Quit Your Job

[caludia]

i've had this little article sitting on my C drive for a few years now. Personally i found it helpful.

------------------------

QUIT YOUR JOB

"Work is for suckers."

--Bart Simpson

The Rolling Stones sold out, most recently, to Bill Gates, to the catchy tune of $12 million. Bill Clinton sold out from the start. Kurt Cobain started to sell out but blew his brains out, ensuring himself a high place in the pantheon of the principled. What constitutes "selling out" for some people--working for a big corporation, changing one's image or work to conform to an accepted norm, being nice to people you hate--is mere pragmatism to others.

More often than not, selling out is associated with work. Usually, those accused of selling out are the ones who have taken jobs that pay well but compromise their professed beliefs. The equation is: Money over Principles = Hypocrisy. But it's a mistake to emphasize only the style of work. Work itself is never called into question. We take for granted that everyone has to earn a living doing boring stuff, except for the few people, like children and bureaucrats, who survive by living off other people's work.

But the fact is that most of the work done by most of the world's people--from the beginning of time, and now more than ever--constitutes a monumental sellout. Why? Because almost no one really likes his job. Because almost no one would go to work if he didn't need the money. Because everyone is all too willing to buy into and adopt the following Assumptions About Work:

• The work you do is somehow necessary.

• Your work won't be fun or interesting.

• Your work will be performed in uncomfortable clothes, in a depressing setting, with people you don't like.

• You will receive wages that will barely pay for your food and housing, ensuring only that you will be healthy enough to continue working.

• You will do said work under said conditions for two-thirds of your life, after which point, if all goes well, you can stop working, play golf and die.

This is all bullshit. When Thomas More, Chairman Mao and Jerry Rubin suggested that work might not always be necessary, they were not talking about their own times, but rather of some period in the far-off future when technological progress and better social organization would allow everyone to sit around watching TV, building model airplanes or whatever else their little hearts desired. They thought that time was a long way off, but now it's here. Now there are options.

If you don't like doing something, but you still spend most of every day doing it, then you're cheating yourself. If you hate your job--and you probably do--and fantasize endlessly about quitting, then you should quit. Quit the job you hate. I'll say it two more times: Quit the job you hate. Quit the job you hate.

In August 1994, I got a job as a financial analyst at a San Francisco consulting firm, The Spectrem Group. (The name was purposely misspelled, to avoid confusion with another company where they were familiar with English.) Spectrem's clients are banks looking to increase their profitability, either by raising their fees without their customers noticing it or by merging with other banks. It's a very '90s company.

Before I was hired, my boss told me I would set my own hours, take vacations whenever I felt they were justified and dress however I wanted. In short, the only thing that mattered, she said, was that my work--mainly cranking out spreadsheets and charts--got done. In return for my services, I would be paid $32,000 a year. As a cartoonist whose big break wasn't yet on the horizon, I took the job in a windowless, airless office.

After I started, my boss told me that while I could set my own hours, I would have to be in by 8:30 a.m. and leave no earlier than 5 p.m. Vacations were greatly encouraged, except when you actually asked for a day off. Despite the company's rhetoric and quarterly New Age-style retreats where a licensed therapist "analyzed the company's dysfunctionality," in reality what I had was a generic, full-time job.

At first, I had a difficult time learning where everything was and how the computer system worked. But after a few months, I found I could finish all of my work in about two hours a day. This came in handy because I could use much of the remaining six hours engaged in far more personally satisfying activities, like calling newspaper editors, sending out faxes, talking to my friends on the phone and masturbating in the restroom. I learned to schedule my Spectrem work at times when the nosy office manager was around or when my boss wasn't on the phone. I got work done and no one ever complained about my output.

My experience at Spectrem was, I believe, typical of work in the United States insofar as style far outweighed substance. I soon noticed that my superiors at Spectrem--baby-boomer former middle-managers who'd been laid off from various banks in the late '80s, especially Bankers Trust--also worked roughly two hours a day. They used their six-plus hours of "face time" engaged in such pursuits as dealing with their spouses and children, gossiping with one another and planning trips.

Unlike the few jobs that require constant attention, such as answering phones or waiting tables, most desk jobs can be completely finished in a few hours a day. This is America's dirty corporate secret. Even well-paid executives, including an $800,000-a-year managing director I know, admit their real work day is much shorter than the official 9-to-5.

