I have tried to write this essay so many times, but I do not know how to approach the topic unbiased. The first draft was pounded out in a fever dream a la Jerry Maguire. It went on for pages and pages. At the end, I was euphoric. I had done it. My manifesto. But in the light of day, it was very much a first draft. I think I’m on my third or fourth attempt now. Each one has been a total rewrite. As an adult, I have tried to be upfront about the fact that I have a lot of feelings.
I hate working. There. It’s in writing.
But that’s misleading, because I do not hate working, I hate labor. But I hesitate to say that because I do not want sound like a millenial hipster cliché. And also, I am not anti-capitalist. I am against capitalism as a game of survival. I want to neuter corporations so that they no longer run our lives, so that they no longer dictate how we spend our time.
But that’s a tall order because our world has come under the rule of behemoths. They have the goods. They have the means to distribute them. And very often they get away with charging whatever they want. And when it comes to things like medicine, they often charge too much.
I am so sick of hearing that people will do nothing if they don’t have jobs. We know that’s not true. Covid showed us. People can only watch so much TV. They will start to crave other forms of stimulation. They will try things they would not otherwise.
I think we should devise a system where people have choice, where people have the room to seek out work that fulfills them without fearing starvation or homelessness. Our system holds so many people hostage.
Why are we still living like this? Why are we talking around the fact that so many of us are trapped?
The boosted unemployment was a dream for my little tribe of artists. We got to pretend that creative work was our full-time job. In a typical year, shoots were squeezed between shifts. I would spend a whole night on set, go to work in the morning, and vice versa. But during the Boost Era, I could acknowledge the tiredness that came from performing. Before that I tried to think of it as pre-tiredness because I had to save the real fatigue for work.
I had a realization during my Covid-sponsored artist retreat. I did not want a full-time job, even as an artist. Not like that, not with every day logged and accounted for. I tried to keep office hours. It half-worked, but I also needed many days to catch up on the massive sleep debt that I had accumulated working nights. And I loved that any day could be a travel day, and since we were being paid, I did not have to feel guilty about spending money. But for me, the most important thing was that I got a chance to experience unprecedented levels of flow. Creative work has a gestation period that I was always trying to rush. I still find myself trying to rush it, because I want a way out, and the only way I see it is to sell something: the novel, one of the four scripts, something. On more energetic days I try to fool myself that I want to audition again because that way I can fantasize about booking something big. When I post music, videos, or photos, I experience the perennial hope that something might go viral.
“Not everyone has a novel,” my friend Krishi reminded me.
Krishi and I had many conversations about ending work. She was the one who turned me onto the positive aspects of automation. But in that moment, I had been going on in a similar fashion to how I am now, and Krishi’s words hit me more than I expected them to. Not everyone is an artist. Not everyone has some giant dream.
But from what I can see, we do all want out. Not out of work, but out of work that we would not choose if we thought there were a better option. But maybe I should speak only for myself. In that case, I’ll say this…
I don’t want to pretend anymore.
Back in June my body decided to officially fall apart, and part of me was relieved that I could no longer work on my feet. At the restaurant, with tips, I could make thirty dollars an hour easy, but it meant moving nonstop. And I was so tired. My body was sore in so many places.
So, I got a desk job. My current job requires a college degree, but I make much less. Per hour, at least. But the hours are consistent. The company has good benefits. And I can do the work in my pajamas. So, what am I complaining about?
Time. We cannot get back time. We know this because of the approximately three billion quotes saying so. But I always found those quotes frustrating. They made it sound as if I only had to open the door and step outside. Once I claimed my dreams, they would come true.
Nah, bro. I took the dreamer’s path. It’s rough.
Here’s a test I do to see if a job is real: would people do it if they were not being paid? Sounds silly, but people volunteer to be firefighters. They volunteer to run into burning buildings because they know saving lives is meaningful. If we got rid of jobs, people would find their true work. They would not have to discuss their interests with one ear out for so-called practicality. They could try things that might otherwise seem frivolous.
Hedge fund managers are frivolous. They play games of pretend with other people’s money. Speculation. They’re guessing. And yet, hedge fund managers are paid much more than people who run into burning buildings. They are paid much more than people who teach children. They are paid much more than people who perform surgery. They are paid much more than the people who do the real work.
