The Way Is The Goal

Category: Work (Page 2 of 3)

Hitchhiking Works

Jobs and me don’t go well together and the only reason why I liked my last job so much was because of the hitchhiking. I did it twice a week, up and down to Den Haag without much troubles. I had great rides, received fantastic stories and shared many things with the more than 50 drivers within 6 weeks of working and hitching. I even started writing about it in Dutch on a new webpage that I called “hitching works“!

And as if it was bound to happen: the day I had quit my job again, the day I was on my last day of hitching to work, I got offered new work by one of my drivers. I could not have been two seconds later at my usual spot as I was instantly picked up by her. Barely 15 minutes later she offered me to work for her, by making a television show about sustainability…

The show is already made and even broadcasted. It was a great success. The presentors and other members of the team were very happy with the work done and there is even the possibility to make more shows for them after the summer. And in addition, during this last day of hitching to and from work, I even got offered a bottle of wine by my final driver who dropped me off at my house.

Hitchhiking definitely works.

I Don’t Want a Career, I Want a Life

My biggest desire in life is to help enabling a world free of hierarchies. So when I did accept a job this year, I was only slightly enthusiastic. I needed some solid financial base and yes I was ready for a challenge but a corporate job was not on my list (at all). In the end I was relatively o.k. with giving it a green light for a while, until I would have at least build up some cash-reserves again.

There are good things about my job. I learned a lot about marketing, I got to understand the technologies that enterprises use to brainwash us, I traveled a bit, worked with some fine people and I learned a lot from them. But, there is so much more to life than just jobs and career.

So when to quit? There is never a better moment than now and I feel now is that time. There are so many useful things I can better direct my attention to, and there are so many more things I still want to accomplish in the near future, that most of my time in this office is wasted. And in the end, what is so useful about working for someone else‘s profit?

Americans don't like to walk

Why is it that people in the US look so surprised when I tell them I rather walk 20 minutes than taking a cab or bus? This was one of my surprises while in Boston. We all know that the average US-American is less healthy than the average European, but still – it is as if they don’t care at all!

If not for the heartbeat-collective and Matrixpoint I would not have enjoyed Boston that much. I was over for a week to the States, enjoying great views of the city from a 17th floor many stars hotel, for my j-o-b. I was thankfully pointed into the right direction by Anu and Sky, making it possible for me to actually make my trip something useful and slightly less boring.

While John gave me lots of insights on the birth and death of CS 2.0, the Heartbeat Collective gave me a lot of inspiration for projects and ideas, adding more roots to them. I was especially happy when I learned about the rhizome collective, and the urban farming projects they do. Somehow I also discovered that -though the US has a lot of toxic soil- apparently there are some really beautiful flowers growing there.

Some other things that come to mind when thinking about Boston: carving pumpkins; pirates; Obama equals hope; the radio-stations played great music but were full with bullshit in the mornings; food is cheap and there are vegetarian meals everywhere; people don’t walk, don’t cycle, but they do talk a lot; I am not born for bowling (nor my j-o-b).

Check out more stuff I wrote while in Boston here

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