Pay vs. Passion

I was admiring my bench from the office window last week when I spotted someone doing what I think has got to be one of the funnest jobs in the world.

If you look at the picture carefully you'll see a guy in an orange hi-vis jacket testing the climbing frame in the park. Yep that's right, he's testing the climbing frame! Not to mention the swings, the slide and the springy animal things. What an amazing job - paid by the council to drive around the city and mess around in play areas testing the equipment. However there's something you need to know about our local (I made up a title) Child Recreational Enclosure Safety Technician... he hates his job!! He mopes around the park like his work is such a chore, he'll give one swing a push, glance at the slide and kick the springy animal things - before ticking it all off on his clipboard and getting back into his white van.

Maybe as a young man he held dreams of making it big in the Child Recreational Enclosure Safety industry - starting as an eager apprentice with chalked hopscotches on an infant school playground musing about the day he'll hit the lights and glamour of Alton Towers and Thorpe Park. But today those dreams are like dust, and no salary can replace the passion he once had to make a difference in his world.

Makes me think... it doesn't matter how much I get paid for what I do if there's no passion. As it happens I love my job and I'm not driven by pay day or by how many days left until the weekend - I'm driven by a genuine feeling that I can play a part in something that will change the world.

Shake The Tree

I read this quote from a 19th Century preacher called Charles Spurgeon last week, which made me think...

"Get a promise everyday and take it wherever you go. Make it, learn it and inwardly digest it... I take a promise, I shake it to and fro and sometimes the mellow fruit falls into my hand. At other times the fruit is less ready to fall, but I never give up until I get it. I shake and shake all day long."

There's some things that have always been some of my 'one days'... Some trivial like 'one day I'll have a Ford Puma', some materialistic like 'one day I'll have a big house with a pool table, hot tub and golf course in the garden', then some a bit more heartfelt like 'one day I'll have a family'. What changes these from being 'one days' into 'to-days'? Tree shaking.

Sometime I go after something and I shake the tree and fruit drops right away, other times I have to shake and shake and shake because one day might be to-day.

[Bench update... I drove into the car park this week and saw a couple sitting on my bench! I would have said something but they had two big dogs. I'll have a quiet word next time.]