Still, I'd get up at 7 a.m. to be at Spectrem by 8:30. I'd never be home before 6:30 p.m. I'd go to sleep at midnight. So I'd spend 10 of my 16 waking hours--nearly two-thirds of my life--at work or commuting to and from work. I spent six hours messing around, doing my own shit. Only my weekends were truly my own. And that's not even getting into the moral implications of my job: contributing to mergers which cause massive layoffs and bank fee increases that hurt consumers.

In short, my work was a giant waste of time.

I have always suffered from an excessive awareness of my mortality. I feel every second, every minute of my life slipping by, bringing me closer to a horrible death gasping and wheezing on some dirty, crowded sidewalk. Once you can taste your own mortality, and how fleeting it all is, you realize something that should be obvious--there is no greater sin than wasting your time. You will never, ever get it back.

Wasting one's time is usually associated with idleness, but my working at Spectrem was just as bad, probably worse, than if I had used that time to, say, draw all over my body with a ball-point pen. What could be a worse sellout than squandering your life-force five days a week, 50 weeks a year?

That's what I was doing, that's what most people do, and you're a sucker if you buy into it.

*** The Buck Is Not Stopping

Employers are starting to catch on to the fact that not a hell of a lot of work occurs at "work." Across the United States, big corporations are laying off one worker every 20 seconds. While the official unemployment rate hovers around 6 percent, that number doesn't include "discouraged workers," people who don't even bother looking for work anymore. It doesn't include part-time workers who would rather be working full-time or people who are "under employed," such as college graduates working as secretaries. Full-time workers have become part-timers; professionals have become manual laborers. The fastest-growing jobs in this country are janitor, nurse and food service worker.

Much of what passes for politics these days concerns placing blame and proposing solutions for a shortage of decent jobs that dates back to the 1970s. Lefties blame greedy, short-sighted corporate executives whose tireless search for cheap labor causes them to shrink their payrolls--and therefore shrink the pool of disposable consumer income. Conservatives cite excessive government regulation, taxation and weak public education.

The Left believes corporations have an obligation to employ people they don't need. They don't. The Right and their corporate allies want a more educated workforce, though they can't challenge the workers they already have. Both sides refuse to adjust to a world with fewer jobs.

Jobs are disappearing without reducing productive capacity. The technological advances predicted by 19th-century utopian philosophers have finally occurred; the trend of increasing un- and underemployment ensures we're all going to have a lot more idle time, whether we like it or not. Under such conditions, working for a corporation isn't what makes you a sell-out. The real dilemma is how to learn not to do stupid work when you don't have to.

*** Resentment Grows, Wages Fall

In 1957, the socialist philosopher Fritz Pappenheim defined alienation as the state of mind that occurs when people are separated from the fruits of their labors. For example, working on an assembly line is alienating because each worker only sees a small component of the final product, and doesn't see each specific item as it's sold and used. My analyst job at Spectrem was a classic case of worker alienation. I only got to see a small part of the final product--my three pages of charts in a 70-page report. I wasn't told what the presentation was for, and I never met the client. When I was able to piece together the overall purpose of the project I was working on, I'd usually discover it was an effort to reduce the expenses of some huge banking corporation.

I resented every single second I spent working at the Spectrem Group. I felt robbed of the few hours I spent actually working. Getting paid to do someone else's work always breeds resentment. Your employer takes away time and energy you might have invested in yourself. Working for a company is like renting--you earn money to pay your bills, but afterwards you've got nothing to show for it. All that time, that huge, screaming chunk of your life--two-thirds, remember--is gone, with nothing tangible or meaningful left to prove you were there. You've poured your soul into a company that sells something you don't care about to people you don't know, and at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your life, there is nothing to show for it but someone else's profits. You have learned little besides how to best sell a product. Your mind hasn't grown, you've scarcely been challenged, because the decisions you make require little vision or innovation.

Working for yourself, on the other hand, is like buying equity in a house.

The only person at Spectrem's San Francisco office who really worked full, non-stop days, evenings and weekends was the chairman and founder. And why not? She owned the most stock, got her picture in the paper and her name at the top of the letterhead. She was the only one there working for herself. Everyone else was just a wage whore.

