Reaching the "Fuck It!" Point
Listening to Dan [1] talking about his WeWork (and other work-related) experiences - among other things - reminded me of why I left the UK. Truth to tell, it wasn't intended to be permanent - and probably won't be in the end - but why I gave up, in several different regards, including trying to find jobs, was that I reached the "Fuck It!" point. I had reached the point where I lost patience with everything - trying to find a job that was anywhere remotely close to the kind of career I had wanted before graduating, but which never actually materialised; voting in elections had already demonstrated its uselessness and so I had given up on that, too; and like so many grads chasing jobs, forever being released and gravitating back to my parents' back bedroom; and always spending too much of my earnings, so that I had a small mountain of debt rather than actual savings. By the time I was 39, I was at breaking point; the trouble was that I couldn't seem to get any reasonable control over the situation.
It also reminded me of an expression I read a long time ago. I used to go fishing with a local match fishing club, and so naturally I used to have fishing weeklies and would read a lot of books, and I came across the expression: "chuck and chance it fishing" - the meaning of this being trying to catch fish without doing any realistic research about the local situation, what kind of bait was most successful, which tackle would be best, and so on. The results would be no better than random. Now, my experience of trying to get any employment in the UK related to biochemistry was a zero success rate - employers always wanted me to do chemical analysis, in which I had little realistic interest, and besides, even at Degree level, I had always failed any examination in chemistry; but they kept giving me analytical chemical jobs until finally I had had enough; the whole thing felt too "chuck and chance it" to have any reasonable outcome. At one point, back when I was living with my parents in the 1990s, I had a huge lever arch file full of job rejections and didn't feel that I was making any progress at all. That was why I decided to leave the UK, and having planned (and failed) to get into Japan to teach English, I went first to Taiwan and then to Korea. That was in 2003, and I'm still here.
Likewise with voting. It dawned on me, rather slowly perhaps, that this periodic circus of voting for which obnoxious group would get to run the country was an utter waste of time. Coming from a purely working-class background, politicians were remote and irrelevant, and gradually I came to think that it was time to disengage from it. There seemed to be no form of political representation for someone like myself in England, and elected representatives seemed to enact laws the results of which seemed more punitive than anything else (the Poll Tax and IR35 spring to mind). The body politic now seems to be the Enemy. I prefer to make my own decisions and not to be coerced into any action by laws for which I personally have never voted; for convenience, I came to refer to myself as an "anarchist", although this is probably only partly true - philosophical rather than practical.
Between an unwanted and unrepresentative electoral system, the unsettled lifestyle resulting from a work situation which was usually temporary and short, an unwanted career in the wrong branch of science and the overall lack of financial security and reasonable prospects, I basically gave up. My experience of life seems to have been one in which I keep crossing thresholds which, once across, are impossible to traverse back because the psychological changes involved prevent it; to try to return to how things were previously would mean living a lie, being a misfit, struggling to exist in an inappropriate environment - an unbearable horror. So I left; I got out.
The original intention on my part was only that this should last for a few years, but I flew out of Heathrow in September 2002, and seventeen years later, I have still not returned. Paradoxically, although my time out here has been far from perfect and has even included a recent experience with cancer, the fact that things like accommodation and salary have been mainly guaranteed and generally useful, coupled with the availability of fast and cheap public transport have meant that I have felt no need to waste money on luxury items like cars. Complete the paperwork and you are then resident with the means of supporting yourself, even with something of an advantage being already here because people outside of the country often say that they will commit themselves and then change their minds, forcing the employers to take whomever they can before the due date. I stayed with my first (and least critical) employer for almost six years; I've worked with the military twice (and really hope that I don't have to do that again), and at the moment I am back in a previous job. I have travelled all around the south, east and north of the country and to be honest, I prefer the south, though I do think that a good job with a good apartment in the Seoul area might be okay later.
Anyway, it was Dan's rant about his tribulations seeking work in the Seattle area that jogged me into writing, and I deeply sympathise with him. The sum of my own experience seems to be that trying to find a job working for someone else in one's homeland is a rat race, but possible alternative careers are never broached during the educational process; we should try to find independent careers of some kind rather than surrendering to dependence upon the whims of others. It is no surprise to find that many of the wealthiest members of society are simply those who have speculated successfully on the value of things and accumulated their fortune; by doing this, they have sidestepped the inevitable trap of having to compete for employment where the business owners would prefer to pay less to those who work for them. There is a lesson in this.
[1] https://soundcloud.com/daniel-sullivan-505714723/little-saigon-report-192-captain-marvels-vagina