Tag: career

A Tall Tree In A Dark Forest

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was lying in bed this morning feeling frustrated. I’ve not been sleeping as well as I usually do and that usual is to close my eyes and suddenly the alarm is going off nine hours later. I’m not sure why I’m not, but for whatever reason I find it understandably annoying. The frustration I suspect is like a wind that gives the fire oxygen but it’s a lack of something that’s the kindling.

I’ve led a reasonably interesting life so far, been to a few places and met many faces. I don’t really feel proud of it like it’s some accomplishment despite the positive response I get when I tell some people. There is certainly a lack of contentment and despite how it may appear I feel a constant drive to achieve things. I often see some of my friends or really successful famous people and I’m envious of their lives. They seem to have a success I don’t. Careers, homes, families and bank balances yet I’m thirty four and my instincts have rejected all of these things until now. In fact I still see the futility of some of them and I know the things they have sacrificed to achieve them, things I’m seemingly still unwilling to as I plan my next adventure. Can we adventure forever though? We can’t eat our memories, we can’t shelter under them and eventually we just become those repetitive old travellers others avoid because all they have is their stories. I don’t often tell my stories unless they come up as a relatable anecdote, I don’t want to be that person.

So why the frustration? I hope you don’t feel me to be self indulgent with this piece but it’s simply I know expressing thoughts like this can help others with their own thoughts. I’m not saying my thoughts are anything special but more that I’m not unique and we all suffer the same things just through different eyes. The frustration stems from a lack of something in life as I said. I’m not sure if it’s a home because I have one now and it’s great and safe but it’s not going to bring me happiness on it’s own. Maybe it’s a family? A wife and kids. Again I’m unsure of that, although I don’t doubt it would be nice to have a woman in my life. Perhaps it’s just wanting it all, or more precisely wanting an idea of how I imagine it’ll be.

I was thinking that for all the knowledge I’ve learnt over the years; meeting wise people, reading wise texts, experiencing moments of understanding; I still don’t seem to put much of this into practice in my own life. It would explain why it is still knowledge within and not wisdom. The only thing I’ve learnt is that unlike twenty five year old me I try to avoid giving wise enlightened advice or talking in that empty way people do when they think they know it all. I feel an immediate inclination to end the conversation, or I’ll carry it on but sometimes it just feels stupid. I know it can impress people, and you see people taking it in but it doesn’t feel real. Unless you start living it it’s just a series of empty words.

A series of desires about something we imagine we want and a series of empty words then. I know the rhetoric about contentment and desires but I’m not content and I still desire. I know the words that give the impression of a level of enlightened but I feel as far from enlightened as I’ve even been. This is the frustration then. Why what I know doesn’t correlate in any way to how I act. This is why I feel confident I can say this aloud and it will resonate with others, another thing I know is that others don’t act on what they know either. Perhaps it’s just part of being a fallible human. Perhaps we just need more than knowledge of words. This drive to achieve life, live it to whatever fullest version we choose. Again this is just an idea of a desire. I think I need to end this here because I can see myself going in circles. The answers aren’t attached to my tail. Maybe the answers aren’t attached to anything. Maybe there are no answers. Perhaps that’s what I’m missing, but what does that even mean? Just empty fucking words again.

Prioritise Dreams

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was an article on the BBC today which I found very interesting in how it allowed for different perspectives of how we view society. The article discussed how the hopes and dreams of youths are at odds with the type of jobs that will be available to them. Apparently “five times as many seventeen and eighteen year olds in the UK want to work in art, culture, entertainment and sport as there are jobs available” and that equated to over half of those surveyed only wanting to work in this sector. Seemingly the industry that requires people the most is accommodation and catering, unfortunately for them they require seven times the number of students who expressed an interest, wholesale and retail appears to suffering from similar disinterest. According to this article, the report believes “young people’s career aspirations need to be constructively challenged”. The article then moves on to how certain young people potentially feel they cannot achieve career goals because of their gender, ethnicity or social-economic background.

Now this article can be viewed two ways I would suggest. On the one hand it can be seen that the youth of today need to embrace a little reality, that they won’t always be able to do the jobs they want, must stop being fixated with being either Instagram models or footballers – terrible gender stereotyping I know but humour me – but also not allow the barriers of their own existence to hold them back from a more serious career. On the other hand it appears that the majority of young people want an interesting, creative career in the arts and entertainment world, and not to be working as waiters or hotel cleaners. To completely dismiss the first idea would most likely expose a glaring ignorance about the realities of life for many people, “destined for disappointment” as the article put it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in it. However what the article seems to not take into consideration, and this is understandable given the angle it is written from, is that if the young peoples desires “do not meet the demands of the economy” then perhaps the economy should not be the factor that dictates what work people do, perhaps society has it’s priorities wrong.

I would love to see the numbers of people wanting to be artists and musicians, over Instagram models and footballers, because that could change my perspective slightly. That is though my take on value in the creative arts world and I would be an ignorant man to not see the folly in that. There are many reasons young people will not get the jobs they want in life, but they don’t mention that perhaps these jobs just don’t satisfy people, maybe if people could choose they would not endure jobs that exist for no other reason than for the sake of existing, bring no real benefit to society or the earth, and are nothing more than ways to pay tax and kill time as we wait to die. Surely it needn’t be this way. Money, economics and business are not fundamentally bad things in their own right but misused and corrupted they lead to the real needs of people being either ignored or dismissed as childish dreams. We all dreamt of something when we were young though, why is we can never seem to remember our dreams?

The Hobbyists Dear Diary

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Although I am starting to become concerned that I may just be turning this into a glorified diary I’m seemingly on such a self indulgent enough trip at present that I’ll continue.

Dear diary,
Today I started a new hobby. You see dearest diary I love hobbies, in fact I’ve seemingly been treating too many things in life as hobbies. Some call it not sticking to anything, but for me I really really wanted to be a yoga teacher so I did a course and got a certificate, a tree surgeon so I did a course, a sailor so I did numerous courses, an English teacher, a philosopher, carpenter, engineer, proofreader and I’m in no doubt there were others that I have forgotten about. I loved learning all these things with the intention of turning them into a career, and in a way I did, just my own version of a career. Oh dear diary I just love to refer to them all as a series of hobbies, my life appears to be one long hobby and it’s just such fun. And now I have a new one. I’m going to learn computer science and become a coder. The ultimate jack of all trades has finally tried to pick up a computer and turned it on successfully. Isn’t that so exciting dear diary.
love you love you love you love you

But yes that is that. I’m a grown man with a diary online. It’s funny how things naturally evolve and I know I take the piss out of myself but I don’t mind or care what I am writing about or where I am now. In truth there is so much time for a hell of a lot of evolution in this thing and currently this is where I’m at. The diary phase.

Coding though, for someone who has prided himself on being a technophobe all these years and forever too cool for school, this is quite the corner to have turned. Who knows though, I’ve got to stick to something one day and this allows for a hell of a lot of flexibility, freedom and creativity. It may just be something that grabs my attention when I’m not sailing or getting beaten up by girls.

With all that in mind it is worth pointing out that there is always more to anything. We are put under so much pressure from society to achieve X, Y and Z, and to have done it by a certain age. For sure there are many people out there lost, with no idea what they’re doing or where they’re going. It is a stressful existence and it disgusts me that people have been allowed to slip through the cracks, forgotten and ignored. They may feel alone but they’re not, that’s almost the worst part. Stand up my brothers and sisters, societies outcasts who have not, can not and do not want to achieve success in a style unnatural and forced upon them. Be free and embrace your freedom. Realise you are the lucky few. And while you’re at it, why not take up a hobby or two.