*** Worker Alienation

In 1973, 57 percent of Americans said they "derived no enjoyment" from their work. By 1992, that was true of 64 percent of us.

If our work is boring, it may be because so much of it is utterly useless. In fact, the number of workers who felt their jobs were not important to society increased from 58 to 68 percent in those same 20 years. Most workers feel nobody would be any worse off if their occupations ceased to exist overnight.

Productivity occurs when value is "added" to raw materials. Wood, for instance, is worth very little, but when used to make the frame of a house, its value-added component--from the architect's design, the builder's skills and other factors--increases dramatically.

In the new post-manufacturing economy, we don't make things, we move them around. Bankers collect fees on checking accounts and loans. Car salespeople are paid commissions for every car they sell. Their soul has nothing to do with their success, only their ability to convince people to buy products--like checking accounts and cars--that they obviously need anyway. Competition between brands spurs innovations in non-value-added fields such as marketing and advertising, but don't cause substantial improvements in the products themselves. In the vast majority of new jobs, there is no relationship between ingenuity and reward--people collect the same paycheck every other week regardless whether they make an effort. People sense they don't add value and lose their enthusiasm for work.

People who sell things feel a special form of alienation. Service-sector workers arbitrate the movement of things from one place to another. They don't make anything and they don't consume anything--they collect fees.

Huge segments of our economy operate in a similar manner. Bankers, stockbrokers, travel agents, advertising executives, middle managers, real estate brokers, tax assessors, notaries and auditors are all examples of professions that add little value; they merely shuffle paper back and forth and skim fees off the top. In other words, jobs are becoming more generic, less satisfying and less interesting. There are a lot fewer reasons--and less opportunity--for selling out than there used to be.

My analyst position at Spectrem was a classic no-value-added job. Most of the time, I was paid to fuck off. My contributions to the tasks were minimal at best. In fact, the company itself added no value--the banks that were our clients could easily have written the same reports themselves. We relied on information supplied by our clients to write our stuff. Arguably, our banker clients added no value either. My employment was nothing more than a four-level Ponzi scheme.

*** Get Paid More--Work Less!

When I was seven, in 1970, my father bought me a box of Cracker Jacks. The prize was a little booklet about how life would be in 1980. In 1980, it said, people would be scooting around in hovercraft instead of cars and working 10-hour weeks.

What happened?

In 1949, the average work-week hovered around 38 hours, labor unions talked of bargaining for the 30-hour week, and the military-industrial boom of the 1950s and 1960s was still in the future. Now we're working 48-hour weeks, labor unions are all but gone and we're still not seeing the difference in our paychecks.

There's a lot of talk about improving the efficiency of workers in the United States. In fact, both per capita and overall per-hour productivity of American workers is by far the highest in the world. Productivity has more than doubled since 1949, mostly because of advances in technology.

This is not the story the media are telling us. We hear horror stories of the United States losing trade wars with Japan and other countries because of lazy American workers. Regardless of the motivations behind the slacker myth, working longer hours for fewer wages will not resolve the fundamental issue of increasing unemployment caused by technology. All this accomplishes is the sacrifice our personal lives--the ultimate sell-out--and we're starving other would-be workers in the process.

The answer is for us to work less, not more.

As Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, says, society could have taken that gain in productivity in several ways:

• We could all have double salaries.

• We could be working 20-hour weeks.

• We could work six months a year.

Instead, some of us are working multiple jobs with absurdly long hours for low wages while others can't find work at all.

The money generated by that hidden boom in productivity didn't disappear. The vast majority of it went to create an unprecedented upper strata of wealthy Americans. The U.S. now has the greatest chasm between rich and poor in the industrialized world--one percent of the population owns 40 percent of its wealth. We live under a corpocracy that pays $10 million a year to CEOs and $8 an hour to file clerks. Unless you're part of the fraction of one percent of Americans in this new elite, your hard work is benefiting some rich white guy--not you. The more you work, the more you contribute to this increasing disparity of wealth and its resulting social instability. At least in the old days, when you sold out, you got paid for it. Now you don't even receive a bigger paycheck.

*** Work is for Suckers

As big business continues to lay off people, eliminate jobs by attrition and downgrade existing positions, the message has become clear: They don't need us.

