Actually, this salty and watery ballad would be the work of a poet who quite recently died in 1960's in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. I merely expanded upon his poem so that it would suit my message better.
Who was the original poet? And what was his poem? You made me curious.
@Son_of_Imoen He used to go by the name of John Masefield. The poem is entitled Cargoes and can easily be found in his Ballads published in London, 1903. Or below.
"Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amythysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays."
@God, thank you for being so honest, and giving credit to Your creatures where credit is due. Of course, if You were dishonest, or were to put forth work from Your creatures, and then exhibit it as Your own, You wouldn't exactly be @God.
Except, any work done by Your creatures is kind of by definition Your own, anyway.
Gaaa, You make humans' heads hurt! Stop blinding us with Your Light! Gaaaa, it burns, it burns!!!
When it comes to a job, I'd be wiling to even do a job I don't really like, but pays well, and continue my passions as a hobby. Money is oh so important in the world nowadays, especially with the economical crisis around. I'll have to be opportunistic as well, and take my chances when I get them. From this point of view, @Quartz, I really advise you to get a degree. Could be anything, but in my country you practically can't get a job anymore without a degree. It is so essential, and right now you still have the energy, mental strength and time to study. So don't end up going through a lot of temporary stupid little jobs, until you become 50 and lament your decisions in life. Having a degree is better than not having one anyway. It shows that you've put effort in learning about something, and I think most companies will certainly appreciate it. Having a good CV is also important, of course. Just look at the current job market and see which kind of 'profile' employers are currently asking for.
Good topic subject ... weighs pretty heavily on my heart at the moment.
[Giant post snipped]
I know what you're going through, I am there myself and it's a lot of work to get out of that "wtf do I do now" period so far. I'll give you some background (which is LOOOONG);
I am quite smart. It may sound arrogant but it's just a statement of fact. I never even understood the concept of studying until I was around 14, I always wondered why people started reading the same things we'd had in class just because there was a test, why didn't they just write down what they heard in the weeks before? Likewise, I was confused nobody spoke proper English (at age 8) because I'd absorbed the language from watching British TV without subtitles (BBC's The Children's Channel was the only proper children's TV we had at the time). I wondered why people wrote calculations down when it was simply quicker to do it in your head.
As you can imagine, I didn't even break a sweat, mentally, until I hit high school where suddenly not everything was discussed in class anymore, you had to do homework. I'd always neglected it, it felt superfluous, it could teach me nothing beyond what I already gleaned from simply paying half attention in class. But I got questions on tests about things I hadn't even heard about, at which point the biggest brain on the planet can't help. I crashed and burned and got moved to an easier school level, to the great dissappointment of my parents.
You'd think this would teach me something. Work hard for your results, study, apply yourself. I didn't take it that way. Life had always given me everything on a silver platter, it would continue to do so, even if I had to force it. I weaseled my way out of every assignment. I lied, cheated, downloaded projects, copy/pasted things I found on the internet (back when everyone over 25 had NO idea how the internet worked). Sometimes this was more work than actually DOING the project, but that wasn't the issue; not doing the work was the intent, not getting it easy. This had a second motivation; if I failed, it wasn't my fault for not being smart enough, I simply hadn't studied like I should have. I could always blame "I didn't study" and not "I couldn't do it" because not being able to excel at something was a terrifying thought to me.
In order to stay afloat in later years, I manipulated everyone in my path. I'm still very good at manipulating people when I want or need to. I try to be less of an ass nowadays but back then I had friends writing my reports (while being grateful for the 'help' I was giving them by nitpicking their projects) and my parents under the full belief that I had A grade marks by falsifying rapport cards and falsifying their signatures whenever my teachers sent them a letter about my failing grades ("We have seen his grades and assure you that he will spend more time in the books from now on! Signed...")
I passed High School (juuuust right) and headed to college, communication studies, advertising. Manipulating the masses for a living, sounded good to me. But good LORD, they expected me to perform actual work as well. And I couldn't download it off the internet, nor could I trick people into doing it for me. The exams were about things I hadn't even heard of. I failed horribly. I tried again, psychology interested me (surprise surprise) so I tried my hand at that. When I got the books in, I knew I'd blow this one as well. 700 pages for Clinical Psychology alone, it wasn't going to happen. I stretched it for two years so my parents (who were getting more hypercritical by the day) would think I'd amount to something.
Around the time where I confessed to them I'd fucked up (and their ensueing meltdown), my girlfriend (and future wife, mother of my children, the alpha and the omega, etc etc, yada yada) cheated on me with my best friend and I kind of...broke.
