A friend of mine recently started her first job. Since then, talking to her during the week, I've sometimes felt this guilty feeling come over me. Today, for instance. While she doesn't do anything to encourage this, I couldn't help noting that she comes home exhausted, while I spend most days sort of... lounging about. Of course, I do things I consider work. But in an artist's life, work's pretty fluid. Grabbing a cup of coffee with someone is work. Listening to a podcast is work. Especially when, as with writers, the wheels up top are the main office, you know, anything can be work.
And I'm sometimes struck with this guilt, shall we say. It got me considering how we structure one's life. Plenty of time for considering when you're lounging about.
You're born and your focus for the first X months is just existing. Then, once you got the feel of the place, your next task becomes play. While this is extremely helpful in terms of development, we (as a society) mainly allot small kids with loads of playtime because that's just what small kids are expected to do. Remember that word, 'cause we're coming back to it.
Then you get to be a little older, but not much. Nowadays, you've got parents cramming the schedules of 3-4 year olds with art classes and piano and basketball practice or whatever the fuck. Already, angling you towards a goal.
Except the goal post keeps shifting, you'll notice as you get older.
Then, you edge your way into school years. Now, the play subsides to a distraction. To be squashed under foot by rigor and structure, so that you can get an education. So that you can start going towards something. As the years go by, you'll get to wave goodbye to all those artsy little endeavors that seemed oh-so-important when you were 2. What's the point of Picasso-talent if you're not curling your "s"s and "r"s the right way?
Then you get older, and you start being pressured about your grades, getting into a good high school, good college, acing your APs and SATs. Play's out the window, swiftly followed by creativity. Why? Because it's what's expected of teenagers. Seriously. Ask someone why they're sending their 13-year-old to school. Give them a couple seconds, they'll come up with some swill about it being for the kid's future, but in truth? It's because everyone's doing it. It's what 13-year-olds are supposed to do. Besides, the parent ain't got time for the kid. We'll get to why in just a minute.
Because come the big 1-8, you finish high school and get bundled off to some sort of college where you dedicate the next 5-6 years (because everyone does Master's Degrees now, right? And I mean everyone. It's gone from a what if to a must-have in a society dropping the bar like it's hot) to finding something you suck least at.
But at least you have purpose. You're still tracking that goal post. Working towards something.
Towards what, exactly?
'Cause pretty soon you're 25 or something, and your schooling's finally done, and you end up in your first real job that's breaking your back and giving you no shortage of shit to complain about... but barring the off-chance that you actually do something you enjoy, the next 40 years are just an endless cycle of setting the alarm and trying to hit the gym and cram in a house clean before you hit the sack and go to work again the next day.
Why? It's what is expected. It's what you have been brought up to expect ever since you were old enough to walk. But does that really infuse it with purpose? Doubt it.
As I say, I was considering my friend. She's not doing a job she particularly enjoys or is good at. She'll probably become reasonably competent at it in time. Most people seem to. But that does not mean an enjoyable, fulfilling occupation. The older she gets, the goal posts will begin to change. A promotion. A pay-rise. A marginally nicer office. Then, as we know, you get into the working to pay for shit mindset, and that becomes its own goal post.
But in all honesty? She probably won't be happy. And if she is, it won't be thanks to her job. At the same time, we give people less and less space to create meaningful sources of satisfaction outside of work. In many places, the pension age is going up. People talking about how science will allow my generation to work till they're 90. Oh goodie. Who the hell wants to work till they're fucking 90? Dunno if that's true, but if it is, I'm taking up smoking and upping my Jack intake. I'm not hanging around for that.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I guess I could see it if you were doing something enjoyable, but most people -- and I mean like 80% at least -- are not. I keep wondering,
Don't they feel a little cheated?
Like all those 20-25 years in the beginning, people around act like you've got this bright future, like you're working towards something important, only to let you down abruptly in your mid-20s. Plop you down in some dead-end job you'll at best learn to tolerate, and that's it? Slug away at that for the next 40-50-70 years?
To quote the ever-wonderful George Carlin, talk about a good bullshit story...
I guess it wouldn't bug me so much if our society didn't continue to shame and castigate the people who opt out of this matrix. Those of us lounging about or going for a coffee in the middle of a work day. Spending Wednesday doing fuck all, or working on their art, or whatever else feeds your soul. I mind. Sometimes. But more so, I mind that so many people feeling trapped get shamed for it if they do try to opt out, or "cheat" by retiring early or saying fuck you to the 9-to-5. It's insolent. It's lazy. Or does it just seem so because in your soul, you know it's right?