When the local TV news interviews some putz, the network sends two guys out--a TelePrompTer operator and a cameraman. These days, the cameraman is actually doing three people's jobs--two years earlier, there also would have been a sound man and an electrician. The cameraman can handle all three jobs him- or herself--shooting the camera, checking the sound levels and stringing the wires and watching for power surges --because the equipment has dramatically improved. However, he or she can handle fewer assignments per day because each shoot takes a lot longer. Despite the reduced efficiency, the network prefers to cut its staff because payroll is the biggest expense in any company.

And, from a strictly business point of view, the savings from layoffs are almost always worth it. Instead of fighting to hold onto antiquated jobs, why can't we accept that our services are simply no longer required? We demand that companies hire people they no longer want or need, that the government subsidize employment programs and that other countries somehow stop competing with us to cut us some fiscal slack. Why can't we take a hint? It's over. Computers are replacing us at the office. Robots have our jobs at the plant. The company picnic, the gold watch and hanging out by the water cooler are all part of an anachronistic lexicon that people of the 21st century will struggle to remember while playing trivia games. They don't need us anymore, but there is hope: You can't sell out if they won't buy you.

*** Is Work Good For You?

We have been programmed to believe that work for work's sake is an intrinsic human virtue. We have always defined ourselves by our work. When Americans meet, the first thing they ask each other is: "What do you do?" And the problem is that we usually don't really want to know what that person does. It's too depressing. And it's too sad trying to explain to someone what minor, negligible role you play in making sure the right slogans are screened onto hamster sweaters marketed to East Coast divorcees.

We should be defined, it could be argued, by the way we spend the majority of our lives, but who wants to be defined by something they'd rather forget? We've taken jobs we don't like, bought ourselves into the dependency of consumerism, and have found ourselves trapped. "I'm a financial analyst," you find yourself saying, always tempered with, "but I'm going to quit." This sort of conflict--that we want to be violently disagreeing with how we actually spend most of every day--causes us to lose our sense of self-worth and of feeling rooted in society.

In New York City today, 2.8 million people work and 1.1 million are on welfare. As that 5-to-2 ratio continues to shift toward idleness, the social safety net created by FDR and LBJ is being dismantled. With total income tax rates already close to 50 percent of gross income in some cities, politicians are no longer willing to tax middle-class workers to pay welfare to those who will not or cannot work. At the same time, our socioeconomic system will disintegrate unless we find some way of dealing with the jobless.

Rather than view it as a social ill, Americans should embrace widespread de-employment from traditional jobs. This is the fruit of our long struggle to improve the way we live by developing new technology. Provided that a new class of people aren't needed to work anymore, why should we call the unemployed lazy? And from the perspective of the young, salaries and benefits are low, the work is boring and advancement is non-existent. In short, there's little financial inducement to work.

There are several options for dealing with the new, permanent jobless class. Here are some alternatives to condemning people to work insane hours at stupid jobs while others starve:

• Reduce the work week. GM workers in Michigan recently went on strike due to excessive overtime. Although they earned much more money putting in those extra hours, they missed their families and were totally exhausted. Meanwhile, GM and other companies are continuing to lay off workers, as part of a strategy to maximize working hours and minimize health and other benefit expenses. Maxing the work week at a fraction of the current 40-hour week--including for salaried, white-collar employees--would slash the unemployment rate overnight, as well as provide health benefits to more Americans. This would impact corporate stockholder profits, but those profits have been coming out of employees' backs for years anyway.

• Mandate more vacation. We could join the rest of the world, where eight weeks of vacation is considered the norm, and perhaps go even further. This is essentially a variation on the shorter work week, but would suit people who like their time off in chunks.

At Spectrem, these options would have translated to, respectively, hiring me for the 10 hours a week I actually worked; giving me eight months vacation a year; or, best of all, accepting that my job was utterly stupid and in no need of being done.

*** Money for Nothing

A national "de-jobbing" program would be extraordinarily expensive to a nation that prides itself on its habit of throwing used-up people out with the trash. Paychecks in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year would have to be issued to people whose jobs are deemed unnecessary; obviously the government does not have enough money to do this.

