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Recently I’ve been discussing a few ideas regarding workplace stress, or, rather, stress caused by work which pervades every aspect of many people’s lives.

One of the main focuses of my unscientific study has been on all areas which cause frustration, anxiety and stress in my life. Pretty soon, it became clear that almost all of the stressful situations are those times in my life when I rely on other people in one form or another. Where does the stress arise? When those other people do what other people do so well - when they behave in a way that does not fit precisely with my plans.

I work with computers a lot of the time, by choice. In recent weeks I’ve been squeezing an under powered Linux server with all my might in order to try to stop it from breaking every time it serves the most basic of functions. While this in itself could be quite a stressful experience, particularly given my relative shortcomings where such things are concerned, I’ve actually found that it has been reasonably rewarding: the machine responds when asked (correctly) to do what I tell it.

Compare that with an imaginary staff member, for example. I might make the most polite request to do something - well within that persons skill-set - yet despite that, I have also to contend with the vagaries of the human mind: “I’ll do it after I’ve finished my sandwich” or “it’ll be finished tomorrow”.

And that’s even before we deal with suppliers who don’t turn up; customers or clients who don’t know what they want; and random callers who try to sell us things we don’t need. Its even before we have the pleasure of speaking to a person at the bank who has the power to make your life so much easier, but just doesn’t feel like it today. These human interactions cause us all limitless pools of despair.

When I were a lad, I had a game that was in the shape of a steering wheel. That game went something like this: you turned it on and the disc would spin, with the image of a road on it. On the road there would, every so often, be some obstacle (an oil spill, or car wreck) that would have to be skillfully avoided by four year old me, masterful driver that I was. That experience would stand me in good stead for when I grew up - I can now use that game as an analogy for life. Other people come along with increasing rapidity, and only present themselves as obstacles. In fact, it often seems as though other people only exist to make our lives more difficult and miserable.

They don’t, of course, it just seems that way.

Last week my theme for the week was jobs, or businesses, that I didn’t ever want to become involved with. Every time I thought of one, or saw one, I would proudly proclaim “Number 7 (or 12, or 367): businesses that are too much effort for the likes of me - running a market stall (etc)”. One such wearisome task that I listed was farming.

So it was a decent end to last week when, travelling to my weekly anger management class (aka playing in a local football league match), I found myself in the company of one such martyr to the land. Pretty soon he explained how buying a farm is, in actual fact, “buying work”.

It gets worse: there’s never any time to do any paperwork; its seven days a week, 365 days a year; you have to milk at silly times of the day; you earn a pittance. I could go on. I mentioned my theory - that farming was far too difficult for a slacker like myself - adding that “from the outside, I can only assume that you really have to love the job”.

We did get on to a list of “pros” long story short - the only real advantage of farming, is that you get to be outside in the great outdoors, sucking in fresh air like there’s no tomorrow. Even if you do get that ‘weathered look’ etched deeply into every inch of exposed skin. Oh, and you don’t have to work with people. “I could NEVER do that!” laughed my prematurely balding driver.