I'm restless as fuck. I can't focus. I'm flirting with some impulsive feeling to just do something shit. Or, more, decide to behave in a shit way. I'm concerned by how easy it was for me to get a job. I don't like the ready-made structure lined up as my destiny after a concerted effort over the last 7 years to avoid it. I don't want this. Moreover, I don't want to persuade myself that it is what I want. I'll learn it. I'll find a way to profit from it. But it's just going to exercise my tools and perspective to a more deliberate opposite-direction-I-want-to-head direction.
I say that knowing full well I don't have much of a direction. The direction is a feeling and impression. It's a sensitivity to the thoughts that beget more and more thoughts that I don't want. It's a shift in my disposition and what I allow myself to justify saying or getting away with. I want to rush to accept the ludicrous terms and conditions and work at Clustertruck all day tomorrow. Why? Because an overwhelming wave signifying “nothing matters” is washing over me. Who cares about sticking up for labor if I could stand to make a couple hundred dollars the next few days? Who'd bother organizing and speaking out when it will land you, always, on the defensive?
That's what this is. I'm in my fallback. When everything I wanted to do entrepreneurially failed, I was supposed to get the “real world job” and be a “mature hate-my-life” kind of adult who said the words “taxes” and “mortgage” slightly less often than “traffic.” I could politely chat around the water cooler about Stormy Daniels or how that new show looks really good. Every cliché detail you could add to an environment like that I've never framed in anything less than a kind of nightmare scenario.
And of course I'm overstating it. Of course I'm of no measured mind that wants to find any redemption or appreciation for my place and opportunities because this isn't a ya ya sisterhood retreat where I imagine we hug our problems tight before letting them go on a homemade candlelit craft. This won't be any better or worse than everything always. But it is something that I've, for many years, conditioned myself and cautioned myself against rejoining. This signals to me, right or wrong, a lunge backwards.
Perspective would bother to remind me that, I'm not chained like if I had a mortgage or family. It would remind me that I “click on” when there's a human component to engage with and distract myself or talk to. The Law and Order stuff on TV will be my day to day. That's not only exactly my humor and morose sentimentality, but “normal” people find that stuff compelling and interesting. I'm poised to load up my “interesting tidbit” bank.
I'm also stepping into an environment that is habitually understaffed, disorganized, and filled with people with some form of nagging do-gooder or guilt status that craves levity and leadership. I will see holes. I will see ways to make more and more money. Maybe, just maybe, I'll discover something important about myself and the “reason” I found myself on this doorstep at this time. I suppose, having said that, I'm just disappointed this is one more thing that played out exactly like I thought it would. The degree I didn't want, got me a job I didn't want, in a setting I'll probably do fairly well in for more money than I'll immediately have the time to spend or know what to do with. God. Dammit.
I'm going to be most disappointed when I do the work, make more money than I ever have, endear myself to the crowd my childhood conditioning taught me to, and STILL get everything I actually want to do done that works to spite and shun the whole endeavor. Oh, you have a NORMAL job and can't find the time or will? Did that shit. You can't find the time to keep abreast of the arts or catch a show? How close am I to traveling at the speed of light, cause we must not be scooping from the same time bin. Oh, you're depressed and anxious? I ain't seen your 10 page 3-part irrational panic attack and dozen depressive sentiments try to preclude the efforts in service to your day.
The more I act like you, the more vicious I'm going to become. I don't look forward to that. The more I have every liability, every familiar comedian reference, every when-did-that-start aching body part, and I STILL keep the dream alive and know the real goal and mode of being on a perpetuating best-lived kind of day wheel, the glaring hole at the center of your being will swallow me up. Part of me wants to construe my tax debt as a sympathy pain to everyone with student loans, but even then, 2 months of working like I do would pay it off.
Even if it's not precisely a step backwards, it is a step sideways. As I'm on the verge of getting power out to the land, less than a day of dry-walling, and figuring out where my toilet is supposed to flush to, I'm getting a real job? And I'm getting that job because I self-sabotaged the job with all the leeway because the idealist in me knows the sacrifices I was making in service to it weren't exactly adding up. But now, I could work “normal” people hours, and make the same money, or likely more, and use my weekends to work on the land. My paycheck isn't eaten before I make it. That's the key. The mode of living and work I've done before this point still count.
I'm worried as well that the job will make me even more the wrong kind of selfish. I feel up my own ass enough without glombing the culture of “overworked and underpaid.” With the high school dropout work culture you get relationship issues and drug problems. With the “middle-income” crowd it's everything ever referenced while making fun of white people. I know I don't feel as though I have much of “a people,” but I know damn well that those are not my people. Jaded seen-it-all-before types are one thing. To be one, and never think there's an escape for you won't cut it.
As I was annoying friends to write me up as professional references, one told me, “Welcome to the system!” I get the sentiment, but I'm nothing if not a product of the system. The school system. The capitalist brain and motivation suck system. The broken nuclear family system. Hell, the “personal brand share all the time” system as I work through every stupid detail of my illusive mythology. You know what I'd rather have? A system of cooperation and calculated risk. A system that extols the virtues of an engaged life. A system of mutual trust and respect that makes it so your first instinct isn't to be exhausted and put off or angry when presented with something new or unexpected. The world at-large is not going to give me what I need, or change my definition of having a life worth living, no matter how good I get at it or money I make from it.
So I hope you don't treat me differently. I hope you don't think this is me “maturing” or “accepting” that my way doesn't work. Like every negotiated act of compliance, this is the bad needing to be translated into something good. This is one of those last few remaining chains on the road to self-sustainability. This is a calculated risk weighing the consequences to my disposition and mental health. It's still just getting by and making money, which are required, but aren't the goal. I hope you can consistently feel better about whatever it is you're doing for money and where it's taking you in life.
