Job Security is an illusion
“And what are the realities of modern life? Well, the chief one is an everlasting, frantic struggle to sell things. With most people it takes the form of selling themselves – that’s to say getting a job and keeping it.” – George Orwell, Coming up for air.
One of the things to which people like to cling – even if the reality of escape should present itself – is job security.
Loss of job security is one of the fears that ties you to a desk job and prevents you from setting up your own business or taking a period of voluntary unemployment. After income, it’s probably the most-cited thing that people go to work for. But what exactly is it?
Wikipedia puts it in cold terms: “Job security is the probability that an individual will keep his or her job; a job with a high level of job security is such that a person with the job would have a small chance of becoming unemployed.”
This is factually accurate but the real nature of job security is tantamount to false hope. So you have a high level of job security, but in actuality you always have to live with the risk that you’ll be made redundant or fired unjustly or forced to retire. It happens. Even if you work for a massive conglomerate and have a contract as long as your arm, your job can vanish if your employer decides it.
People think that self-employment is risky but at least such risk can be managed. The self-employed are not at the whim of employers. Yes, they are at the whim of the markets but a good entrepreneurial education and a knowledge of investment will give the self-employed the skills to manage that risk. There is no analogue action for an employee to take: you’re a passenger with no access to the cockpit.
Job Security is an illusion. How do we overcome this illusion?
As advised in Issue Three, use your job as a career gym. Don’t just take the paycheque like a happy worker. Use your job to learn transferable skills. Make yourself re-employable in the event that you should lose your job, want to change your job, or want to voluntarily escape it.
I suppose the fear of losing job security is higher if you’re living from paycheque to paycheque. This is the argument for saving: if you can make adequate measures of frugality and save a decent proportion of your income, you will gradually overcome the fear of losing job security with every passing paycheque. If you have money in the bank, the possibility of losing your job will concern you less. Eventually, you will have enough money in the bank to give you the confidence to leave your job in the most dignified manner possible: a letter of resignation.
Hello, new readers
The recent guest posts and a new dedication to frequency has lead to an increase in our online readership. I’d just like to say a friendly “Hello!” to those new readers.
You’ve probably already explored the more static parts of the site, so you already know what we’re about. To get a feel of the blog, here are some entries of note:
An Escapologist’s Diary, Part 1 – arguably the start of my personal escape story.
Interview with Judith Levine – free content from our first print issue.
What comes after escape? – brief suggestions of how to spend the good life.
An Escapologist’s Diary, Part 11 – our weekend at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair.
Never forget – what’s not to be missed about office life.
Feminism and Escapology – Holly Meier explores the overlap.
New Escapologist launch party – review and photographs from our Issue Two launch party in Glasgow, Scotland.
No more mindless submission – a guest post I made over at ‘Early Retirement Extreme’.
Comments at the blog are always encouraged. I generally reply to comments, even on older posts. Let’s get a conversation going.
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Welcome aboard, folks.
My 2010 reading list. Or: you are what you eat
Escapologists should impose a degree of discipline over what they consume if they want to live deliberately. Be aware of the nerd maxim, Garbage in, Garbage out.
A couple of people asked about the self-imposed reading list to which I referred in a previous post. For the duration of 2010, I am exclusively reading the titles on a pre-planned list.
I don’t particularly recommend this practice: it’s just an experiment. The rationale behind the experiment, however, is worth imparting here.
The list was a 2010 new year’s resolution. It was a sequel to 2009’s resolution to record everything I read.
It had become clear that I’d spent a year consuming mediocre material, often to honour the recommendations of other people. As someone who values reading, this was an insane situation, needing to be taken by the lapels.
By making a pre-planned list for 2010, I could discipline myself to read exclusively for pleasure and to read a few classics I’d previously not got around to.
It was also a good way of explaining to people why I couldn’t read the books they were keen for me to borrow. Recommendations from friends are seldom without merit, but it’s never good to commit hours required to read a novel out of obligation. It has also been fun to entertain people with this slightly eccentric methodology in the pub.
Being a realist I’d allowed for two deviations from the list by including a couple of empty slots. In practice though, I’ve veered from the list on about six occasions. This is experiment and not a challenge, so I don’t see such deviations as ‘failures’ but as a ‘finding’. So far I’ve read about half of the modest list (which is about right for June) and those few extras. The extra choices evolved pretty organically from the list: mostly other books by a listed author.
