There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by Kikuko Tsumura

Of course, nobody likes it when their home and workplace are too far apart, but too near isn’t great either. You end up going straight into work without having the chance to shake off any of that just-woken-up daze.

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.

Rather than doing the kind of job where I’d be involved with lots of people and become a central pillar of the establishment, I was better off in a role that I could fulfil calmly and peaceably.

When I thought about how many people there were in this world struggling for work, not to mention how I owed my ability to do this job and the previous one at the bus company almost entirely to those who’d walked the path ahead of me, my desire to quit felt like an impudent thing to be feeling – but there it was.

‘So, what you’re saying is that you felt like the job itself was very worthwhile, but there was some interference that prevented you from properly engaging and building a healthy relationship with your work.’

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.

‘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.