I spent four years practicly living like a hermit. I'd lost contact with almost every friend I had, spoke to practicly no-one and when I got a (max 2-day) temp job somewhere, the slightest bit of critisism ruined me for the rest of the week. Of course, I got heaps of that from my parents, who saw me wasting my life away.
(slight parental off note for those who care and can stomach MOAR TEXT;
It bothered me for years that they never did anything or showed any intrest in me, personally. As long as I did well in school, they were cool. The only questions I got about school were not what the subject was about, how the classes were, how I liked them, but simply "What's your grade, why isn't it higher?". They had no idea what my hobbies or intrests were (beyond "that damn computer") and didn't bother finding out. When my grades failed, they told me to do more homework and sent me to my room. They sent me to after school classes so I could do homework there (instead I perfected sleeping while appearing to read). They sent me to a therapist to see what my blockage was (I started with showing her stuff I sucked at, then after a few weeks, stuff I was good at so she thought I was fixed.) However, aside from one project when I was 10 and one french test when I was 12, they have never personally set down with me and did anything school related with me. Even when I was hopelessly depressed and (seriously) throwing my life away in my room watching every sitcome ever made (all seasons) they just told me to man up, but didn't actually DO anything. I was so pissed that they didn't care, only wanted results, which didn't do the relationship between me and them any good.
Only years later did I get past the resentment and simply saw them for what they are; non-perfect human beings who did the best they could in the manner they thought was best. Considering my mother's Conform-and-obey upbringing (where your family dictates who you are) and my dad's Don't ask-don't tell upbringing (where everything is always fine and nothing bad ever happens), they did a fine job. I'm not on drugs or in the gutter or selling my ass for money. They did alright, even though I had to fill in the bits left out myself.
So that was my situation. Twenty five, never worked an actual job, no experience in a serious workplace, no education, hardly friends to help me out. I'd stockpiled money from various sources (birthdays, odd jobs, etc) which I used to move in with a friend of mine to get out of my parent's house. Living a simple life, I could hold out a year with what I had but I needed a job, which was impossible to get because of the previously mentioned. Also, any kind of pressure or critique broke me. So first, therapy. And then I got a lucky break; my sister had a friend who's business had just burnt down and he'd relocated his printing company to an emergency building. Working with outdated equipment, they needed people and they needed people fast so anyone who'd show up on Wednesday at 9am was hired for a week. If you'd perform well enough, you were hired for three months. First day, a computer gave out and I fixed it before the IT guy could get to it. Second day, I got my desk at the IT office upstairs. Fourth day I got a contract in front of me because I'd refitted the new server room (which was really only 14 emergency desktop PC's linked up together) so you could see the status of the entire network and all files on the printing presses at a single glance instead of clicking through everything over the course of 20 minutes of frustration.
I got lucky.
A year later they gave me the choice. Either get an education in computerstuff so I could actually be useful to them on a proper level, or GTFO. They'd pay for everything. Logicly, I rebelled. I quit, and studied on my own. And of course, having learned nothing, I failed my third education like the previous ones. I did make nice friends though, who are my D&D and warhammer buds to this day. As I was failing computer science, I got a call from the company that I quit 10 months before. Servicedesk manager, he needed a technical person and he'd heard I was looking for a job (how he knew I still do not know). If I showed up tomorrow, I'd have a job.
I got lucky again.
So I did, and I did it well for three years when I was fired. Law requires a company to give out full contracts after three years (instead of year-contracts) and the new boss saw that I was bored out of my goddamn mind and seriously unmotivated. My dad linked me an opening at a hospital, datamanager. Patient files and indexing casualties and injury severity scores. The manager's mother was his bridge partner. I sent the guy my resume, got an interview because of my referral (thanks dad) and during the interview, I found out he also played Warhammer. We bonded, I got hired (despite never having worked with a database in my life).
Got lucky, yet again.
I've had this job for well over a year now. The basics are simple, SQL is basicly English with an accent. The interface to the database is easy enough and I have enough experience with bluffing to pretend to know what stuff is about until I get enough information to *actually* know what it's about. I get compliments from surgeons and other datamangers on the quality of my work so I figure that, even though I was initialy hired for a silly reason, I'm doing a good job. I'm blessed with a brain that allows me to master the basics of pretty much anything practical in record time, which is enough for now.
Of course, now comes the actual problem. Is this what I want?