Corporate stockholders do. In 1994 the value of outstanding U.S. stocks increased from $4.01 to $4.68 trillion. That increase alone--$673 billion--is enough to feed the entire nation for a year, or pay every American worker $5,100. Stockholders have been the primary beneficiaries of increased productivity since World War II; clearly they could stand to be taxed more. Regardless of how it's financed, it is vital that society begin to confront the reality of work's obsolescence. Given that our government would rather debate school prayer and flag burning than anything that really matters, it's up to us to take action by refusing to do stupid work.

*** The Payoff

Sooner or later, the United States will have to acknowledge that work as we know it--the 40-plus-hour a week variety--has become obsolete. Economic and technological trends ensure that the ranks of the un- and under employed will continue to grow. If we continue to ignore this demographic shift, social disintegration is inevitable.

Regardless of how one defines selling one's soul, what could be more corrupt than to work longer hours at a meaningless job? Not only do you sell yourself to a machine that doesn't care about you, but you contribute to the decline of society as you do it.

But waiting for the government to wise up isn't necessary. It's up to individuals to make the decision not to work. In my case, I got fired from Spectrem because of my bad attitude. Apparently I hadn't kept my personal phone calls, faxes and side projects sufficiently secret (not that my employers knew the half of it). My instinctive response to getting canned, as someone who has worked my entire life, was to start looking for a job.

But I didn't. My wife and I decided that rather than start looking for another day job, I should concentrate on my own work--cartooning. I'd been doing okay as a cartoonist before, but giving eight hours a day to Spectrem had squelched my ability to make cartooning work for a living. I'd won an award earlier this past spring, some newspapers picked up my stuff, and I'd gotten some favorable press during the summer. To make up some of the $500 a week of post-tax income I used to get from Spectrem, I'll have to seek out freelance illustration work; so we're moving to New York City where there are more magazines. I started working on a comic book and a new weekly column. And I filed for unemployment, which I'll use until my own work pays my way.

No more day job for me. I just wish I'd thought of it myself.

Now my time is my own. I spend a typical day--about seven hours straight--drawing, writing, calling editors and preparing mailings. I actually work a lot longer and harder, because it's all for me. I lose track of time. I forget to eat. I have a serious fire under my ass; if I don't make things happen, no one else will. So I keep my phone calls brief. And every second, every minute, is mine--not stolen by working for some stupid company.

I suspect that for some time I'll be making less money than I did at Spectrem. Maybe in New York, where the cost of living is so much higher, it'll be even harder to get by. But I sure don't have time to wank off during my work day.

We should stop whining over lost jobs. We don't want those goddamn jobs anyway. You've only got one chance to spend your life doing something you believe in. Quit the job you hate and start over, before you're too old and too stupid and it's too late to take a chance. We are on the brink of realizing humanity's oldest dream for the first time in history--the ability of the vast majority of people to stop selling themselves out. I can't wait.

------------------------------

Ted Rall's cartoons reprinted courtesy Chronicle Features, San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Might magazine, a delightful new publication you're sure to enjoy. Pick up a copy today.

[Torsten]

Good luck getting people to read all that

I pretty much realised this situation when I was 19 and made the required changes then. Although often I do not like my work, at least each thing I do is part of a greater block of work that has a tangible reward at the end of it (mostly not of a financial nature).

Alienation fo work goes right back to the basis of the neurochemistry that makes us get up in the morning. While our nights are controlled by bliss and seadation courtsey of serotonin, to wake up and get ourselves motivated we need dopamine. Dopamine production is at its highest when we are rewarded for something we have done. Which is why it is called the hormone of 'pleasure and reward'. That nice tingly feeling you get when you have finished painting a room, or planting a garden, or the pride you feel when you have finished writing an essay or polishing your car, is a result of a dopamien flood. It is what keeps you motivated.

Alienation of work produces no dopamine and yet we are asked to keep on doing it. Ever wonder why the boss in a small business manages to work twice as hard (or even harder) than any of his staff and yet the staff complain about their hours while the boss doesn't. And this has nothing to do with money or potential profits. A business owner who earns as much as his staff will still work double the hours and more than double the workload while still feeling good about it.

I think if we want and efficient and happy workforce we need to design our jobs to take natural neuroresponses into account. It maye not be as efficient in the short term, but it will make for a happy workforce and an overall more content and productive society.

