yesterday i went for coffee and a long walk with an old friend from my brief time at millikan middle school over fifteen years ago. we walked around an elementary school and he did most of the talking while i gushed internally at the nostalgic value of old schools. before high school, i attended eight different schools, and i remember playgrounds and people from each one. the one we were circling boasted a fisher price log cabin playset, five community box gardens, various colourful murals painted on sides of classrooms, and a fence lined with 6×4” paintings of hummingbirds and butterflies. i was in swoon city.
the friend i was walking and talking with is an ultra-creative type; the kind of people i most prefer to surround myself with. spontaneous, un-regimented, usually late to engagements (ironically my antithesis), and at times with a tendency to be a little chaotic or unhinged. i hold a high appreciation for the many quirks and facets of their unique and beautiful brains. this person in particular had previously made a living as a creative consultant, and had at a few times in the past month or so attempted to pick my brain to help point me in the direction of what it is i want to do and how to go about doing it. i told him i had recently written my first paid article and was looking to focus on more of that line of work, but was quick to change the subject.
more importantly, something had long been formulating in my mind, which finally culminated into actual thoughts just recently. listening to several of my friends lament their struggles over the past almost-year, focus has primarily been on work and career – largely of people feeling trapped in their miserable jobs because of the uncertainty of the job market during the ongoing pandemic. i keep thinking of what an immeasurable tragedy it is to grow up in a society that has trained us so deeply to identify solely with our roles as the cogs in its capitalistic wheel. we would rather show up each day to the grueling jobs we have, knowing that they are actively and heavily contributing to our overall unhappiness, than take a job that perhaps pays less, is less glamorous, or is more part-time – for less money but more quality time to spend doing what we enjoy with whom we enjoy. at the heart of this issue is a deeper and more political conversation about why jobs with unlivable wages even exist and why our worthiness of food and housing is determined solely by what we contribute to capitalism – but that is a conversation for another time. generally, we as a society do not prioritize our own happiness.
i know that this isn’t a conversation that everyone has the privilege of considering – i’m unmarried with no children, and live a very modest life with my one cat and ninety plants, drive an ancient car that i don’t have to make monthly payments on, and luckily have no medical bills to speak of. add children or medical bills to the mix, and it’s much more difficult to find wiggle room in these conversations. while i’d be pressed to believe that it’s impossible, i don’t really have the right to say, as that isn’t my personal experience. i’m well aware that there are situations wherein sacrificing your own happiness for the well-being and survival of those you are responsible for seems the only viable option, and i will make no attempt to claim otherwise.
back to my main point – to use an example, one of my best friends told me last week that he finally received the promotion he’d been working so hard for for at least a year or two. with it came an immense pay raise – he described it as “what some people make in a year” – and while i felt and expressed immense pride in him and my sincerest congratulations, i couldn’t help but contemplate the trail of lost relationships left in the aftermath of its wake. for one, he’d been so busy that we hadn’t spoken to each other in a couple of months, other than to briefly exchange memes every so often. but prior to that, he’d expressed his frustrations with strained friendships and a tersely ended romantic relationship as a result of long hours and unavailable weekends due to taking work home with him. when we begin to prioritize what we’re slaves to over those who give us their love and time freely, what do we actually have in the end?
this line of thinking comes in part from my own personal struggle after losing my job in march last year as a result of the first lockdown. the entire management team was promised their jobs back “when this is over.” obviously, we’ve seen how this has panned out, and there’s still no end in sight. for the first two or three months, i really held onto the idea of going back. it was a place i’d poured six years into, dropping out of school in the beginning to pull double shifts when we were short staffed, and eventually working a regular 60-70 hours a week as a general manager (and a full time student), including often from home on weekends. it wasn’t a perfect situation – in fact i’d attempted to quit a couple of times and essentially been denied (how does that work?) – and it was frustrating work for the majority of the time that i was there. there were times, perhaps more often than not, where i did truly feel miserable and trapped there – but it felt like a part of me, and after it felt like a part i could no longer claim months into quarantine life, i spiraled into an existential crisis. i had never, ever been unemployed. i’ve never even taken an actual vacation.
if i didn’t do _______, what did i do? if i can’t go to a bar on a friday night and dance to my chosen songs on the jukebox while beating misogynistic strangers at pool, what am i good at? if i can’t spend a saturday afternoon drinking in obscure facts about some weird and creepy sculpture at a tiny museum, what do i enjoy? if i lack the motivation to draw, am i still an artist? am i really all the things that are outside of me? i arrived at feeling like the absolute lamest version of myself, with absolutely no frills, bells, or whistles to show for the carefully curated collection of things that i had prided myself on embodying. i started forgetting about all of the things that i inherently am.
with real experiences being replaced by virtual realities, i now feel defined only by my technology. i’m a UCLA student – but only in my living room. i can tour the Louvre – from my phone, i guess. i still love so many of the things that i did a year ago, but i’ve never felt more limited in the ways that i can express them. when i show up for coffee walks, i can only bring with me my now perpetually overwhelmed scatterbrain, overdeveloped sense of empathy, problematic hypersensitivity, crippling insomnia, and newly developed social ineptitude after months of social withdrawal. whatever charm i may have had at any point has gone totally dormant.
in many ways, i still feel this way daily, but am slightly improving on talking myself out of diminishing my worth down to the things that i used to do – or at the very least i make an effort to lessen the time i allow myself to feel this way each day. and in the end, i hope to never be defined by my job again. i never want to take loved ones for granted the way that i realize i have in the past, when i was “too busy” working to make time for people, no matter what the pay might be or how important or impressive the title might sound. if the last year has taught me anything, it’s that we are all that we have, and that a job can never fill the void left by the absence of our preferred company. i hope that our generation comes to a similar conclusion before it becomes irreversibly lonely.
