An illustrative photo of Brighton beach.

I didn’t have a gap yah. I dropped out of University instead and now I’m about to finish my degree I’m puzzled by the world’s attitude to work.

“Enjoy this summer, it’ll be the best of your life” Mike said.
“But I’m working,” I pointed out.
“All of it?” he said, as agog as one can be through msn.
“Yes” I said, perplexed.

My parents, lovely people, are retiring in a couple of years from long lives of Microsoft Engineer-style IT training and Pegasus Consulting, amongst other things. Apparently way back in the 20th Century they hatched a plan that upon retirement they would move to New Zealand for half a year. I’m not sure why; Lord of the Rings hadn’t yet aired with nine hours of NZ mountain footage, and Tolkien makes little reference to the place in the book. I assume, with my Mother’s keen aversion to America (and also the brand “Tesco”, the two main horrors in her life) they chose somewhere a bit British, and didn’t fancy Australia.

Anyway, I’m not sure what drove them to New Zealand, but forty years after the muttered birth of their plan my Mother mentioned it to me in passing. “You could visit us,” she said. A stylish sort of Wales with a hip accent? I thought. Yes, I could probably do that. But why wait forty years to have what is essentially a gap year? Why is a post-University summer, presumably to spend three months on Brighton beach greedily drowning myself in ice cream and cheap wine the last ‘good summer’ I’ll ever have before I retire? Perhaps the longest yes, but what stops other people doing this if it is indeed so fantastic?

An illustrative fence metaphor.

Three sentence-long anecdotes:

Fun things should always be fun, and not merely invented and discovered when one loses a job or reaches 65. (I meanwhile, am not one to talk, having spent most of holidays beadily interning around but that’s a pre-first-job different scenario.) I deduce there is there some sort of vacuum that sucks a person into work and refuses to spit them out for fear of being unproductive. Perhaps our notion of ‘what is productive’ changes through work. Unproductive is not heralded enough.

Yes, it’s a bit of a privileged outlook, so let’s assume I’m talking to the privileged. But this mostly stems from being halfway through a dissertation writing a lot about Castells’ notion of the Global Network Society which most likely includes you, First World. (In short he says: horray for those that have computers.) A key part is the arrival of flexi-time, and contractual and freelance work. Also with that thing called frugality (later: how to turn potato sacks into shirts) it’s not impossible. For example, a nice Glue colleague disappeared off for a year or so with his wife to Africa to “play with Lions or save something [sic]” and I have a lot of respect for this. Job relocation’s equally viable, aside from the need to learn the different cultural practices in PR/Advertising (for me). I suppose you get the gist.

So, note to self: Investigate another country at some point before age of 65.
And to summarise. For all and for me: more fun with traveling. Less: being sucked into work.

“Students” they scoff. Lazy lazy students, what do they know? Alright, alright.. yeah.