Making Play Pay
Dr James McCabe is an Irish poet and corporate storyteller with decades of experience helping entrepreneurs and professionals narrate new kinds of value. His upcoming book “Fable” encapsulates this wisdom from starting up to eventual evolution.
People talk about work, jobs and careers with interchangeable synonymy.
But in fact all three kinds of organized activity are about to be wiped forever.
Don’t believe the Techies that tell you we’ll all get new jobs. Right now they can’t even employ themselves and are shedding jobs by the hundreds of thousands. That is what is about to come. Mass unemployment nothing like single individuals losing their jobs. Huge drop-offs in demand - like the more than 30% decrease in freelance writing jobs since ChatGTP was introduced. And yes, I always misspell that name – because why should I get it right? Hokeypokey names that aspire to mysticism and power. No, not going to spell you right.
I’m always amazed at the amazement people show when they share how they employed themselves only after being fired or let go. What’s so unusual baby? This is how it works! You are fired. You are let go. People pause you, without reminding you it is forever. And then…slowly…suddenly you think: “I’ll employ myself! I’ve no other choice!”
It’s what our subconscious springs on us by the million. Nothing original. Nothing unusual.
You’re not going to fire yourself.
No! Let’s get professional here. Let’s get strategic. The I’ve-just-decided-to-go-solo-because-I’ve-been-fired is naïve, amateurish and disingenuous. Let’s say deep down and secretly we’ve always dreamt of employing ourselves (we just didn’t want to fork out the rent ourselves). Paying the mortgage with someone else’s money is always easier, isn’t it?
And it is your employer’s money – even if you are generating it for them. And then some.
EMPLOY THYSELF is the unwritten law of the twenty-first century. Because the bots are coming. First for all the check-out ladies. Next for all the waiters. Next for all the taxi drivers. Next for all the truckers. Then for all the copywriters. You’re not protected either, graphic designers. Nor you, accountants. And definitely not you, lawyers. Nor even you, judges.
The way out of this trap is to begin employing yourself today. But here’s the trick. Don’t employ your work self. Employ your play self. Who you are when you play is your real self. We don’t retire from play. We retire from pretending to work. And you can’t pretend to be someone else all your life. Which is why people who retire only have work, jobs or careers. You never retire from a vocation. Callings call us, we don’t choose them. They don’t pay the mortgage up front – but we can turn them to money advantage.
No, hang on, if we turn our hobbies into paying professions won’t we just hate them again?
Au contraire. Ever do something you loved long enough and well enough that you were paid? It’s lovely fun. You’re getting paid. More than you would in your career. And it’s actual fun. You’re not pretending to be “passionate” and “excited” on the job (God what a drag), you’re simply in flow. There is no weekend, there is no retirement – because you don’t need them. You’re not resting from the labour. You’re at rest doing the workplay. Rather than the playwork.
They can’t botify our vocations. Because they can’t botify our characters. We are a mystery to them, which is why they want to hook into our brains next. We must be special, eh?
Personalities are the masks we present to the workaday world. From Greek persona, mask. Characters are who we are when no one’s looking - when the mask falls to earth. We’re David Jones, purely and simply.
The future from the mid-twenties onwards will consist of making play pay. Those who convert their golf love into a golfing school the quickest will win. Those who finally get off their ass and write fiction instead of being paid to slavework copywriting are the winners.
Yes it takes guts. Even delusion. No guarantees. No mortgage repayments up front. We’re going to have to change our own nappies from now on because the caretakers are withdrawing. This is The Great Growing Up.
We can employ ourselves. It’s called entrepreneurship. Literally, taking yourself in hand. Undertaking yourself. Not to the cemetery, to the bank vault. You can do this. You are uniquely talented. You just don’t know it yet. You are not your experience, nor are you your qualifications. You are not a job role. You are not a profession. Find your vocation – the thing you never want to retire from. Picassos don’t retire. The Bob Dylans of this world don’t retire.
Find your inner Bob Dylan.
What is your definition of not working? What is the opposite of work for you? This is your vocation. It’s not a paying gig right now and may even require money to partake in it. That’s because someone else is making money supplying it to you.
Don’t just supply it to yourself.
Supply your playtime to the rest of the world.
Take the loot to the vaults and deposit it there for peace of mind.
Start playfully working. Workplay your way out of this one.
The dilemma isn’t going away.
