The wandering thoughts of a nursery-hand

by TDJ

Over the summer I have had a part time job working in a wholesale nursery helping with plant production. My duties involve the removal of unwanted flora from plastic plant receptacles (weeding), the downsizing of stock volumes (pruning), and the insertion of developing vegetation into said receptacles of terra firma (potting). While performing these tasks the mind starts to wander from what I’m going to have for dinner, all the way through to trying to work out a solution to world peace (you’ll have to get back to me on both of them). So I’ve decided to write about a few of these things which occupied my mind while I had a pen and paper in my pocket, and which also might interest r4nt readers (or might not).

The majority of the staff are unhappy with their jobs or specific aspects of their jobs, whether it be pay, conditions or recognition.

Happiness at work:

This is a topic that comes up regularly at work, as a lot of my fellow employees tend to vent their frustrations at me (probably because it appears like I’m listening). The majority of the staff are unhappy with their jobs or specific aspects of their jobs, whether it be pay, conditions or recognition. Fair enough, that’s not unusual in any line of work, weather you be a nursery worker or an industrial chemist. But what gets me is that the ones which complain the most, tend to be the most surprised when I suggest they find another job or go back to school. It seems that they have put this limit on themselves, that this is as far as they will get in their lives, that a situation improvement is impossible, and to change their lives by their own free will is heresy. Then as I pull a few more weeds out of the Gardenias, I start to think that it’s all got to do with personal responsibility. What I mean is that people who don’t take personal responsibility of their own situation, their own actions, will never be happy with their station in life. This is because it’s never their fault. They got bad marks at school; it’s their teacher’s fault. Their children are little shits; it’s the TV’s fault. They don’t get paid enough; it’s their boss’s fault. This all comes back to people always wanting to play the victim and take the easy path, which only leads to a life of bitterness and resentment.

This then begs the question, should I tell these people what I’m thinking?
No, because they don’t want to hear what they already deep down know is true from some 20 year old undergraduate. But then again I might be wrong.

After you finish school you lose a very large concrete part of you life: people to talk to, communicate with, grow up with.

Mental Health:

One of my cousins is suffering from severe anxiety and panic attacks. He’s on some medication (anti-depressants or downers I guess) and is having to change fairly regularly as they just stop working for him. He’s only a year older than me and it came as quite a surprise when I was told. The more I thought about it though, the less surprised I became. I had seen this same kind of anxiety in some other people I know, and it seems to happen for the same reasons. After you finish school you lose a very large concrete part of you life: people to talk to, communicate with, grow up with. Yes, you still have your close group of friends, but some of them will leave to go to a job, study, some you’ll just grow apart from. This cuts down your social circle even more. This is when family is important, they’ll always be there to talk to and to support you, but if that isn’t there, then what. The person in that situation has lost most of the people they communicate with and relate to. And when you lose that, who do you talk to when something is on your mind, or when you want to express a feeling or thought. No one. So when you can’t speak to someone to ease your mind over something trivial, but at the time seems huge, it just builds inside your head and gets out of hand, this is when the anxiety and panic attacks start to build. (Remember, this is my own little theory).

What does upset me though is the way that I was told about my cousins problems. My mum, who lives three and a half thousand kilometres away, told me over the phone, yet my cousins only live two suburbs from me. And I think this is a problem in general, by where a person with a mental disorder (for want of a better term) is hidden or the disorder is hidden from people who could help, all for the sake of saving face.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that, people in general don’t communicate enough, and I mean really talk to each other, not just about the bloody weather and other trivialities. And if more people did, and were open and honest with them selves and people around them, I think problems of this kind would happen a lot less, and we’d all be just that little bit happier. (We can only hope)

TDJ