We know things are broken. We know they have been broken for a long time. What I think we all tend to forget is that it does not have to be this way.
I really thought I might be dying this past year when my mystery illness was in full force. I was dizzy all day. I got down to 120 pounds. A trip to the store was a quest fueled by huffing and puffing. I hobbled through the grocery aisles, my heart palpitating, my palms sweaty, my head throbbing, and I wondered if that day would be the one where I finally passed out. Part of me wanted it. I was so tired. And the uncertainty of everything was making me feel more than a little crazy.
But it was also liberating, to think that I might be dying. That’s the funny thing: those five months were not just terrifying. They were the best and worst five months of my life. I was caught in a paradox. I was running out of time, and yet, I never had more of it. I was afraid for so much of the day, but at night I tasted peace. I was lonely but also relieved to experience solitude, to have a space all my own. I was so tired, but I also had time to rest.
I always thought a near-death experience would do me some good. I always felt like I needed something to give me that sense of urgency. Never waste a crisis, and all that. That’s how I discovered honesty this year. It had been an option after all. I had all these things to say that I never could before. And I found myself admitting things you can only half-acknowledge when you’re pushing your way through shifts, when you do so much pretending five plus days a week that you lose track of your real thoughts.
Here's my Cynical Idealist hope for these times: we are close. So close. The long-predicted Age of Automation is almost upon us. This age is often touted as a dystopian prospect, but that’s where Krishi changed my thinking. Machines might soon take over the rat race. Maybe they already can. We might be so close to getting our time back. And that’s what most of us are afraid to talk about. What would we do, who would we be, what would we care about, if we had the ability to choose?
And we do have the ability to choose. Not “we” as individuals but rather the collective “we.” It’s harder for individuals unless you have the kind of excessive wealth that exempts the need for a job. People with wealth get to choose. But those lucky ducks often feel deep shame knowing that they have won the lottery while so many others struggle. I felt that about my college fund for the longest time, trying not to feel guilty every time someone mentioned taking out loans, making all sorts of elaborate justifications in my head for why I deserved it.
But here’s the thing: I think we all deserve a college fund, one that does not even have to be used for college. Or at the least, college should be made affordable again. We know colleges scammed us, we’re just afraid to say it out loud. We have the statistics on how tuition ballooned out of control. We know there are now more administrators than there are professors. The money is there. It is going to the wrong places.
But I got so much out of college. I learned how to think for myself there. It sounded silly at the time because STEM kids kept rolling their eyes, but the older I get, the more it feels like the most important thing, especially as I try to hold onto my real thoughts in the shadow of Maslow’s Hierarchy. It’s very rare that we get to be truly honest. That’s why therapists are so important. People need a space removed from society to find out who they are when they can hear themselves think.
Much like David Graeber (I think his book Bullshit Jobs should be required reading), I can’t see a better option than some variant of UBI. We need to take away the fear of starvation and homelessness if we are going to expect people to think rationally and to also be honest in daily life.
That’s what really kills me. The pretending. The Truman Show zaniness of it all. Putting on my fake voice and trying to speak in this jovial and submissive cadence to show that I Am Not a Threat. I Am a Good Guy. I Don’t Hate This Job. What Kind of Ingrate Hates Their Livelihood.
This ingrate. See earlier confession in Paragraph Two.
But aren’t we all ingrates if we’re being honest? Who wants to do customer service? Who wants to scrub toilets? Who wants to do someone else’s taxes? Etc., etc., etc. I’ll believe in a few exceptions, but nothing of statistical significance. A workplace is toxic if the workers do not want to be there. That means most workplaces are toxic. Some are more noxious than others, of course, but even the ones that kill you slowly kill. It reminds me of those signs in California warning that you can get cancer just by hanging around. The first time I saw that sign I couldn’t believe it. Why was everyone walking past it like this was normal?
Because people must function. We live in a society in which we must swallow truths in order to function.
But what if we didn’t have to? What if people’s choices weren’t dictated mainly by fear, nor by a sense of responsibility to the way of life they were born into?
It’s hard to learn social theory and then function in the real world. There are so many fascinating contradictions to unpack, but you are not meant to unpack your employer in such a rude way. The only way it seems possible to do such a thing is to become a tenured professor, a successful artist, or just independently wealthy. Even then things are tenuous. Life gives and takes away. Nothing gold can stay. Fate is a cruel mistress. All that shit. You’re only safe so long as you have money. You can only be honest so long as you are safe.
