There was a very interesting article on Hard Work on sfgate.com way back in July. I have a habit of copying any slightly alternative pieces I stumble across on my browsing journeys, and re-visiting them later.

Anyway, the gist of the article was that this belief that hard work is all there is - that working flat out at your nine to five is what you should be doing with your life - is no more than a crazy myth born out of the American Puritan work ethos.

Now I’m not American - I’m an Irishman living in London. But even on this side of the Atlantic, working hard for 40 years for company after company is seen as the rational, responsible, expected course.

Why would anyone want to live like this?

My corporate journey began just over 6 years ago, and it took only four of those years for me to begin pulling my hair out.

Sit still for a moment, and think ahead twenty years. Yes, there will be flying cars, and yes, you will probably be able to download your brain into a computer and live forever; but where will you really be? Will you be in a position to look back on the previous twenty years and say: “Wow, what a life!”

Why should we work all those years for some nameless faceless corporation? Why is it important to abandon our dreams so that we can afford the larger mortgage and the second car? Because make no mistake - that is what so many of us are doing. We’re giving up our dreams for a second car.

I read a piece on a stranger’s blog the other day, where she described how after losing her boring temp job, she went out and fulfilled a dream by busking on the New York subway. Now there’s something you can look back on in twenty years and say: “What a life!”

So that’s what I’m doing - not busking, simply saying that the nine to five is no longer good enough, and that I really don’t want a second car. Or a first car for that matter - anyone like to buy an eight year old Ford Fiesta? Never failed an MOT!

I want to design my own things, and build my own things. And I’ve already started.

I want to look back in twenty years and say …