Continually being told we are in a recession. Trying to decide whether to worry about being in a recession or to aspire to something else. Seems like an obvious choice to me.
It’s a gorgeous morning in Dublin provided you don’t open the door. The sun is scattering in the double doors at the back, bathing my kitchen in the sort of warmth I haven’t known since I was last in Brazil. Wasn’t even this warm in Spain last year. Of course, opening the door leads to reality but that’s for another moment in time.
Someone in my twitter feed retwitted a social media job in Sydney, Australia this morning; it was being filled by some agency with a slightly better attachment to aspiration and people than the norm. “Work in social media and go surfing after work”. Sounds ideal. I don’t remember a single job ad in Dublin ever talking about how you could make your life perfect. Work in Dublin, earn lots of money, pension rights, private health insurance.
Take Eastpoint Business Park. I could go with “Come work with us, go sailing/kitesurfing after work. Biggest beach in Dublin just up the road”. Doesn’t happen, does it.
There’s not much emphasis on how you can have a great life at all in Ireland sometimes. It’s like, taken for granted, and then when you look under the spotlight it’s not all that hectic in reality. Now we have a recession you’re supposed to be glad you have a job regardless of how lousy it is, how badly you’re treated, how lowly paid you are. Despite a property bubble actually bursting and seeing prices down about 40% and historically low interest rates, buying a house is not really getting easier, selling it getting ever harder without causing some form of bankruptcy. Tenancy legislation is shite. People in Ireland have a lot to worry about on basic things like a roof over their head before ever they get to think about having a life. And all the while, we are told that this is it, live with it. You earn so little you can’t aspire to better.
Class driven tosh. The ones saying stuff like that are usually the ones who don’t have to deal with that reality.
I had some flashbacks lately, to when I was a student in London at the age of 23. Postgrad. Worked the whole way through it, in secret having been told it was impossible to work your way through the course in question. I made it but that’s neither here not there. What I remember was having to save for a CD. Do we really think that a life where people have to save for little luxuries like an hour of music is something people should be content to stay in? Apparently yes.
There’s something seriously wrong in Ireland. It’s not political or economic – they are just symptoms. Maybe it’s education. For a long time I thought it was improving because of the influx of foreigners and the influx of Irish people who lived abroad and saw how things could be different and better. Now I really am wondering. You still get judged on how economically successful you are as though it equates to happiness.
I’m not sure it does. I’ve never wanted loads of money. I’m not even sure I want to own my own house at this stage. But I’m sitting here looking at Andre Philipp buildig a slider park in Antigua and thinking about the things I want to do. The big mosaics I want to do. The kitesurfing and camera trips I’d like to do. And I’m thinking, instead of spending energy worrying about the recession, I’d prefer to find some way of makign those things happen.
I can’t help feeling the country would be a lot better off if we allowed ourselves to aspire to stuff rather than judging ourselves for not being financially succcessful enough. Because au fond,. I think you’ll find that judgment is at the root of a lot of the economic ails we have now. Our banks wanted to be seen to be financial heavy weights. They bet their continued existance on it. Half the country wanted to be rich. They thought they could do it with property. I’m not sensing that they got overly happy from it.
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