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Saturday 15 February 2014

WordPress Daily Prompt: Money for Nothing

If you’re like most of us, you need to earn money by working for a living. Describe your ultimate job. If you’re in your dream job, tell us all about it — what is it that you love? What fulfills you? If you’re not in your dream job, describe for us what your ultimate job would be. 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us WORK.




Cutting Trees on Bahnhofstrrasse, Solothurn


Chopping away the remains of the Summer from the trees in our local town of Solothurn is also a job.
My ultimate job sounds final, the end of the road. Somewhere in a quiet corner in a graveyard watching the roots of the daisies grow. Perhaps celebrating at a a ghoul party on Halloween, reminiscing over how it once was, and playing a tune on those dry bones. Of course for those that were cremated, they might be missing out on something, but even ashes are scattered.

Perhaps I am missing the idea of the prompt here, taking it a little too realistically. I am sure I now have the best job I have ever had, although this sounds so stereotype: something we might all be thinking about. Some might be wishing they had done something else with their life. If I had won my Pulitzer/Nobel prize for literature for being recognised as a gifted author I could tell everyone about the dream job I now have. I would be living on the profits earned by my writing, after the publisher and agent had taken their shares, but there is a little problem with all this success. I am too lazy to want to do anything about it.

Just suppose that one of my fantastic, wonderful ideas would be discovered by a scout looking for new talent in the book world. “We must have the sole rights to publish your book.” OK, this would be fine, but then the problems arrive. “When can we expect your next work of literature?” I would have no intention of producing stories, books as a human treadmill. I would have to spend hours, even days, thinking about what to write, making plans, evolving characters and annoying everyone in the family, and above all myself with the stress. I do not want to be dependent on success, which might not happen the second time around.

My whole life has been a working life. I have been in the hands of bosses and companies churning out the expected results and doing it all right to make everyone happy and to keep my job. What I did is not the point. I did what I could to earn money. I was not asked “would you rather be doing something else”, I had to survive. Not only a job, but being woman and reproducing from time to time, I became a multi tasker. I was feeding a family with my hard earned cash, cleaning bathrooms and toilets washing underwear and discovering the advantages of a vacuum cleaner. Did I love all of this, did it fulfil me? Ask a silly question, get a silly answer – did I have a choice?

I now have my ultimate job. My wages are paid by the Swiss State mainly, and the remainder by the British State (although a minimum as I only worked in Great Britain for 2-3 years). I am a golden-oldie, retired, at the end of the line and nothing left to look forward to. All my life I had something waiting around the corner and then one day you get a handshake, someone says thank you, and you go. Your work colleagues carry on, someone else is sitting at your  desk in the firm as it you never existed. The biggest mistake you could make is to pay a visit to the old company. I have never done this and do not intend to. You are now the living joke. “Remember Mrs. ….”, “Who? Ah yes the old lady with the grey hair, I wonder what she is doing now?” Do not expect more and you will not be disappointed, even if you did spend thirty years doing the job.

There is of course a retired workers club and you are cordially invited, but that too has its disadvantages. Talking about the old days (which no longer exist), asking if Fred is still amongst the living – “oh he died a couple of years ago. He didn’t have much from his pensioned days”. I did not join this dead workers society, I decided it would be too depressing.

So now I sit at home, write my daily prompts, practice my Tai Chi daily and now and again take a walk to the shops to get out and hunt for food. I have a partner, but he does the same thing. Luckily he has his hobbies and I have mine so we do not make the mistake of looking into each others eyes the whole day and holding hands thinking how lovely it is that we are now together. We can be there for each other, but can also do our own thing.


We live in a little village where the foxes and hedgehogs say goodnight to each other, and the local cemetery (and crematorium- we havn’t yet decided) are just across the road. What more could you want. Just one thing, do not ask a lady with grey hair that has left the work system, what her ultimate job would be. Ask her if she is satisfied with what she is now doing and she would say “Yes”.


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1 comment:

  1. I'm not sure what mine would be.....something to do with photography......maybe photographer for NatGeo :-))

    ReplyDelete