Employers do not want to hear about Weber’s theories on the connection between charismatic leadership and bureaucratization. They do not want to hear that the concept of work as a goal in itself comes from a specific Protestant sect that was also a real buzzkill. And do not even think of exhaling the name Marx. Half of middle America will grab their guns from the bunkers.
Marx wrote some cool shit. Just saying. Also, the Soviet Union was nothing that Marx would have signed off on. And even Adam Smith suggested interventions for low-income folks. He was not so totally laissez-fairre himself. I’ve read The Wealth of Nations. It’s pretty damn boring, but that was one of the more interesting parts, the section where Smith discussed his more Socialist-sounding ideas. Smith didn’t trust the market either.
So there, so there, so there.
It’s also hard to pretend at work now that I had this whole mystery illness saga, a saga which is technically not over, although I have been feeling much better with time. It’s taking longer than I want it to, but so long as I am careful, monitor my physical activity, and allow myself to rest, I am not in daily pain like I was. I do not feel like I am dying anymore. Not most days, at least.
And part of me is disappointed, isn’t that funny? Because I had to go back to real life, by which I mean the game of pretend that we all deem adulthood. I had to bring back that false self the handbooks trained me in. I had to go back to using that tinny voice we must all turn on and off in a world run by corporations. I had to go back to giving half of my waking hours to work that feels pointless. Do we really need customer service representatives? There must be some alternative to torturing people like that.
I saw how close I came to having no more time at all. I felt my life force flickering. At age 29, I had to ask myself a question that seemed better suited to some elderly deathbed:
What had it all been for?
That’s what I would debate lying there, dizzy when I stood up, my stomach churning, and wondering if maybe I might not wake up at all the next day. If my life cut off there, what would it have all been for?
Half of my waking hours is too much. I cannot get that time back, just as I cannot get back the massive portion of the past thirty years spent in dissociation. There is nowhere to go but forward. There is nothing to do but hope.
Also, we should eat the fucking rich.
No, I’m kidding. But we should give the Zuckerbergs and Musks an ultimatum: pay back all those taxes you’ve avoided, give everyone a dividend in the enterprises you built on the backs of people’s data and government contracts, or we will eat you. Give people a stake in the economy. Pay them out. They do it in Alaska with the oil money, as Andrew Yang loves to point out. Pay people for their data. Pay people to perform roles of caregiving. Pay people to make art. Pay people to teach. Pay people to save lives. Pay people for the real work instead of the bullshit.
The Child Tax Credit cut child poverty almost in half. Our nation was able to do that almost overnight with a slight shift in legislation. With the unemployment boost, people were able to survive without working, and so, they had time to rethink things. And so many of us realized how unhappy we had been. That’s why everyone wants to work remotely now. That’s why most of the job shortages are in the service industry. People want more of their lives back, and they want to be treated like people. But corporations are afraid of that. The more you remove strictures, the more people will want further removal. At some point, they’ll want to be free. And a free populace is a real wild card.
We know things are broken. We know they have been broken for a long time. And on some level, we must know that it does not have to be this way. What we don’t know yet is what comes next. We don’t know how many times we must be dragged back before we can progress unhindered. The Child Tax Credit is no more. There is no more unemployment boost. There are no more stimulus checks. There was student loan forgiveness, but then that was blocked too.
Why are they so afraid of letting people live without fear? Why are they so afraid of people having choice?
Because it’s hard to be a Bezos if you have don’t have warehouses of workers peeing in bottles. Because it’s hard to be a Musk if you’re not pushing your engineers to the limit so that you can take credit for their work. Because it’s hard to be a Zuckerberg if you’re not exploiting people for their data without compensation.
A middle class is a difficult thing to maintain because a middle class implies balance. Balance is the most difficult thing. It demands compromise. It involves staying calm. This is the real motive behind polarization. They want desperate people fighting other desperate people so that the Collective We won’t go after the people who could make us less desperate.