A small step towards this is ownership. Workers are constantly required to make sacrifices for the sake of the survival of their company, yet they have no stake in the company other than their jobs. Jobs that suck!

Owning shares in any company does not addres this problem either. What connection is there between your shares in telstra and your job at westpac? None. You need ownership in the company you work in so that you know that any extra effort you produce will in fact benefit yourself, and that any loyalty you have for that company will improve the productivity and running of that company. It also means you have a democratic say in at least some parts of what happenes in that company.

In tough times directors and shareholders will demand loyalty from their workers, yet in good times they don't reimburse for this goodwill. If workers own their own company (at least partially or with non-voting shares) the goodwill is already repaid.

More importantly, if you make sacrifices for your local company to stay afloat you are not just helping yourself, but you are helping your local community, your neighbours, your family, your friends. Again, what good is it to own shares in westpac if all the bank does is to suck money out of your community and take it overseas? Invest in your local building society and buy shares in local businesses if you really want to make your money work.

The concept of wages and ownership is very closely tied together. By keeping them local you make each dollar go around more than once. Investing in local industry will give you a say in its development and may even provide for jobs that are satisfying. At the very least you are providing jobs within reasonable travel distance, allowing parents to spend more time with their kids.

[woof woof woof]

No T!

That nice tingly feeling you get when you have finished painting a room.

That nice feeling is not only due to dopaminerelease. It's more from paint toxin inhalation. :D

[caludia]

Bemused small business owner to complaining staff: "i don't understand, don't you love working for me as much as i love working for me?"

[woof woof woof]

Like Torsten said,.... have shares in the company.

T - how can I obtain shares in your comapany?

I love to learn more about whatever the heck it is that we discuss here on this forum and I have fairly green thumbs. :D

[waterdragon]

i found the whole post a good read indeed, fits in with my beliefs nicely. it's the greatest feeling to turn your back on a shit job/employer and go do something new. the 'something new' for me has been my desire for self sufficiency - why work to live just go to work again? creating your own food and incomes is very time consuming but satisfying work, i still feel that more reliance on your own means is the answer to the worlds ills, it has so many benefits to work where you live ie less travel/emissions, less reliance on packaging/processed foods/supporting immoral food giants, less spending means less gst that i pay to a corrupt regime, flexible hours too. wages should be viewed as a means to an end not the end itself.

[Torsten]

Wandjina finances are kinda complicated because all our profit is put back into the gardens and our staff in preparation for getting the gardens listed as a non-profit organisation. And because it will be a non-profit organisation it won't have any shares, but will be a self benefiting trust.

All previous companies I've had used to pay out dividends to staff, and I'll be happy to do that again in the future, but its not possible with the current arrangements.

It's interesting how much of a difference this makes to staff morale though.

[Happy Cadaver]

I have to agree MG. We are not put on this earth to be slaves. I hope everyone here strives to use their talents for the person which will value them the most, usually yourself. If you don't enjoy it, strive to change it.

[rkundalini]

Thanks for that, interesting.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on this topic recently too. I'm not sure what the answer is. I got into science since I figured they'd pay me to do whatever I wanted. The thing is I'm paid to work on a particular narrow project in a narrow subfield of a subfield of a subfield of astronomy. Sometimes I go for weeks at a time enjoying what I'm doing and getting paid for it, other times it is a real drag. You could take away all those "subfields" and it would still be a drag, sometimes I just don't feel like doing astronomy, dammit. It is infinitely better than a "normal" job but still I find it unacceptable, the hours in particular and the pay vs the cost of living in the city.

What's the answer. If I tried to be self-sufficient, I'd starve!! Starting a business sounds like a good idea (and I think I have a great idea for one) but by all accounts it can be more stressful and time consuming than a regular job.

Personally I think property speculators have a lot to answer for. They basically hold people to ransom, say thank you very much, I'll have half your post tax income for the rest of your life, which by the way will be full time and probably also you partner will have to do likewise unless you are interested in the 2 square meter apartment I have over here. Ultimately most residential property (leased or mortgaged) is in the hands of a "propertied class" who also owns much of the commercial sector, so when it boils down to it, the whole thing looks very much like slavery to me.

