There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by Kikuko Tsumura

I’d come to the conclusion that there were very few jobs in the world that ate up as much time and as little brainpower as watching over the life of a novelist who lived alone and worked from home.

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.

And, needless to say, money was of utmost importance to me right now. I had no idea when I might burn out next.

The surveillance job hadn’t been that bad, but it had felt weighty and involved in a way that I didn’t feel capable of dealing with. Perhaps it just wasn’t a job suited to a chronic over-thinker like me.

I didn’t want to have any more feelings about my work than were strictly necessary. I was done with all that.

When things had been really unbearable for me at my old job, I’d fallen prey to paranoid thoughts several times,

Just having to choose felt stressful. I wanted to return to that period when all I needed to do was work, and the time would pass of its own accord.

I’d previously been worried that I wouldn’t ever be able to come up with any good ideas, but gradually I was coming around to a different mindset: if you fired off enough ideas, you were bound to eventually hit upon a winner. The key was to keep churning them out.

After having to leave my old job because of burnout syndrome, I was rationally aware that it wasn’t a good idea to get too emotionally involved in what I was doing, but it was also difficult to prevent myself from taking satisfaction in it. Truthfully, I was happy when people took pleasure in my work, and it made me want to try harder.

Mean people are mean even when they aren’t working.

‘I’d like an easy job.’

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.

Whoever you were, there was a chance that you would end up wanting to run away from a job you had once believed in, that you would stray from the path you were on.

There are pitfalls like that everywhere, lying in wait to trip you up. The more feeling you put into your work or whatever it is you’re devoting yourself to, the more of them there are.

‘Accepting those ups and downs, choosing to take on difficult jobs – that’s what life is about.

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.