One thing Ive learned over the last 20 years, mainly through the experiences of others: ********** (1) Im an archaeologist. Oh WOW! So thats, like, uncovering buried treasure all the time, and exploring ancient tombs, and digging in exotic places! Not really. Its almost all work in labs or classrooms until your eyes are sore from squinting at pottery or bone, or writing academic papers to sweat-inducing deadlines, or panicking over funding. Oh, we get to dig, yes, but that often involves rain, or sunshine that turns your trench into an oven, or cold so fierce your fingers and toes go white and stay that way for days, and through all that youre trying to make progress and hit deadlines and think *really hard* about what youre looking at, when all you want is to be indoors and warm/cool and drink endless cups of tea. In other words, its actually bloody hard work. (2) Im a fulltime travel blogger/writer. Oh WOW! So thats like, exploring exotic places and sitting in 5-star luxury in beach resorts and always being on holiday! Not really. Its almost all working really hard on my site/articles, hours and hours every day, and desperately trying to build income streams because this job has zero security, and theres a constant pressure to work while I travel thats tricky to balance, and booking travel when you dont know where your next load of money is coming from is hard on the soul, so very hard, and Im doing this to see what happens but basically I still dont know if this is what youd call a career - or, well, even a *job*. Oh, I get to see amazing places, yes, but Im never on holiday. Im never on holiday. I havent been on holiday for years. You know what? That really sucks. I love this life, but its actually insanely hard work. (3) Im a fulltime writer. Oh WOW! That would be AMAZING. The perfect dream job, right? Hahah. Hah. Haaaaa. Look, dont get me wrong, Im lucky. And Im grateful. And Im not going to go off on a rant about how tough it is to be a fulltime writer, because my time is better spent trying to be one, and dream up some new way to get paid in this churning, ever-changing chaos we call new media/publishing. But actually Ive just gone back to part-time work because its just too bloody hard, and if my writing is going to get anywhere (and I think it will, because I have these *ideas*, right?) I just need to make sure I dont go bankrupt along the way, okay? Okay. ********** Basically, Ive been around a lot of people doing dream jobs. And they all involve people working so hard theyre almost losing their minds. By choice, of course, because theyre that healthy mixture of passionate and obsessed thats a requirement of getting anywhere with these professions. But from my limited set of data collected over half my life so far, I reckon that as a rule, if something looks like its a dream job (eg. being an actor, model, etc.) its almost certainly more work and financial uncertainty than youve ever experienced in your life. And if that doesnt put you off? Okay then. *Go* for it.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:19:35 +0000
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