The Wilderness Years

(Aka the first five years where I learnt nobody owed me anything, and if I was ever going to do anything, I need to figure it out myself)

The jump from child to adult isn’t easy.

At school everything is laid out for you, even your studies give you a defined criteria of success that outlines whether you are a success or failure.

Sure you might get the occasional option, such as whether you intend to pursue History or Geography, or Art or Information Technology, but the choices you make in itself give you a structured syllabus for the next few years.

You don’t have complex multitude of outcomes dependent on each decision you make (or don’t), and if you can figure out how to game the system, then you’ll achieve those desirable grades.

What you don’t learn is the reality of life, where every action has a reaction, and anything that defines societal expectations has consequences.

Yes, it hard going from school into the world of work, with the first challenge understanding social norms to successfully apply for a job!

How dareyou supposed to know answers to questions like “Why do you want this job?” and why is it wrong to give the answer “Because I need money to live” when that’s the real the true reason anyone works?

Then what do you wear to an interview? A suit? No context matters.

My dad was so proud when I landed my first ever interview he bought my first suit so that I would show up smart.

The gesture was appreciated, and y attire might have been a good fit if I was going for a job in finance, but you can understand my embarrassment showing up for an “Office job” at a builders yard, being interviewed by a trio in labourers outfits who looked like extras for the TV show Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

My first job

When the miracle happened, where someone actually wanted to employ me, my first job was pushing a post room cart around collecting and delivering mail across a building and sending out stationery orders to businesses in the area.

As I settled in the first few weeks learning my role, and getting over the shock of working 9 to 5, and not the 12 hour weeks I’d been used to at school, I wondered what now?

Let’s be realistic, even at 18 I knew working at this place wasn’t something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and it might seem like overconfidence from someone who had no work experience, but I knew I could do better.

But what did better look like?

I had no idea, so the only thing I could do was keep pushing that post trolley from office to office until I figured out what was the meaning of my life.

This was something I kept on doing, until before I knew it, I’d been doing that same job for three years. In my situation I think of the quote by Perfect Manifesto’s favourite nihilistic poet Charles Bukowski:

“I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.”

But the extraordinary never did happen, because I never did anything to cause it to happen.

During those years I’d reached my peak in my role. I wasn’t going to get any better, and if I outstayed my time here in this role, I was only going to get worse.

I was so good at my role that I’d developed more efficient ways of doing my job, for example those stationery orders I mentioned? Well each business had a set delivery day based on where they were located in the area, so normally we would package up orders the day before.

I worked out although delivery was on a certain day, that didn’t mean I couldn’t prepare them all in bulk, saving time on a job I’d been doing every morning.

Work dumber, no harder

“Work smarter, no harder” is a common saying but I described my talent as coming from:

“being a really lazy person who’d prefer to spend his time finding easier ways do a job, rather than actually doing the job.”

These workplace time saving hacks exposed a talent I didn’t appreciate and exploited for career gain until later in my career, when I began working on process improvement projects.

So if I wasn’t showing what an innovative employee I was, what was I doing?

Well, I’d write crap poetry for my creative writing class, have a bit of banter with the other lads in the post room, fire rubber bands into pigeon holes, anything that meant avoiding doing anything else towards my day job!

One day I was so bored I decided to experiment how durable the plastic post bags where to fire. My hypothesis figured that as it was plastic and sealed up it would starve the oxygen from a scrap envelop paper I set on fire with a lighter, stopping the fire from growing.

What can I say, I was wrong, I don’t know what they put in those postal bags, but when I unzipped the bag to see if the fire had died down, the scrap was engulfed in flames!

I panicked in realisation that my messing about had really landed me in it this timeas I furiously stamped out the embers, and disposed of the charred evidence in a skip behind the building.

The only problem when I got back to the post room was it stunk of smoke, so I opened the window and began waffing towards it to get out the smell, but before it had cleared properly, I heard my manager approach, so I stop flapping my arms and went back to looking like I’d been working innocently away.

She stopped and I could see her sniffing the air, she paused.

“Is something burning?” she questioned.

“Err… yeah… I think someone’s burning something outside”. I amazed myself how quickly I’d come up with that lie off the top of my head.

She nodded her head and left.

I needed to do something more with my life, and stop acting like an idiot.

There’s got to be more to life than this?

I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life sorting and delivering post in a dilapidated, old building, and as I approach five years I’d come to the realisation that the meaning of life, earth and everything wasn’t going to come and slap me in the face doing the same day to day routine of working/messing about.

No one was going to grab me and show me an opportunity and say “this is what you were meant to do.”

No, if I was going to change my life, I had to do it all myself.

I had to try new things, things that scared me, I had to take risks.

Just before my fifth work year anniversary at 23 I left my first job never to return, pursuing a new exciting opportunity, in a change that took me out my comfort zone, and terrified me a bit at the unknown future ahead.

No one is going to save you

No one is going to show up and save you. And the longer you wait, the more disappointed you’ll be when you figure that out.

Mark Manson

Your actions (or inactions) will always be what you get. How you carry yourself each day in your attitude and enthusiasm will impact how others see you.

I probably could have advanced in my first job, people who’d not been there as long as me did, and at the time I saw an injustice in those decisions, but they had an advantage, they weren’t me, they weren’t immature idiots who did silly things, and acted like they didn’t want to be there.

At the time I resented management for not giving me a chance, and in a way that helped motivate me to move on, but today I accept this was the right decision, even I wouldn’t have promoted young me!

One of my big errors was the expectations I set where I thought everything had to be about finding purpose and meaning, and that other people owed me opportunity, when in reality no one owes you anything – it’s up to you to define your own destiny.

It’s nearly 22 years since I started my first job, and although I’m more confident and secure in my own skin today, I don’t feel I’m anywhere nearer to figuring out what my meaning is on this planet.

The lesson is – you don’t need to find this answer, because in reality most people never do. You just need to keep putting in your reps, keep dreaming of possibilities, keep working to make the lives of others a little bit better, and take action to explore other interests that excite you.

Wishing you the best in your success

James @Perfect Manifesto

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