Opinion Day jobs, freeters and in-betweeners By David Parmer	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
夢を追う人、背を向ける人、妥協する人 夢の仕事を追い求める人、最初から背を向ける人、夢に関連した仕事で妥協する人…。だが、あきらめなくても 好きなことに打ち込んでいれば、道は自ずと開かれるはずだ。

A lot of the people who bring your food in restaurants in New York and Los Angeles are really actors, artists or musicians. What they are doing they call their "day job." So if they say, "This is my day job," what it means is that they would like to be doing their art, craft or music full-time, but they have not gotten famous enough, or not gotten "the breaks" or the one big break" so that they can quit their day job.

Some do go on to "make it" while others don't. Film director Quentin Tarantino worked in a video store, and actor Harrison Ford was a carpenter. They say that Chinese director Zhang Yimou sold his blood to buy his first camera. Singer Billy Joel worked in a piano bar for a while and even wrote a song about it.

If people say, "Don't quit your day job," when someone performs, it means "your performance, or your art was pretty bad" or "you are certainly not ready for the 'big time' yet."

In Japan, we have a different type of part-timer called "freeters" or "free-arbiters" — a mix of English and German meaning free, part-time workers. While some freeters may be artists, I think a lot of them simply don't want to enter "the system." They don't want nine-to-five salaried jobs and conventional lifestyles, so they take part-time jobs to remain "free." They have to do no overtime work but what they choose, and theoretically they are immune to company politics and can quit whenever they want.

Some of these people, I suspect, never fitted well into society, and are not about to try once they have left school. In this sense, I think they are a lot like the hippies of the 1960s, who, following the advice of the late Dr. Timothy Leary, decided to "turn on, tune in and drop out."

A year or so ago I saw a CNN report about freeters who were trying to get back into society. That must have been truly painful, for a lot of ships sail but once, and when you miss them, you miss them. (And probably for good reason.)

Another group is what I call the "in-betweeners." These are people who get close to their dreams, but only close: surfers who open surf shops, musicians who work in the music business, writers who become editors, divers who open dive shops, etc. Maybe close enough is OK for some, but if you want to "perform," i.e., to do an art or craft and be acknowledged as a player, then to settle for a job on the support staff is a problem — especially when your heart is telling you that you should be up on that stage and not merely enabling other artists (some even less talented than you). I think it is more honest to deliver pizza or work a cash register than be an arm's length away from your dream and never be able to grasp it.

Is there a way out? My personal hero, writer Joseph Campbell, was famous for saying, "Follow your bliss." What he meant was that if you are really and totally committed to what you love, doors will open where none appeared before, and you can live your dreams. What do you think?

(550 words)