So half the answer has to be to move out of the city to low cost rural housing. But then you still do need an income, albeit much smaller. How do do that without having to "work" is the question.

(edit: by the way some of you might be interested in this site: http://www.whywork.org/ )

[ 08. February 2005, 12:56: Message edited by: rkundalini ]

[woof woof woof]

Okay - here is the plan. Lets put our heads together, think of a serious project "a goal" "So unbuddhist " and work on it together.

Like, what about organizing all the info on Shaman Australis even more, for more accurate searching on subjects that interest us.

I mean we learn from it and get better.

The first trippers UNI.

And we will erect a statue for our beloved leader - hi hi :D "Ey Torsten!"

I am kinda serious about this.

I mean it is not only the facination that we have with plants. I mean how many of us here are people that are just aching to get ahead " to learn something ", to if not secure their own further, to secure others their futures,...

I think a cool step would be to have a more organized learning center/ forum / community.

or maybe something like a PREfab business plan that can be used to get funds from the government.

Maybe WadjinaGardens can serve as a model. (so T,... start putting up your probably interesting/instiring biography up

he he - I have been blabbering too much now - you all are probably thinking ,....."what is that guy on?!" "GIMME SOME!"

I am getting or am Fed up with working and not completly doing my thing.

[Leo^]

Im working on this kinda project right now. Im starting my own organic plant/herb/suppliment business. Im going to centrelink in a week or 2 to get benifits as i quit my horrid corporate goon job (security for a very large company) over a month ago and I am hoping they will give me some leeway in looking for work if they think I am trying to make my own work. Doing this also allows me to supply all my own veggies and fruit and to do what I love all day! If it works I might write a paper on it and try and organise some co-operation between people in similar areas to achieve the dream

[caludia]

good luck with that Leo. i am in a similar boat.

[nabraxas]

Leo & Metal Guru----would you both be so kind as to keep us informed on your progress?

especially as far as dealing w/centrelink goes?

cheers.

[caludia]

nabraxas, unfortunately i qualify as employed as far as centrelink is concerned Oh well. Has anyone read "Voltaire's Bastards"? It is a rambling and incoherent book (rambling and incoherent... my wife would say i am calling the kettle black), but i agree with the central idea. (Voltaire was a capitalist in the purest sense - he supported entrepreneurialism, ownership of your own livelihood, etc. His 'Bastards' are the big-company capitalist bureaucrats that run the world today.)

[gomaos]

it's the greatest feeling to turn your back on a shit job/employer and go do something new.

Sure is.

The feeling of freedom when walking out of a horrible job that's been eating away at your lifeforce for so long... nothing can surpass that!

[alucinare]

It was an enjoyable article to read, the length not really a hassle (surprisingly). It actually reminded me alot of 'Fight Club', espcially some of Tyler's rants.

I totally agree with the idea; create your own enjoyable viable lifestyle not as a corporate string. Although alot of the people I have spoken to at the job i'm currently at dont even think it is possible to do such a thing so they tolerate it, "a means to an end". This tolerance is helped by workers centering their entire life around work social and such though who is to say the people would have gotten along if not working under the same roof for many years? It seems alot of people are comfortable in their job and dont want to change even though a percieved, though not actually tangible at the moment, increase in their happiness may be possible. They would rather just counter-act the side-effects of work with "stuff"/family and there is no idea of life outside such a setting except the long-awaited retirement. Though thankfully exceptions always exist.

[Leo^]

ive worked for years as security for people, it kills the soul to be someones 'bitch' in whatever form. Now i do my own thing I feel free and my health problems i had are gone. Im getting bigger and stronger and happier too, also people listen to me now and are drawn to me. I say screw the worlds systems but not the people, if only people would hear our message but they are blinded .

[woof woof woof]

gomaos:

it's the greatest feeling to turn your back on a shit job/employer and go do something new.

Sure is.

The feeling of freedom when walking out of a horrible job that's been eating away at your lifeforce for so long... nothing can surpass that!

Ha ahahahahha - lol

[woof woof woof]

I like my job. it can be very stressful sometimes ( customer service for Online Wagering )(ohh i do not agree with mindless gambling)

That is why I liked GOM his statement. "EATING AWAY YOUR LFEFORCE" When the work pressure is up and Brian is wrecked from the night before, then it can really feel like that.

