Lately I have been goodbye Mad Men (a little for fun, but also for a Mad Men rewatch the podcast I started), and while almost every character in the film has slightly different flavors of flirtatious bastards, it’s hard not to notice and be jealous of how often they drink, make fun, take introspective walks, and think usually while smoking. .
Why can’t we live more like thisI find myself asking.
The obvious answer is “because we’re not white people in the 1960s” (nor do we want to destroy our families and die of a heart attack at 51). Still, it’s hard not to wonder whether abandoning the concept of a “smoke break” was really just about getting people to stop smoking or whether it was also partly about getting workers to stop smoking. take breaks. There’s an added irony in the fact that I vicariously enjoy the frequent time these fictional characters spend on a show that I watch essentially as part of a television schedule. job.
And that’s the problem: Many of us have blurred the lines between living and working so much that we’re barely capable of spontaneity. I feel itchy and anxious every time I do something that can’t be monetized.
It’s certainly worse here in the media industry. Everyone I know, most of us with 10, 15 or 20 years of experience, is now working one of the last staff jobs – which usually involves doing work that was previously done with four or five people and trying to please. an MBA somewhere that doesn’t really understand what you do – or trying to replace the job you lost a few years ago with five or six semi-regular part-time and/or freelance jobs. Either way, it tends to put pressure on filling all your time slots with some type of bag-securing activity.
But I would argue that the phenomenon goes deeper than the decrepit, dying old bitch that is the media industry. For Gen being a millennial i owned ska records damn i won’t be erased), we were primarily raised to pursue our passions. Study hard and go to a good universitythey all shouted at us. You don’t want to end up digging ditches and working in fast food!
Now that I’m over 40, I feel like I’m relatively successful, and yet the managers at In n Out make a lot more than I do. And their work also seems to be the best: with a tangible product, satisfied customers and relevant success indicators. A friend of mine recently gave up tech sales to start a pool cleaning business. He seems happier than ever and there isn’t a single person in our group chat who isn’t jealous of him.