Happy Talk

I wasn't going to blog tonight, but was just reading Justine Larbalestier's excellent post about how you don't have to be a tormented soul to be a writer - and no, there's no 'but it helps' punchline to go with that - when I came across, and just had to nick, her link to this Forbes list of The Ten Happiest Jobs, because there, in the top 5 no less, we have:

4. Authors: For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existent, but the autonomy of writing down the contents of your own mind apparently leads to happiness.

So true. Money, believe it or not, and gasp, gasp, gasp, isn't everything. That said, covetous soul that I am, I would still prefer to be paid a decent amount for my scriberly work and be both happy and well paid, because:

Ya gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,
How you gonna to have a dream come true?

Amusingly, if you scroll down,  below the list of the Happy Ten, there is also the list of the Ten Most Hated Jobs which were generally much better paying and have higher social status. What’s striking about the list is that these relatively high level people are imprisoned in hierarchical bureaucracies. They see little point in what they are doing. The organizations they work for don’t know where they are going, and as a result, neither do these people.

So, rich, poor, got lots of stuff, haven't got much stuff, happy, not happy - things are not always as they possibly superficially seem...