I don’t think I’ll run another book list next year, but the experiment has shown me that there is value in disciplined consumption.
As strange as it feels to say this as a former librarian, I also think it’s possible to read too much for the sake of personal titillation, which is why my list is so unambitiously short. Reading novels is still just entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as being somehow ‘higher’ than watching films or surfing the web. I don’t think reading novels is the thin end of the wedge to reading more fibrous material either: if you want to read raw Descartes or Seneca, you don’t need to munch through Dan Brown to get there. Try not to consume more than you produce, lest you become intellectually obese. Be like an earthworm and keep a steady in/out ratio.
Financial action: do less instead of more
My partner and I are planning to visit friends and family in Britain. Our original calculation showed that we’d have to sacrifice 1800$ each for this fortnight-long trip in August.
The high cost is partly due the expensive time of year for transatlantic flights, but an August trip allows us to enjoy the Edinburgh Festival Fringe so we’re reluctant to change our dates. (Such a cut-back would compromise the quality of the trip, resulting in the illusion of economy).
1800$ represents several months of unemployed living to me. In a way though, I’m glad of the financial challenge. Rich Dad advises that we stop thinking along the lines of “I can’t afford it” and start asking “How can I afford it?” instead. The conventional wisdom is lazy and stops you from thinking. The open-ended question forces you to rise to a challenge and to exercise your brain. So I began to think about an AdWords campaign capable of generating the required revenue.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations showed that we didn’t have to launch a money-making campaign at all. Frugality will save the day after all. Admittedly, this is the laziest way of ‘making’ money there is, but it would be silly to ignore.
– we saved 25% by shopping hard for the cheapest available flight
– we saved 50% by planning acceptable financial cutbacks for the June-August period, including the duration of the trip
– the final 25% doesn’t need to be saved since it equates approximately to our regular living expenses
We’ve theoretically paid for our trip by doing less instead of doing more.
An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 12.
Yesterday, I stayed indoors because of the amazing rain. This incidentally resulted in a day of zero expenditure, if you overlook the 12$ daily rent.
Here are some of the things I did for free:
– Read the final quarter of George Orwell’s Coming up for air. It was a library copy, which I had retrieved on foot).
– Watched the torrential rain from our balcony. I had to stay close to the wall to avoid getting wet but it was remarkable to watch and listen to rain like this. Even though I’ve largely acclimatised to Montreal’s sunshine and French language, the heavy rain is always a reminder that I’m abroad
– Edited four articles for the pending fourth edition before passing them to our sub-editor for approval.
– Posted yesterday’s blog entry and spent a little time reading Matthew‘s blog.
– Baked bread (not technically free but at 70¢ for two loaves, it’s hardly worth acknowledging as an expense).
– Took a nap. Possibly the sweetest afternoon activity for any non-worker. I kept the balcony door open and drifted off to the sound of foreign rain.
– Played twenty minutes of free online Pacman, my favourite computer game ever. This version (designed by Neave) is an unlicensed clone of Namco’s original, but I think it’s the best version ever made. I don’t generally advocate spending time playing computer games but I have an occasional penchant for Pacman and Asteroids. I like to make up stories about these strange and simple games. I believe the pilot of the Asteroids spaceship is a criminal sentenced to the penal servitude of rock-breaking in outer space with only an amazingly fragile hull between him and the eternal void. Not bad for 2KB ROM code.
– Ate home-baked cake (again, at a negligible cost) while listening to the weekly podcast of Richard Herring and Andrew Collings: a comedy double act who’ve provided hundreds of hours of free entertainment since they went live in July 2008. It is shabby and hard on the ears but that is kind of the point. I’m looking forward to a month-long visit from my friend Dan in October, with whom I’ll make a smaller contribution of a similar fuzzy quality.
– Drank home-filtered water from a mason jar and pretended alternately to be Epicurus and Robinson Crusoe. Anyone who suggests my day of solitude drove me temporarily insane might be onto something.
– A daily ten-minute French language lesson using MP3 versions of Michel Thomas‘ method tapes.
– Spent quality time with my rainsoaked girlfriend upon her return from work. We made dinner and watched Star Trek DVDs from my compact and well-stocked DJ case.
Yesterday was like one of those ‘wet lunches’ at school when the teachers allow you to stay indoors and play board games instead of getting wet at lunchtime, except that it was an all-day ‘wet lunch’ and it was pretty alright.
