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Maybe I'm an idiot or too Pollyanna, but I've worked a bunch of jobs ranging from farm labor to Walmart to mopping floors to financial analysis and I've never thought any of them were awful. Most had bad days occasionally but never beyond that. I've had less than wonderful bosses and wonderful bosses and prefer the latter but even then there have always been things about the job that were at least decent.
After about 10 days vacation I'm still enjoying myself but am usually starting to get bored pretty quickly.
The closest I've come to non-accidental death is working a waggie job that had me legitimately considering assaulting a guy for being in my way at Home Depot just because the idea of going back to work was so utterly unbearable prison or getting shot by the cops sounded better.
This might seem like an exaggeration; it is not. The only thing that saved me was school mandated anger management classes from 7th grade.
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i think salaried work is liberating in the sense it gives you autonomy. you can say " i have work, I cannot do XYZ" and everyone understands, without the guilt trip of having to make up an excuse for not attending a wedding or some other shit that you don't want to do
The thing I don't want to do is work, because I'd rather be doing various things that a dependency on work is keeping me from doing (like exploring the world or full-time intellectual pursuits), so this doesn't really seem like autonomy to me.
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As I mentioned in my post, it depends heavily on the temperament of the person in question. Personally I cannot understand the perspective of someone who is okay with working meaningless jobs when the world is so beautiful and has so much to spend your time on.
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