Finding job satisfaction

I think it's pretty safe to say that in the fight against adulthood I'm not winning. What would be even truer to say is that it's becoming ever more of a willing surrender. You see, I finally seem to have found a career that suits me: I've become a freelance copywriter.

This does seem to mostly entail writing about dull business software that I don't really understand - so dull that I can often sense my brain obstinately crossing its arms and sitting in mute defiance until I relent and do something - anything - else for a bit. But that's the brilliant thing: I can do something else for a bit, something that isn't even work. I'm freelance. I work from home. I'm my own boss.

This was what I always assumed adulthood would be like.

I soon learnt otherwise - like most people, I suppose.

Let's leave university aside - if taking a philosophy degree isn't a way of avoiding the real world for a few years then I don't know what is. For me, adulthood began when I entered the world of work full time. Thanks to that philosophy degree, this seemed to mean temp jobs in offices. If this was adulthood, I decided, it had been sorely overhyped. It was also something to be resisted.

Don't get me wrong, I still tried to make the best of a succession of awful jobs, since I didn't really see what other choice I had (anything I appeared qualified for appeared to be as bad as every other thing I appeared qualified for). This inevitably proved to be a mistake. It got me sacked. Twice. Well, I say mistake: in truth, failing to remain in the complaints department of a rail franchise that runs not only the Stansted Express but also most of the main London commuter lines should never be considered a mistake, even if it wasn't wholly intentional. Few jobs in existence are closer to the eternal uphill boulder-rolling punishment Sisyphus was condemned to in Greek myth than that one.

No, the only aspect of leaving a job - whether willingly or, when I was sacked, only very slightly less willingly - that I ever found regrettable was that it meant searching for more jobs. Yet more pretending to want something you didn't really want. Yet more trying to appear more qualified to tap things into databases, adjust standard letters, or listen to people complain, than anyone else might be. Yet more forms.

In the end I decided it was less hassle to just not get sacked, or not leave. I even stuck to a job - or got stuck in it - for a few years. I thought I'd finally succumbed to adulthood. God, it was depressing.

But I was wrong. There was another way and I cannot believe that I missed it. I spent some time getting a new qualification!

Getting myself qualified in what I really loved doing was great. The business stuff pays enough that it only takes up part of my writing time. Taking control, finding a life and a lifestyle that suited me couldn’t be better. Now I truly feel like an adult. You can do the same because it’s so easy and when it happens you’ll know, believe me – it’s really not that bad.

Sarah Maple writes about jobs