Walking everywhere
“Why don’t people, instead of the idiocies they do spend their time on, just walk round looking at things? […] all the while the sort of feeling of wonder, the peculiar flame inside you. It’s the only thing worth having and we don’t want it.” – George Orwell. Coming up for Air
This month, I decided to eliminate the expense of public transport and to walk everywhere instead.
Before June, I had been recharging a travel card each month. Admittedly, the ‘Opus Card’ is a snatch at 70$ for unlimited access to excellent bus and metro services, but that’s still 70$ per month (£46 in my native currency, representing 2.5 hours of labour) I could use on something else or leave in the bank, so I decided to pick up the gauntlet (or rather my shoes) and start walking.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the cost of shoe leather is negligible (especially when you buy handmade shoes for something in the region of 250$ and can have them re-heeled occasionally instead of buying poor-quality new shoes every couple of months).
I’ll admit that walking everywhere is pretty extreme action. Most people would struggle to get by without a car let alone forgo public transport as well. But, again, it’s only your circumstances that dictate this and circumstances can be modified. I know that people have to get to work in a timely fashion and that those who live in the suburbs or countryside can’t rely on public transport, but that’s (bluntly) the result of choices you made and can still change.
Since I do not work, I have the time and energy to walk anywhere. In my favour, Montreal is a small city and I have so far not found the need to spend more than two hours walking from our apartment to any significant location.
If it rains or snows, I either dress appropriately or simply change my plans and stay indoors. If it’s hot, I make sure I take along a flask of water (refillable for free at public drinking fountains – that’s what they’re for).
So far this month, I’ve caught two busses due to being pressed for time on one occasion and submitting to peer pressure on another. Total cost: 5.50$. Even projecting forward another two busses in the second half of the month, I’ll still have saved 59$ over the course of June and 413$ between now and the end of the year (half the cost of a flight to London).
This is ostensibly a money-saving exercise but there are also physical and intellectual benefits to walking:
Walking makes me fit so I don’t have to burn time and calories on a treadmill. Choosing different routes also allows me to discover and enjoy previously uncovered parts of the city.
You see things differently than if you were in a bus or a metro carriage: the other day I saw a culture-jammed advertising poster morbidly combining an ‘American Apparel’ model with the skinless corpse currently promoting Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds exhibition. Brilliant.
When walking, you can enjoy some downtime. You can process your thoughts and the information you’ve acquired since your last walk. It clears the mind. Personally, I do not listen to music as I walk, preferring to engage exclusively with the sounds of my thoughts and the city.
Like most people, I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep. Thankfully, having a tired body and a clear mind after a daily walk has curbed this problem.
Try it. Eschew transport for a while. Go à pied.
Alchemy for simpletons. Or: the minimalist loaf
To most intents and purposes, I’m a decent cook. I’m great with vegetables, fish, pulses, pasta and puddings. When it comes to baking bread, however, I’m a complete dunderhead.
To me, baking bread is closer to alchemy than cookery. Instead of ingredients, you have base elements: water, salt, flour, microscopic-organisms, heat and precious, precious hope. Perhaps for this reason, my oven has produced many a floury quagmire and blackened cobblestone. I’m wanted for mass-murder by the yeast FBI.
Naturally, I find this incompetence fairly unsettling. Baking is something of a minimalist/frugalist/self-sufficientist linchpin. If you can somehow convert these base elements into a golden, glowing loaf, you’re symbolically empowered to do pretty much anything.
At last I have banished my incompetence. Today I produced twin golden-brown rustic loaves. Allow me to share the procedure that even a simpleton like me managed to follow:
Twenty things and “the toothbrush that is at me”
Holly writes to me: “I read the post you did for that other blog, is it really true you only own 20 things?”
At my mum’s house in England there’s a bookcase which definitely belongs to me but I don’t count it because (a) other people use it so it’s kind of a gift to them; (b) I only see it a couple of times a year, so it’s like an estranged son; (c) if pressed to take responsibility, I would cut it loose.
Aside from that semi-concession, I own something in the region of twenty things. I should mention that this figure was never a goal or even particularly deliberate. This is how it happened:
– I’ve never bought furniture or utensils because I’ve always rented furnished apartments.
– I mainly wear a single suit, which means substantially fewer clothes to most people.