Data managing is....fine. It's a living. It's not a riot, it's not my passion. Hell, I don't know what my passion is. I'm so burnt out from years of depression and fighting with myself that I have no idea what I like anymore. I've never had future plans. I wanted to be a policeman until I heard that it's not catching bad guys all the time but mostly drudgery, paper work, boring patrols and stopping speeding drivers for little respect and littler pay. I wanted to be a game designer, until I heard it's mostly crunching frustrating code, working unpaid overtime, falling over the tiniest detail and then putting out a game you didn't want to work on in the first place but one that 'the market demands'. I wanted to be a writer, until I heard that the market for fantasy books is so vastly saturated that every getting published is literally a one-in-a-million chance and the royalties you get can't even pay a single month's rent unless you sell like Rowling.
I have no goal, no drive, no want. Any job that I think I'd like, is either impossible to get (working on 5th Edition D&D monster/world design sounds awesome), not as much fun as it sounds (aforementioned video game design) or has a risk that I'm not willing to take (Becoming a history teacher sounds great, but requires another study...which I apparently suck at). And even if I did settle on something, I'm apparently incapable of *working* for anything.
My boss offered me Datamanaging courses. Whichever one I wanted, whatever education level I wanted, whatever duration I wanted, whatever the cost. I started one three months ago and when I look at the first page I still have the same feeling in my chest that I did 15 years ago; sheer abject terror of having to DO something to achieve something. Four therapists in three years have not gotten that out of me.
So what future is there then? A job for the rest of my life that I can only feel a passionate 'meh' about? Taking a risk that could literally ruin me if it doesn't work out? Or find a way to beat my own brain, buckle down, promote myself through study, hard work and dedication until I have enough money to do what I want instead of what I need to, but maybe only 10-15 years from now? And how do I find that way?
People say your teens are the hardest part of your life. That's bollocks. It's in essence really simple; manage school (where most of your courses are decided for you), shag some people (or play D&D), don't be a loser (which you will certainly be anyway). But fuck up your twenties means potentially fucking up your entire life. And that pressure's weighing heavily on me at the moment. It's like being at a crossroads with a dozen different roads, but all of them have serial killers hitchhikers and signs that say "Silent Hill, this way" or "Raccoon City, 2 miles".
@Drugar Please tell me you learned English from Andy Peters in the Broom Cupboard with Edd the Duck. (I did read the rest, it was genuinely interesting.)
I have a twisted dream about the end of humanity because the human will never live the "good" utopia many wishes. He will just nuke himself away rather to share his last dollar, bread or say sorry....So my dream is the doom we will face one day or the other, doesnt matter when it will happen. But the sun doesnt get´s us
@Drugar Please tell me you learned English from Andy Peters in the Broom Cupboard with Edd the Duck. (I did read the rest, it was genuinely interesting.)
Top Cat, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, The Banana Splits (though I haaaated them), a science program with some dude dressed up as a crazy professor who did all sorts of cool experiments, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (which started at 7am, ouch), Thundercats and later on a quiz show called Around the World in 60 Seconds. And probably a dozen more, but these stick out in my memory. I don't recall ever seeing Andy Peters I'm afraid.
@Drugar, I read your story, and I wish I could help. I believe you're having what's known as a "quarter life crisis", and they're getting more common for twenty-somethings. I wouldn't want to be in my twenties again in today's world, because finding and holding down a job that isn't sheer torture is getting harder and harder, for everybody.
I can't really think of anything to say to help you feel any better, other than, I hear you. Hopefully, it helped you sort things out to put it all in writing like that. I know that journaling in forums often helps me feel better about things.
I guess it would be best to try to stick it out with the data managing job if you possibly can. You said it wasn't torture to you, although it wasn't very fulfilling, either. But, bad as that may be, being homeless, starving, or without power and other utilities would be worse.
Comments
He used to go by the name of John Masefield. The poem is entitled Cargoes and can easily be found in his Ballads published in London, 1903. Or below.
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays."
Except, any work done by Your creatures is kind of by definition Your own, anyway.
Gaaa, You make humans' heads hurt! Stop blinding us with Your Light! Gaaaa, it burns, it burns!!!
LOL.
John Masefield's Cargoes is considered a public domain work. It is freely available at no charge and it is generally allowed to transform and derive new works from the poem without the need to mention the original author. What I did here is a reinterpretation of Masefield's work which constitutes a new artwork in its own right and I am even allowed to copyright it. I, however, choose not to, as I built something with the fabric of Cargoes solely in order to communicate a message, and not to earn acknowledgement or money.
