'humourous' posters about work safety etc actually on the walls (I suspect 'The office' is so funny because it's so true), with the exception of some supervisors who let stuff slide, would actually clamp down on most of the harmless and non-performance impeding things I did to try and make my job slightly more enjoyable. And what's worse is for most of that time I was there, they knew things were closing down and were actually letting things go to seed (although this was good in other ways, as it sometimes allowed us to treat the instructions of the management with indifferent scorn, if not complete contempt). I can't imagine what it would have been like if they had been serious.

The danger with not knowing what I might enjoy is that I will wander into the first job I can get like I wandered into Armourguard, and soon find myself not only fervently scanning the skies for the Pancreas-Removing Eagle, but scouring the spaces under the desks looking for the Duck of Massive Coronary Thrombosis. (tagline: "When he goes 'Quack', you go 'Ooouuaarrrrgggghhh!!") So it's a bit of a worry. One of many worries fighting to come to the forefront of Ben's brain affairs about now, actually. Thankfully my brain is not a democracy, and all worries are still beaten down by 2 primary factors: anticipation for the 4th ODI on Tuesday, and curiosity over whether maybe Dave missed that talk in intermediate about how boys and girls are different. And just like that we're back to Fight Club again, which is now not so much an argument as it is a running joke. But for those still interested the varying opinions on the film, those over at everything2 support, well, everyone really, what with the different people contributing and all. Damned freedom of ideas. Somebody alert the Thought Police.

In other non rant-related issues of late, a lot of time was wasted this evening in taking this rather interesting (and intriguingly accurate) internet test, which shocked Nic and I by scientifically proving that Tim is a Nazi. With science.

And this has now rabbited on long enough. Flourish; exeunt.