[850] Still Unwritten

Good help is hard to find, they say. It's a common enough theme to permeate every industry. I don't know if you've searched for a job lately, but you'd be amazed how many require you to show up on time, reliably keep track of what it is you're in charge of, or communicate. There's only so much by way of labor that is capable, responsible, or remotely accountable. The way society makes up for this leaves us with reason to be concerned.

Say there are too few doctors. What do you do? If it's your job to “find more doctors” the solution becomes an extension of your most fantastic marketing scheme. If you're a little more holistic, you might bother to advocate for people eating better and exercising more. If you're looking for a shortcut, maybe you start to understand the function of a doctor in a broader way, and allow for those functions to get couched under doctor-adjacent titles or through newly-minted certification processes. If you were the Big Box Store of doctors, you'd hire everyone that came in, call them doctor, fire the ones who kill, not merely maim, the patients, and keep a flood of bodies coming in to meet the demands of being big.

I'm all over the place in the last few days. I thought I was going to start a new job that doesn't appear to be panning out. I'm figuring out how best to time my leaving of my current one. I'm ruminating on the daily failures. I'm making cheeky appeals to Craigslist gig-makers and psychologically preparing myself for the idea of not having a consistent paycheck; it's a place I used to sort of revel in that now feels foreign.

I think about what I contribute to my jobs, and thus life in general. I think about the things I've done for which I got no reward. I think about the perspective I've garnered that made me more or less capable. I think about the standard I try to maintain in my work and how that gets interrupted when I'm overwhelmed by an environment that's comfortable sleeping in shit-filled beds. I think about how I have literally never lived nor worked in an environment that runs by even half of the examples I've set that would constitute “working hard” or “being responsible.”

The only place in which who I am or what I stand for seems to exist is right here. I write about it. I live on the land “it would be so cool to have!” in those empty conversations from years ago. I've escaped the statistic where half or more of my money is going to rent. I can account for a $400 emergency. I build on the foundation that is vitally important to understand, preserve, and defend. My attitude and sense of morality is embodied in my work ethic and how I prioritize my time.

I've never wanted to be a doctor. I don't like people. The more I learn about people, I like them even less. I don't like that they have the world and pretend otherwise. I don't like that they talk out of their ass. I don't like that they let children get raped because they're too busy covering their own ass or holding a meeting about nothing or the 4 reworded words on a policy no one reads nor conforms to. (I can't make this shit up.) The truth about me being a doctor would have everything to do with my ego regarding my intelligence, not that I just care so much and want to help.

I genuinely believe it's a foreign concept to people to admit that to themselves. Most things you don't want to be or do. Most people you don't care about. Most things you spend your time on have absolutely nothing to do with who you “really” are or how you orient yourself in the world. We're victims of circumstance to a heavy degree, and we eek out seeds of joy in a forest of bullshit. That's not the interesting or worthwhile thing to keep pointing out. In fact, it's the cliché for people who smoke, eat, or drink too much.

Once you admit you don't give a shit, you can start to explore, or even just see if not barely recognize, what you do care about. Your world begins to change, not unlike the things people say when their child is born. (And guess what, they say all those bullshit sentiments, and proceed to fail miserably.) The failure is not the point or the interesting thing. The initial epiphany, moment of honesty, is. There are things that are significantly vulnerable, more vulnerable than you, that are worthy of protecting. You have the power to not just enable the creation of sensitive and worthwhile things, but the obligation to protect them. If you are not worthy of this task, it's a degree of catastrophe there aren't enough words for, and the likelihood of death becomes incredibly high.

I was regarded as a “perfectionist” the other day. I've never called myself as such, and I think the organized chaos of my living environments or approach to a dozen projects would refute it. At the same time, I think that sense of order that I'm after is probably what the observer was picking up. If I want someone fired for lying on paperwork that besmirches a child-mother as a drug user, when she's a victim, is that “perfect” of me? If I have a few different avenues I think a space may evolve into, and attempt to organize an initial idea to account for those, it's not that my idea for the space is perfect, it's that there are variables that feel more or less pertinent to the situation.

What's a perfect work environment? How do you codify something like that? Well, you start with that same epiphany that parent about to fail their newborn has. You recognize the responsibility, and you denote the veins required to work its arms. I don't care if you're building, cutting someone open, or being a paper pusher. The reason it's lost on the culture at large, and the reason I started this talking about how hard it is to find good help, is because we do not recognize our responsibility. We don't use our voices responsibly. We don't act right. We don't hold each other accountable. And we not-so-slowly chip away at our ability to recognize what's really at stake. In my job, it's the life of a child, and we fail miserably. I have to believe if we're willing to be this shitty, your clerk, office environment, or manual labor gig is as well.

The “look around” method of attempting to prove something isn't to be preferred, but is anyone paid what they're worth? Are we getting better at being civil online or recognizing when the news is actually a troll or propaganda? Are we bothering to measure or study or track...anything...besides the story of environmental decline? Are any of my 30 year old friends truly in that much more stable of a place than when they were 22? Have we started circulating billionaire money into better schools? Or, is Kanye West running for president? You know, to succeed Trump. How dangerous of a cartoon are you going to put up with living in?

I was reading old blogs and finding a sentiment that, whatever I'm doing with my time, it's going to arguably be better than having it get sucked away by those who have zero regard for my values or the changes I wish to see in the world. If I get smarter reading a book every day, so therefore the world gets smarter and maybe I can translate it into bigger consequences. My environment doesn't just fail to inspire confidence, it attacks my sense of self and being. Let's recall, me getting a “normal” job was me hitting rock bottom. I've been at my worst for at least 2 years, and have meagerly parlayed that into the floor I was hoping to establish years ago in having the basics on the land paid in advance. I need a different selection pressure and to better focus my funds and attention.

As long as your practical “I don't care” impulse is there, you need to maintain an angry vigilance and standard for whatever circles you occupy in life. Do I care about raped up children? Yes, in a removed sense that isn't the one doing the raping. But I work in the office that's supposed to prevent such things, and we actually help it happen, and no one gets fired, and then we set our eyes on someone else in danger and find a way to make their life worse. All the while we repeat how much we care and bemoan the stress, like you can just behave that way and not be the fat self-satisfied yet insecure power monger that constitutes the look and feel of my office. You holding standards where you are works its way into standards being held elsewhere. If you don't believe that, but can viscerally feel the impact of there being basically no standard, you're one more that the privileged few of us have to build into how we structure society.

I won't break. I'll bitch through hundreds of blogs, but I won't break. I will throw the truth in your face until the day I die. The truth is sticky. It's not true because I say it. It's true because it doesn't go away. It's true because the consequences exist independent of our feelings or opinions. It's true because you think about it when you don't want to and your response to it isn't accountable or sacrificial enough. I need to sacrifice the “security” of this paycheck and find new people to talk to, industries to explore, or just ways to use my time that I've been neglecting. I need to find the path forward, always, because what's in place is broken and does not care.