-------------------------------------------------

Okay - The following is in Dutch , but I just had to post it.

It is about the school I was attending a while back (pharmacy assistant) Where they they systimatically kicked me out for BULL SHIT REASONS (very angry) BUT NOW the fact that this year the school is not going to be able to continue schooling for the people that started this school year due to lack of funding. So again I feel extremely blessed to be kicked out.( TY whover runs this crazy show called life

The crazy thing is is that is not the first time that this has happend to me. I went to filght attendant school and quit it half way. The airline wasnot able to pay salaries for months and eventually bankrupt.

HAHHAhahHAHAHA ahah aahahahAAHahaha haHHh

11 Feb, 2005, 17:40 PST

Geldgebrek noopt IFE tot onderbreken opleiding

WILLEMSTAD — Het onderwijsinstituut voor verplegend personeel IFE (Instituto pa Formashon den Enfermeria) heeft besloten om de opleiding van 90 eerstejaars studenten per 14 februari te beëindigen. Bestuursvoorzitter Ivan Asjes benadrukt dat het hopelijk om een tijdelijke maatregel gaat totdat er meer duidelijkheid komt over de toegekende subsidie voor 2005, en het Land ook daadwerkelijk geld aan de onderwijsinstelling overmaakt.

---------------------------------------------

I am now hoping that I can start doing bioligy and chemistry and maybe perhaps teach classes in the future.

[ 12. February 2005, 12:29: Message edited by: brian ]

[woof woof woof]

Ohhh - It's a bummer for the others that had their hopes dashed

[spacetrucker]

This thread is really interesting and the topic is the main one in my life at the moment, so heres my story plus some questions.

Six months ago I quit my fulltime IT whore job of five years, and I am happy. I mean I really had it good there, relatively speaking. They were easygoing people to work for, wear what I like to work, they even gave me shares in the company. But at the end of it I was just so sick of all the corporate bullshitting, and commuting 1hr each way every day to sit on front of a screen all day. Its no way to live. I appreciate that many people would kill for these working conditions, but at the end of the day I just made a choice. I feel like I took control of my life again.

I still do a few hours a week of IT work, working from home, but I dont want to take on any large projects. But its not enough to pay my mortgage and bills. When I quit I had saved up a decent amount of money, so I knew I could survive for a decent amount of time (without centerlink!) while I set myself up.

Since I quit I have been reducing my living expenses to the max and have started growing lots of veges and herbs, and set up a greenhouse. I will be setting up a chook pen and getting chooks soon. Also I have been getting the hang of propagating herbs and other plants (still a total beginner but I seem to be on a roll lately), so I've been thinking about maybe setting up a stall selling medicinal herbs at the market on some weekends for a some extra cash. I don't expect to make heaps of dough, but there are hardly any overheads either.

So what I would like to know from other herb sellers is are there any major legal issues? I have never been in business before so I have no idea. I do plan on seeing a 'proper' business advisor soon. The thing I am wondering about is public liability insurance. Is this required by law for this type, or any type of business?

Also are live plants considered to be foodstuffs, since I imagine that there would be a bunch of legal requirements for selling food? Would advertising plants as 'medicinal', or anything else implying human consumption, bring any issues?

I only plan on selling live plants, but if someone says oy this plant poisoned me I am going to sue you to hell where would I be?

that'll do for now :cool:

[Rev]

waterdragon:

the 'something new' for me has been my desire for self sufficiency - why work to live just go to work again? creating your own food and incomes is very time consuming but satisfying work, i still feel that more reliance on your own means is the answer to the worlds ills,

here here

it seems to me that the more you earn the bigger the overheads. Cut the overheads and watch your dollar and time go further

[Torsten]

space_t - I cannot recommend liability insurance enough. It's actually not that expensive for a small business in that field, so it really is worth the peace of mind. If you are going to sell potentially dangerous plants to an unscreened public then you can't afford not to have the insurance. If you get it as part of your home & business combined insurance it turns out quite cheap. They just don't like it as a standalone product.

Selling plants is the safest thing in terms of legalities. There are 5 species you can't sell and that's it! No other limitations. There may be some weedlaws, but they are a slap on the wrist.

good luck.