I was watching The Island but as usual couldn’t concentrate on the movie, despite Scarlett Johansson’s amazing facial(chest) features. Had lunch with an old friend today which was quite nice, I think that’s the first time I’ve had a decent sober conversation with her in around 8-9 years. Anyways she was going on about her new job, which she moved back to SL to take. Decent pay, but they make them work from 10am to 3am on a regular basis. Now this is a trend I’ve noticed here with a lot of my friends, especially those that work for MAS, long work hours and work even on the weekend all for no extra pay. They seem to take it fairly well though and function as (somewhat) normal human beings. I personally don’t see how people can manage such long hours and no weekends off.

 
One of the main reasons I cant work like that is I have always believed in the principle of a balanced life, I need to go to the gym, meet up with friends for a drink, watch a movie, be able to sleep in, go on trips and most importantly just have some quiet time doing nothing. I just couldnt take my last job because I was out of the house from 6am until around 7pm, went to the gym for an hour and by the time I had dinner and showered had a grand total of around half an hour to do everything I had to do before having to go to bed. I ended up stressed out, lacking sleep, having half arsed workouts, almost addicted to sleeping pills and eventually falling asleep at the wheel and destroying my car and very nearly myself in a fiery fireball.

Now my rather adverse reaction to the lifestyle I lead in the US may have had something to do with the soulless nature of my job. It was fun initially and exciting to be hitting million dollar targets, structuring deals, learning about a new field. I guess it was when I moved to a new team and was stuck with a pointless, menial task that my enthusiasm came to a grinding halt. Anyways back to my issue with long work hours, I just can’t picture myself working like that, no weekends and such long hours. Not only is it my desire for a balanced life that prevents me from accepting such working conditions but I cant stand the fact that while I would be working so much for a moderate paycheck, some bloody manager would be making so much more for half the work. This aversion to working like my friends do leaves me with two possible conclusions about myself:

1) I’m just plain fucking lazy - this is entirely possible, I’ve just spent three months in Sri Lanka lazing around doing absolutely nothing except relaxing, reading and surfing the net and the occasional lunch with a pretty girl.

2) I’m just not a worker bee – I have this theory that people are split into two work personalities, worker bees and ideas people. I tend to be the latter, the one thing I’ve done consistently in my jobs is to come up with faster ways of doing the things I had to do. This would involve streamlining existing procedures and sometimes coming up with entirely new ways of doing things. And I really enjoyed that part of my work, even though it was nowhere in my job description.

I guess its going to be one of my new years resolutions to prove to myself that I am not in fact bloody lazy, just effing smart:0)….now if I can just figure out a way to get financially independent quick.