There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by Kikuko Tsumura

I’d left my last job because it sucked up every scrap of energy I had until there was not a shred left, but at the same time, I sensed that hanging around doing nothing forever probably wasn’t the answer either. In short, I felt pretty confused about whether I wanted to go back to work or not, and that was why I’d come out with that line to the recruiter, which sounded like I thought the whole thing was a joke.

In fact, in all my working life, I hadn’t once made myself a packed lunch. If there were any spare seconds in the morning before work, I wanted to spend them sleeping.

but I began to feel sorry for poor old Mr Kazetani, and in the end I took the can. I got the sense that he wasn’t a bad sort, all told. Although I was also aware that in a workplace context, people could become bad sorts as and when the situation required, so maybe it was more accurate to say he wasn’t always a bad sort.

I wasn’t so convinced that fatigue from looking for a wife was a valid reason for depression, but at least it seemed unrelated to the job.

A job counting the number of sparrows sitting on telegraph cables, or the number of red cars passing through a crossing – I felt like if I listed those kinds of examples it would seem like I was joking, so I kept quiet, but in truth I was semi-serious. I wanted a job that was practically without substance, a job that sat on the borderline between being a job and not.

The questions were inoffensive enough, but I sensed a certain darkness lurking behind them.

The sensation reminded me of finding out for the first time that the cleaning company Duskin was run by the same firm as Mister Donut.

An emotion rushed in on me that seemed to be made up of a confusing number of different parts. All I could say was, ‘Oh.’

Nobody’s life was untouched by loneliness; it was just a question of whether or not you were able to accept that loneliness for what it was. Put another way, everyone was lonely, and it was up to them whether they chose to bury that loneliness through relationships with other people, and if so, of what sort of intensity and depth.

Really and truly, I didn’t care. At this moment in time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work at all. Were I to be told there weren’t any jobs available, I’d probably just nod and quietly make my way back home. Equally, if I was asked if I was available to go and work for a construction company in Dubai, I was likely to say, quite offhand, that I was up for it.

The time had come to embrace the ups and downs again. I had no way of knowing what pitfalls might be lying in wait for me, but what I’d discovered by doing five jobs in such a short span of time was this: the same was true of everything. You never knew what was going to happen, whatever you did. You just had to give it your all, and hope for the best. Hope like anything it would turn out alright.