She spent the last two years working with the Unemployed Workers’ Union to support and advocate for those navigating the pandemic on below-poverty line jobless benefits. Kristin O’Connell was granted the disability support pension in early 2020, after illness stymied her career in the not-for-profit sector. If work was more stable, those same people might be taking long service leave at this point in their careers. Owning a home feels out of reach many of their peers are living in sharehouses in their 40s. But it’s what I love to do and what I want to do with my life.”īadge is clear that they are choosing a life of doing what they love over a life of financial stability because the latter does not even feel like an option. “I now tend to answer with what I want to be doing first and what I’m doing for money second,” they say. “The immediate material needs aside, why should we be working at all? What is the point of it?”īut the crisis did lead to a shift in identity: now when Badge is asked, ‘so what do you do?’ they answer: ‘I’m a writer’. “There is a real sense of nihilism about that,” Badge says. Work – the freelance researching which paid their bills – felt pointless against the backdrop of global catastrophe, and there are more catastrophes on the horizon. They skated on the edge of financial catastrophe for months. ![]() “Partly out of necessity I threw myself into work, working more than I ever had. They had been working as a writer on the side – but without teaching, writing became their mainstay. Their teaching contract at a Melbourne university ended and they were left without the bulk of their income. Joshua Badge, a Melbourne-based writer and academic, did place meaningful, fulfilling work over financial gain, and it left them close to homelessness. Because the other way, I don’t think happiness lives there.” ‘It’s what I want to do with my life’ “I say to them, if you have something that you can grab onto now, and you really love, then by all means follow that and if you don’t make a lot of money doing it, I don’t care. Thompson is determined that his children, facing global existential challenges, will have a different life. If you have something that you can grab onto now, and you really love, then by all means follow that David Thompson* He could not afford to maintain it and to pay the mortgage if he were to start over in a different career, and won’t risk his children’s financial security to secure his own happiness. That lifestyle is not extravagant, but it has expanded to fill his income. He did all the right things: excelled at school and graduated with a science degree from a good university, with the aim of finding “any job that I can tolerate that earns me enough money to fund the lifestyle that I want”. “And once that’s gone you just kind of look around and think, what am I left with?” “That’s not really the case any more,” he says. Before the pandemic he was aware that he was “bored out of my mind” doing his well-paid office job but “I could distract myself with plans and holidays”. But many – because of insecure work or choices restricted by debt, poverty and family obligations – remain stuck.ĭavid Thompson* is one of the stuck. Some have been able to restructure their lives through remote work, a change of career, or a change of location. “I never want to work for something I don’t believe in.” ![]() “The pandemic pushed me to make my life become meaningful again,” says Rosie Pavlovic, who quit her job and moved to New Zealand to be with her long-distance girlfriend. ![]() Many said they quit jobs that did not align with their values to take on more meaningful work others vowed not to let work – any work – dominate their lives any longer. They turned down work in favour of activities they actually enjoyed, scaled back their need for material possessions, and in some cases retired early, choosing to live a more restrained life on the pension than continue in a job they hated. When Guardian Australia asked readers whether the pandemic had made them reassess their lives, dozens responded by saying they quit or were considering quitting jobs that they did not like or that demanded too much of them. The pandemic forced many Australians to reevaluate their relationship to work and the central role it plays in our lives and identities.įor many, the shift to working from home provided the space and time needed to make big decisions. Some frustrated with work have been able to restructure their lives through changes in location, career or remote working, but others remain stuck.
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