[Skybird]

Kitchen of a beer garden in summer, during my university years. 300 guests, a cramped kitchen the size of a mobile fastfood stand, room temperature due to the heating stoves and a court verdict to not open windows (due to the neighbours complaining about the smells) always near or above 40°C, a choleric chief at the bar, stress without end, service time 1900 to 2400, coming home after midnight, drowning in my own sweat and stinking like hell from all the kitchen smell (you hardly get that smell out of your hair even when using truckloads of soap under the shower). I gave up after 6 weeks - and then had to fight for my payments. I admit this was the one job that totally and hopelessly overburdened me. A nightmare.

Vegetable market, again during my university years, in the night and early morning, over the winter months. They needed a muscular guy like Schwarzenegger. Instead they got me, figure of a slim (back then) fencer. Extremely exhausting job.

Best payed job was overseas, as scout and security for TV crew. More money in one week than with any of my other jobs in several months. But more risk involved, street crime, and two occasions when i had to see really nasty things, a massacre site in Algeria, and a Kurdish village that Turkish artillery had rolled over the day before. The best and the worst of my job experiences - this one had it both. But it gave me the money that I later needed to buy my current flat.

In my studied profession (psychology) I worked only unpaid always, and in contracts of limited time. Sooner or later that pissed me, and so I turned my back on it - plenty of compliments and requests to continue are flattering, yes - but it does not pay bills, and when I am of value for somebody and passed their testing time, then I want something valuable in return, not just cheap words.

All in all I had I think 13 different paid jobs since end of my schooltime, and 5 unpaid voluntary engagements in my life. Paper boy, truck loader, market worker, shop salesman, cashier, counselor, meditation teacher, martial arts trainer, cook, guard, factory worker, psychologist - I think I covered quite a wide spectrum. I am not obsessed with defining myself through work only, and so today live by modest family savings and relatively withdrawn, also due to health issues. Life is for once only, and I saw too many old people near their death who deeply regretted that they wasted so much of their time for fame and job, and spend so little time for what they really were interested in: hobbies, family, friends. Most people do not have the luxury to really love and be filled by feelings of achievement and self-realization regarding their professional jobs, most people are stuck in useless, boring treadmills killing their lifetime and wasting their spirits. If you do not really love what you do, I see it this way: work professionally as much as you must, but as little as you can afford. All in all I found in my life my balance between moderate living standards that I can afford and can still live with, and time invested in paid work.

Work as a fetish like it is today, and work-related diseases and burnout as a status symbol? Our society is sick, I say. We were not born to serve factories' needs. Again my advise: work as much as you must, check your demands on living standards and see if you can tweak them and still be happy, do not work more than necessary, as long as you do not really love your job. No man on Earth has any claims to make for you and has no demand that you should serve his interests, as long as you do not live at his costs and do not spend what is his.

And if you do not know what to do with your time if you must not work, and have no interests of yourself, then you have a big problem, me thinks, and you may want to talk with a counselor on that.

Time when you are happy and are absorbed by what interests you, is living time well spent. May be hobby, may be work on your farm, may even be your profession if you are lucky, may be whatever it is. Time when you count the seconds until your shift is over is a waste of life. Maybe needed to make your living, but nothing that gives meaning to your life. Cut it as short as you can afford, for you will not get back that time.