We have so much. We know this. Capitalism gave us that abundance. That’s why I am not anti-capitalist. That’s why I am only against capitalism as a game of survival. I think that’s where so much of the collective frustration boils from. We know on some level that even though we are fortunate in so many ways, we are also being sold a lesser version of existence, and for prices that are far too high. We are always being forced to find more creative ways to pretend that we don’t long for freedom. Rest. Choice. Liberation from the most the basic fear for survival.
I don’t miss being sick like I was in June, but I do miss having an excuse to rest, to lie there and wonder what I actually wanted, and to surprise myself with the answers.
I don’t want to feel guilty when I buy food anymore. My job should pay a living wage, but also, jobs should be phased out in favor of real work. If a role turns out to be one that no sane human would show up for, then we should find a way to make that job irrelevant in our society. We need to neuter corporations because they are beasts that feed on profit, and beasts do not like to share their spoils. Beasts hoard. Beasts mark out territories. Beasts are willing to kill to get what they want.
It was way too easy to get opioids when I threw out my back. Way too easy. I didn’t even ask for them. They were one of three muscle relaxers prescribed to me. WARNING, the big red label at the top said, and then there was smaller text clarifying the risk of addiction. The prescription came with Narcan as a fail-safe against overdose. The whole display freaked me out. I never took any of them. I took the other two muscle relaxers and got high instead.
I can’t tell if my job knows that I am sick. I don’t think so. I somehow ended up number one in bookings even though I thought I was a hot mess. I keep getting headaches, though, so it’s hard to focus, but I can’t tell if that’s from the mystery illness, from stress, from boredom, from looking at screens for eight hours, from frustration at the job itself, or from all of the above. My nervous system is so fussy. Taking care of that puppy is a part time job. It’s okay, it’s okay, that was years ago. Shh. Shh. Stop barking. Please.
My company is remote first, so maybe they don’t care if I’m somewhat debilitated. That’s the tough thing about discussing my new company in this essay. They’ve actually been quite nice. It’s hard to hate them. They start us out with vacation time in the bank and personal time on top of that to use for appointments. It’s been a while since I’ve had a job with benefits, so I keep getting excited about stuff in the goodie bag. But my company can also be so bitchy sometimes. Maybe it’s my imagination, but a passive aggressiveness keeps infiltrating the false cheer dominating our multiverse of slack channels. Turnover seems to be high. The people left are saddled with the work of two or three people. “Thank you for your teamwork,” my manager said in his announcement about the onslaught of new assignments divvied out. But my manager is a good guy. He’s a grown up nerd like me so I have a real fondness for him, especially since I can tell he’s stretched thin as well.
Could be better, could be worse, could be much worse.
I came up with that mantra at the pizza place. The pizza place was a real low period. That was when I really started to really resent my stupid dreams for getting me in yet another ridiculous situation. The pizza place was on the verge of riot. It was also on the verge of closing (and would close soon after I left). There was an air of desperation from both the employees and management. Things moved so fast. Workers threw screaming fits, and they couldn’t get fired because we were already stretched so thin. But when I started drowning in self-pity, I would remind myself of the woman working next to me, a woman trying to feed both herself and her kids on what was not enough for one person. The wages felt like a cruel joke. But I had put myself there. That’s what I also kept reminding myself. I had gotten a respectable degree at a respectable university, and I had also decided not to use it.
But I was using it. I was using it for the work that I wanted to do, namely the writing, namely this writing. Social theory does not pay well, but damn is it cool. My favorite professor at UVA was an anthropology professor named Frederick Damon, and he was perhaps the most honest person I have ever met. Professor Damon had such Dumbledore vibes, and I had already been waiting so long to be Harry Potter (if you’re sad as a kid you get to be Harry Potter, that’s the trade-off, I somewhere convinced myself), so I got hooked on the magic of structuralism real fast. It felt like Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ancient runes were waiting to be deciphered. Complex illusions were waiting to be revealed. One thing could transform into another just by looking at it through a different lens.
A workplace is toxic if the workers do not want to be there. That means most workplaces are toxic. A workplace that is toxic does not deserve our time.
Things won’t change overnight. I know that. But I just want us all to be on the same page that there is a better way to live, and that we could have it if we wanted to, maybe not overnight, but soon. Sooner than we might think. I want to hear what people sound like when they have the space to be honest. I want to see who people could be if they were not afraid all the time. I want to know what kind of work people would take up if they had choice.