Out of curiosity- how far spread is the principles of going Walkabout?
How many of you have experience with letting reflection, interests and coincidences set the direction for a while in your life?
Please leave a note - by pressing "COMMENTS" below - telling your story or just saying that you have been here....!
Torben, Copenhagen, Denmark
Dear Torben,
ReplyDeleteWhat you are describing and your thoughts behind your walk-about concept as I understand it, are exactly what I personally believe sums up what the whole experience of being unemployed should be all about.
As a stress management consultant I mainly coach unemployed engineers and other academics suffering from “unemployment stress” and time and time again I find them totally lost in the unemployment world when all they have really lost are their jobs! Of course the financial aspect of unemployment can stress anyone, but to them it’s much more than money problems. In fact money is rarely their biggest stress issue. It goes a lot deeper than that.
What really triggers the stress reaction for some of them is the perception of having almost lost their fundamental right to exist. They feel they no longer have an identity without their job or their job title. That they are “losers” and do not have any kind of future without a job. What your blog is communicating is the other side of that coin and the one side to focus on.
Unemployment is for most people a temporary halt from a career in the fast lane. It’s a time to pause and reflect on where you are in your life and where you would want to go next. It should also be perceived as a time where one has a unique possibility to go walk-about and exploit what else life has to offer.
I believe periods of unemployment will be part of everybody’s CV or résumé in the not too distant future for several reasons. For one the increase of people with higher educations is growing constantly and at the same time there are still less academic jobs in the western world since production and other industries are being moved to Asia, eastern Europe etc. Secondly, we are still struggling with the transition from the industrial society to the information society on a mental level and therefore haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.
Once we fully arrive in the information society mentally, I believe we will see a general shift in the work consciousness towards a “life career” rather than a “work career” where the individual is much more concerned with his or hers immediate needs as a preparation for the future. Periodically we will all be unemployed – in fact it will become somewhat of a status symbol to be on “reflection time” where one catches up with what has been on hold for the past few years or with life in general. These periods of “time out” will be part of our career paths and in our CV since they send the message to any future employer that we are in tune with ourselves and therefore of great value to the company.
Whether we use our time away from the job market to take the family around the world or to pursue a new direction in our career is secondary. The point is that we listen to our selves and do what feels right at the time. In order to fund our times of self growth and life discovery we will all have unemployment insurance financially backed by our employers in much the same way we have health insurance today since it will be perceived as an asset to the company that its employees take leaves of absence in order to go walk-about..
All the best of luck on your continuous journey,
Karina Weidner
Hej Torben
ReplyDeleteTak, fordi du sætter ord på et kafkask univers. Systemet bygger på et menneskesyn, der ligger langt fra det, som kunne være i et samfund med frie individer, der gerne vil arbejde, realisere sig selv og sidde med ved bordet. I stedet går alting op i kontrol, trusler og kontrol af kontrollen. Tænk, hvis alle de penge, som bliver brugt på kontrol, blev brugt på at skabe nogle reelle arbejdspladser i stedet for?
Hilsen en, som også er midt i det!
Dear Torben I like your thoughts about marinating and surveillance. It made me remember the book Deutchstunde, Tysktime, by Sigfried Lenz about a painter who was forbidden to paint his expressionist paintings during world war II. The story also tells about a constable who surveyed the painter day and night to make sure that he didn't paint.
ReplyDelete