Job Hunting – Survival, Fun, What Matters, Stay or Go
Job hunting strips work back to its core — not titles or security, but a brutal question: are you surviving… or actually living the life your work is building?
There’s something about job hunting that strips everything back to survival.
Not ego. Not titles. Not LinkedIn bios.
Just survival.
Will I have work next week?
Will the pay hit the account?
Do I stay loyal?
Or is it time to go?
I find myself here again. Not for the first time. And certainly not for the last.
Three and a half years in my current role a record for me and now new management is shifting the ground beneath our feet. Strategies rewritten. Assumptions overturned. The quiet whisper of “restructure.” The word redundancy floating just close enough to feel real.
This isn’t new. Thousands of people live here every day.
But when you land here, it forces reflection.
What was fun?
What mattered?
What do I actually want?
Because here’s the hard truth:
We spend half our waking lives at work.
Half.
If you don’t enjoy what you do… why are you doing it?
That question hits differently when you blink and your kids are suddenly in their twenties. When you’ve been married nearly thirty years. When retirement is no longer theoretical.
Life is short. Too short for a joyless grind.
And yet most of us forget that work can and should be fun.
The Best Jobs I Ever Had
Some of my best job memories weren’t about promotions or pay rises.
They were about adventure. About stories I can reflect back on.
About the kind of days that make you sit back and say, this is unreal and I’m being paid for it.
Darwin to Groote Eylandt
As a facility manager inspecting remote sites, work meant distance. Real distance.
Six-hundred-kilometre road trips across the Northern Territory. Darwin to Groote Eylandt. Gove to Mount Isa and back again. Red dirt highways stretching beyond the horizon. The kind of isolation that resets your perspective.
You don’t just inspect buildings in places like that.
You meet people living their best lives on the road contractors camped in caravans, mechanics who know every corrugation in the track, sparkies who’ve raised families between projects. People away from loved ones in the name of work, but building something, fixing something, keeping something running.
There’s pride in that.
There’s purpose.
Chasing Crocodiles on the Booroloola River
Then there were the moments no one believes.
Chasing crocodiles down the Booroloola River.
Not because I’m a wildlife ranger. Because site access sometimes means navigating real terrain. Real risk. Real country. When you work remote Australia, nature doesn’t move for you. You adapt.
And there’s something alive about that kind of work. It sharpens you.
Flying into Victoria River Cattle Station
Flooded roads cut off all access — so we took to the air. A helicopter into Victoria River Cattle Station. Because the job still had to get done.
You don’t forget the sound of rotors cutting through hot NT air. The view of endless red plains below you. The absurd realisation that “office work” has taken a strange turn.
That’s fun. Not because it’s glamorous. Because it’s alive.
Big Red, Birdsville and My Dad
One trip to Birdsville, I convinced my father to come along.
We rented a 4x4. Took it up Big Red in the Simpson Desert. Only to be gently told by locals we probably shouldn’t be taking a rental off gazetted roads.
All in the name of work. But really — in the name of life.
Dad and I bouncing over dunes, laughing like idiots, pretending we knew what we were doing. Work gave me that memory. Tell me that’s not worth something.
Survival Mode vs Fun Mode
Right now, I’m in evaluation mode. Stay or go?
Do I cling to what I’ve built for three and a half years?
Do I fight for relevance under new management?
Or do I step into uncertainty again?
The survival instinct says:
Take the safe 9–5. Keep your head down. Make ends meet.
But something in me resists that.
No way. Life’s too short.
And here’s the deeper truth: Fun doesn’t mean easy.
Fun means:
Work that stretches you
Work that lets you travel
Work that allows mentoring
Work with purpose
Work that leaves a legacy
Maybe one of those. Maybe all. But fun isn’t frivolous. Fun is alignment.
Am I Too Old for a Fun Job?
I’ve asked myself this. Am I too old to chase something different?
Should I finally accept the reality of the grind? But when did we decide that responsibility and joy were mutually exclusive? Experience should widen options, not shrink them.
If anything, I now know what fun looks like. I know what purpose feels like. I know what good teams are. I know the kind of leader I want to follow and the kind I refuse to become.
And I know this:
If you don’t include fun, you burn out.
If you don’t build teams that laugh, they disengage.
If you don’t create purpose, people drift.
What Job Hunting Really Is
Job hunting isn’t just survival. It’s recalibration.
It’s taking stock:
What were my best days?
What environments brought out my best?
Where did I feel alive?
What kind of people do I want to build with?
Sometimes we stay because it’s comfortable Sometimes we go because it’s necessary.
Sometimes we’re pushed and that push becomes the best thing that ever happened to us.
Make Work Fun
Here’s the challenge:
Whatever you do — make it fun.
Be fun to be around.
Build teams that want to follow you.
Mentor someone younger.
Take the long road occasionally.
Say yes to the helicopter.
Bring your dad on the trip.
Because one day you’ll blink and decades will have passed.
Your kids will be grown.
Your career will be nearly done.
And you’ll either have stories…
Or spreadsheets.
Work is survival. Work is accomplishment. Work is the next step.
But it should also be joy. I don’t know yet whether I’m staying or going.
But I know this much: Wherever I land next, it must be fun.
Because life is too short for anything less.