– There are always plenty of books in my orbit but they belong to libraries.
– I consider CDs, magazines, show props (I’m a performer) and DVDs ephemeral, so these things are sold or swapped or given away once I’m done with them. I never have many in hand at one time.
My total cache is something like: a suit, some shirts, a couple of bitchin’ t-shirts, shorts, underwear, a pair of handmade oxfords, some long-serving hush-puppies, a pair of snow boots, a small DJ case of favourite DVD discs (I throw away the box if a film makes it into the elite of keepsies), a laptop computer, a toothbrush, a safety razor, two pairs of specatcles and a wallet.
When making the ‘twenty things’ claim, I’ve often wondered if I should count consumable mainstays like olive oil and flour, condoms and toothpaste. Although they’re ephemeral, they are always present. If such things count then I probably have something closer to fifty things (though Leo Babauta doesn’t count consumables in his list either).
A final thought on the subject of ownership:
In the Gaelic language, my friend from the Scottish Western Isles tells me, there is no possession. Instead of saying “my toothbrush”, you say “the toothbrush that is at me”. There are exceptions (if memory serves, you can grammatically own your body, your spirit and your blood relatives) but the language generally treats objects as being temporarily ‘at you’ rather than in your posession. As an exercise, try thinking about “your things” as “things that are at you”.
A different kind of budget
I was thinking about budgets today. I’ve never used them. Instead, I stick to a general rule about finding the cheapest way of doing something without compromising too much on quality.
Suppose the typical cost of air travel between NYC and London is $800. If you find an alternative flight for $650 but this flight takes an hour longer to get there, you would be wise to take the cheaper option (assuming you can’t make $150 or more during an hour on the ground). The saving of $150 is worth taking because the quality of your trip is not sufficiently reduced. If, however, the cheaper deal were to result in three connecting flights, an overnight stay or passage on a pirate ship, the sacrifice of quality would negate the saving of $150.
From this emerges a different kind of budget: one that focuses on quality rather than money. Where a conventional budget asks you to consider how much money you are willing to sacrifice on a given exploit, my kind of budget asks how much quality you’re prepared to sacrifice in order to get the most cost-effective version available (the cheapest option available within your quality budget).
For another example, my tailored suit cost £600. I could have had one made from a more expensive fabric for £1000, or I could have bought a non-tailored one for as little as £75.
I didn’t choose the £600 suit because it satisfied a pre-determined ≤£600 budget. I chose it because the advantage of buying a better quality cloth was negligible. The one I had chosen was aesthetically pleasing, highly durable and better fabric than that of anyone else in my office. It was the best I could reasonably expect to need, so anything better (the £1000 option) would be waste. Moreover, any off-the-peg option, no matter how financially cheap, would fall outside of my quality budget. In my opinion, I had found the best ratio of cost to quality.
So, in a way, I do use budgets after all. I just spend ‘quality’ rather than ‘money’. A budget of this nature would allow you to consistently find the cheapest option (defaulting to our original ‘general rule’) without compromising your personal expectations of quality.
Portable Telephonic Gimcrack: why I gave away my iPhone
The following is a guest post from my excellent friend, Mark Wentworth.
With my Escapological love of transience, I spend much of my spare time roaming city streets by foot and country lanes by velocipede. As such, I have toyed with the idea of acquiring mobile Internet access for over a decade. When Apple Inc. released an intensely desirable portable telephonic gimcrack in the form of the iPhone, it seemed like exactly the sort of gadget I had in mind.
I didn’t rush out to buy one of those sleek black confections immediately. Instead, I exercised Escaplogical restraint and, besides, it is wise to allow technology to mature before investing in it. This February I finally took the plunge and splashed out a not inconsiderable £350 on an O2 Pay-As-You-Go 8GB iPhone 3G.
By the Beard of Zeus, I should be careful what I wish for.
Just buying the confounded thing was a frustrating experience. First I endured a bout of acute choice anxiety as I examined the relative merits of the 8GB 3G, the 16GB 3GS and the 32GB 3GS (inevitably there is now an iPhone 4). Do I need a compass on a phone? Am I comfortable walking around with a package of electronics worth more than an entire Peruvian village? Do I need the video recording feature or can I abstain from happy-slapping homeless alcoholics outside McDonald’s? After much agonizing I girded my loins and joined the queue at the Carphone Warehouse in Wimbledon.
