RubyTwoShoes

Published – 2009/09/25

To me life is all about the love; the things you love, the people you love, the things you love to hate… So dreamy and sentimental you’d think I was a 19 year old in a backpacker hostel. But no matter how many years its been since that was the case, I still cant help thinking that what it is not about, is working a great deal of it away.

When I hear the fabulous Dolly Parton sing; “Working nine to five, they’ve got you where they want you. There’s a better life, and you dream about it don’t you?”. I get excited. I have only ever had one full time job in my life (I lasted 5 months), and every time I hear the song I quietly celebrate ‘living the dream’.

For a long time I didn’t have an answer for ‘what else I did’ (I worked part time and people were constantly sniffing around for my second job, my study load, or my hoard of children that would somehow legitimise this part time situation). But I recently went and had myself a baby, and that tends to really allay people’s fears of what I could possibly be doing with all that spare time. What a relief.

I never really understood how work came to take centre stage. And while I appreciate that it’s all very useful and necessary, even satisfying, this working business, I still scratch my head at how it has come to dominate people’s lives so much.

Apparently, in the ‘good ole days’ work was considered a degrading annoyance that interfered with more noble pursuits. What a grand concept!

Today I think the mix-up has something to do with people rewarding and glorifying all the wrong things – that, and people having poor ‘doing nothing’ skills. In Trinidad it’s a national past time. (See Liming).

In my ideal world instead of people scratching their heads at my lifestyle, there would come a day when we looked at people very strangely when they told us they worked nine to five, or longer, five days out of seven.

I capture the people, events and experiences that keep me busy, 9-5, and sometimes longer here

You can find a more professional take on this topic from me here

Note: Apologies for the wanky intellectual article on liming, just scan thorough the academic speak for the good bits, like…The concept of liming encompasses any leisure activity entailing the sharing of food and drink, the exchange of tall stories, jokes and anecdotes etc., provided the activity has no explicit purpose beyond itself…whereas idling and inactivity are frequently seen unequivocally as shameful and slightly immoral kinds of social situations, liming is in Trinidad acknowledged as a form of performing art...