But let's not stray from the original topic.
As you can imagine, I didn't even break a sweat, mentally, until I hit high school where suddenly not everything was discussed in class anymore, you had to do homework. I'd always neglected it, it felt superfluous, it could teach me nothing beyond what I already gleaned from simply paying half attention in class. But I got questions on tests about things I hadn't even heard about, at which point the biggest brain on the planet can't help. I crashed and burned and got moved to an easier school level, to the great dissappointment of my parents.
You'd think this would teach me something. Work hard for your results, study, apply yourself.
I didn't take it that way. Life had always given me everything on a silver platter, it would continue to do so, even if I had to force it. I weaseled my way out of every assignment. I lied, cheated, downloaded projects, copy/pasted things I found on the internet (back when everyone over 25 had NO idea how the internet worked). Sometimes this was more work than actually DOING the project, but that wasn't the issue; not doing the work was the intent, not getting it easy.
This had a second motivation; if I failed, it wasn't my fault for not being smart enough, I simply hadn't studied like I should have. I could always blame "I didn't study" and not "I couldn't do it" because not being able to excel at something was a terrifying thought to me.
In order to stay afloat in later years, I manipulated everyone in my path. I'm still very good at manipulating people when I want or need to. I try to be less of an ass nowadays but back then I had friends writing my reports (while being grateful for the 'help' I was giving them by nitpicking their projects) and my parents under the full belief that I had A grade marks by falsifying rapport cards and falsifying their signatures whenever my teachers sent them a letter about my failing grades ("We have seen his grades and assure you that he will spend more time in the books from now on! Signed...")
I passed High School (juuuust right) and headed to college, communication studies, advertising. Manipulating the masses for a living, sounded good to me.
But good LORD, they expected me to perform actual work as well. And I couldn't download it off the internet, nor could I trick people into doing it for me. The exams were about things I hadn't even heard of. I failed horribly.
I tried again, psychology interested me (surprise surprise) so I tried my hand at that. When I got the books in, I knew I'd blow this one as well. 700 pages for Clinical Psychology alone, it wasn't going to happen. I stretched it for two years so my parents (who were getting more hypercritical by the day) would think I'd amount to something.
Around the time where I confessed to them I'd fucked up (and their ensueing meltdown), my girlfriend (and future wife, mother of my children, the alpha and the omega, etc etc, yada yada) cheated on me with my best friend and I kind of...broke.
I spent four years practicly living like a hermit. I'd lost contact with almost every friend I had, spoke to practicly no-one and when I got a (max 2-day) temp job somewhere, the slightest bit of critisism ruined me for the rest of the week. Of course, I got heaps of that from my parents, who saw me wasting my life away.
(slight parental off note for those who care and can stomach MOAR TEXT;
However, aside from one project when I was 10 and one french test when I was 12, they have never personally set down with me and did anything school related with me. Even when I was hopelessly depressed and (seriously) throwing my life away in my room watching every sitcome ever made (all seasons) they just told me to man up, but didn't actually DO anything.
I was so pissed that they didn't care, only wanted results, which didn't do the relationship between me and them any good.
Only years later did I get past the resentment and simply saw them for what they are; non-perfect human beings who did the best they could in the manner they thought was best. Considering my mother's Conform-and-obey upbringing (where your family dictates who you are) and my dad's Don't ask-don't tell upbringing (where everything is always fine and nothing bad ever happens), they did a fine job. I'm not on drugs or in the gutter or selling my ass for money. They did alright, even though I had to fill in the bits left out myself.
So that was my situation.
Twenty five, never worked an actual job, no experience in a serious workplace, no education, hardly friends to help me out. I'd stockpiled money from various sources (birthdays, odd jobs, etc) which I used to move in with a friend of mine to get out of my parent's house. Living a simple life, I could hold out a year with what I had but I needed a job, which was impossible to get because of the previously mentioned. Also, any kind of pressure or critique broke me.
So first, therapy.
And then I got a lucky break; my sister had a friend who's business had just burnt down and he'd relocated his printing company to an emergency building. Working with outdated equipment, they needed people and they needed people fast so anyone who'd show up on Wednesday at 9am was hired for a week. If you'd perform well enough, you were hired for three months.
First day, a computer gave out and I fixed it before the IT guy could get to it. Second day, I got my desk at the IT office upstairs. Fourth day I got a contract in front of me because I'd refitted the new server room (which was really only 14 emergency desktop PC's linked up together) so you could see the status of the entire network and all files on the printing presses at a single glance instead of clicking through everything over the course of 20 minutes of frustration.
I got lucky.
A year later they gave me the choice. Either get an education in computerstuff so I could actually be useful to them on a proper level, or GTFO. They'd pay for everything.
Logicly, I rebelled. I quit, and studied on my own. And of course, having learned nothing, I failed my third education like the previous ones. I did make nice friends though, who are my D&D and warhammer buds to this day.
As I was failing computer science, I got a call from the company that I quit 10 months before. Servicedesk manager, he needed a technical person and he'd heard I was looking for a job (how he knew I still do not know). If I showed up tomorrow, I'd have a job.
I got lucky again.
So I did, and I did it well for three years when I was fired. Law requires a company to give out full contracts after three years (instead of year-contracts) and the new boss saw that I was bored out of my goddamn mind and seriously unmotivated.
My dad linked me an opening at a hospital, datamanager. Patient files and indexing casualties and injury severity scores. The manager's mother was his bridge partner. I sent the guy my resume, got an interview because of my referral (thanks dad) and during the interview, I found out he also played Warhammer. We bonded, I got hired (despite never having worked with a database in my life).
Got lucky, yet again.
I've had this job for well over a year now. The basics are simple, SQL is basicly English with an accent. The interface to the database is easy enough and I have enough experience with bluffing to pretend to know what stuff is about until I get enough information to *actually* know what it's about. I get compliments from surgeons and other datamangers on the quality of my work so I figure that, even though I was initialy hired for a silly reason, I'm doing a good job. I'm blessed with a brain that allows me to master the basics of pretty much anything practical in record time, which is enough for now.
Of course, now comes the actual problem.
Is this what I want?
Data managing is....fine. It's a living. It's not a riot, it's not my passion. Hell, I don't know what my passion is. I'm so burnt out from years of depression and fighting with myself that I have no idea what I like anymore.
I've never had future plans. I wanted to be a policeman until I heard that it's not catching bad guys all the time but mostly drudgery, paper work, boring patrols and stopping speeding drivers for little respect and littler pay.
I wanted to be a game designer, until I heard it's mostly crunching frustrating code, working unpaid overtime, falling over the tiniest detail and then putting out a game you didn't want to work on in the first place but one that 'the market demands'.
I wanted to be a writer, until I heard that the market for fantasy books is so vastly saturated that every getting published is literally a one-in-a-million chance and the royalties you get can't even pay a single month's rent unless you sell like Rowling.
I have no goal, no drive, no want. Any job that I think I'd like, is either impossible to get (working on 5th Edition D&D monster/world design sounds awesome), not as much fun as it sounds (aforementioned video game design) or has a risk that I'm not willing to take (Becoming a history teacher sounds great, but requires another study...which I apparently suck at).
And even if I did settle on something, I'm apparently incapable of *working* for anything.
My boss offered me Datamanaging courses. Whichever one I wanted, whatever education level I wanted, whatever duration I wanted, whatever the cost. I started one three months ago and when I look at the first page I still have the same feeling in my chest that I did 15 years ago; sheer abject terror of having to DO something to achieve something. Four therapists in three years have not gotten that out of me.
So what future is there then?
A job for the rest of my life that I can only feel a passionate 'meh' about? Taking a risk that could literally ruin me if it doesn't work out? Or find a way to beat my own brain, buckle down, promote myself through study, hard work and dedication until I have enough money to do what I want instead of what I need to, but maybe only 10-15 years from now? And how do I find that way?
People say your teens are the hardest part of your life. That's bollocks. It's in essence really simple; manage school (where most of your courses are decided for you), shag some people (or play D&D), don't be a loser (which you will certainly be anyway).
But fuck up your twenties means potentially fucking up your entire life. And that pressure's weighing heavily on me at the moment. It's like being at a crossroads with a dozen different roads, but all of them have serial killers hitchhikers and signs that say "Silent Hill, this way" or "Raccoon City, 2 miles".
Meh.
I should win the lottery.
(I did read the rest, it was genuinely interesting.)
I don't recall ever seeing Andy Peters I'm afraid.
I can't really think of anything to say to help you feel any better, other than, I hear you. Hopefully, it helped you sort things out to put it all in writing like that. I know that journaling in forums often helps me feel better about things.
I guess it would be best to try to stick it out with the data managing job if you possibly can. You said it wasn't torture to you, although it wasn't very fulfilling, either. But, bad as that may be, being homeless, starving, or without power and other utilities would be worse.