Changing My Mind About Working...This is Ghetto

A friend sent me a text from her excursions in Sint Maarten, a place she was not feeling the day before, but now pleasantly resigned to her current situation. Lamenting on the thought of leaving and returning to mundanity of her 9-5, she shared words that have now become a sort of benchmark for quality of living: "working is ghetto". Now as I type this in my dungeon of an office, tucked in a corner at the back of the lowest floor, I too must admit that working is indeed for the less couth. I mean who willingly and eagerly signs away their life to take on tasks and responsibilities that they'd rather not have? The modern human does. That's who! Consider the white collar 9 to 5. You sit at a desk, and if you're lucky, in an office with walls, in front of a screen and silently crumble apart on the inside. I keep flowers on my desk just to remind me that I am yet still among the living flora and fauna of the world. When they die after a week, I find myself envying their escape. For them, at least, there is an end to this senseless torture. They say figure out your passion and work wont feel like work. I call bullshit. Work is work. I am only here because I need a check. Do I like helping people? Yes of course. If I didn't need to pay my student loans would I be helping people? Maybe but not Monday thru Friday from 9 to 5. I don't like people that much, and frankly I think if there weren't a whole entire professional landscape built around helping people, the altruism we so desperately seek in the world would finally have room to manifest. Maybe the government would remember that its supposed to serve people? At any rate, I lie to myself every morning. Its the power of this lie that gets me out of bed in the morning, onto two different trains and through throngs of zombie-like New Yorkers, to my pit of an office, just to "help people". Even when I had the so-called "cool job", I had to lie to myself to get going. For starters anyone who believes that multi-national corporations hocking ice cream can be a force for good is certifiably delusional. Secondly, getting white men to "pay what they owe" to society, in particularly people who look like me, is a Sisyphean task. The lie stopped being so powerful; all of its euphoric sway lost. However, the grander lie that working the way that we work is normal, has a cult-like grip on my logic. Everyday I tell myself that I must work to matter. I must contribute something so that I can add it to a piece of paper proving my value to society. I must work to accumulate validation from others who I hope will say that I am both smart and productive. I get results. But what happens when those markers of success cease to trigger floods of dopamine in the reward center of my brain? What happens when I can no longer ignore the heaviness of fatigue, or the finish line that seems to get farther away with each achievement. The addiction no longer gives me the high, and suddenly I realize that Whitney was right: crack is whack and so is working for a living.

There are days that I wished that I didn't like nice things. That I could value my freedom more than the fleeting joy of finally buying a Chanel bag or even something more practical, calling myself a homeowner. All signs that I am upholding my side of this social bargain. I long for the sense of freedom that would allow me to live day to day and figure it out as I go along, but the fact is, I like my things. Love of things might be the most ghetto of all mindsets. Listen, I'm not saying be a bum. I do value productivity and purpose, but less in a capitalist framework. I think about Coltrane towards the end of his earthly run. His music was not made for sales or to appease the masses. Ole dude, literally became a conduit. A divine experience. We wont all be that exceptional, but I do believe that we have the capacity to do amazing stuff... when we are not consumed with the need for things and a paycheck to acquire things.

Maybe I have worked so hard up until this point that I am literally out of fucks to give about work and the working world. I've always been the model of get it done. If there was anyone who was going to succeed, it was going to be me. There were times that I didn't give my all. Take law school of example. I was literally taking up space, doing the bare assed minimum - believe me it showed -  because I didn't know what else to do. I just knew that I had to work at some point, and law seemed like a lucrative and important avenue for me to venture down. It was like walking down 5th Ave knowing I can't afford anything. I can however admire the windows. I spent three years admiring the concept, never intending to buy into it completely. But there were those times where I gave my all a little too much, and despite getting it done, I didn't get the return I'd hoped for. Those times left me spent and questioning why. I'd do something remarkable and the CEO would barely mention my name, but would revel in my achievement. A colleague, whose sense of self was bigger than mine, would proudly explain my doings as if they were their own, and I, too tired to fight, would convince myself that the only thing that mattered was that it got done. This is not to say that I've just been a victim of my own making. There were some hard fought victories that still drag a smile across my face, but not as much as reading something that I wrote years ago or looking a crisp photo that I took. Lately, I've derived more pleasure from cleaning my closet than completing a policy manual. At least having a clean closet matters to me. My coworkers can run amok and I've just decided that I don't care anymore. As people, most of them are great, and that goes for all of my colleagues past and present. I just don't care about them as coworkers, which is ironic because my current job is all about creating a caring and cohesive team. I gotta laugh at that.

At some point or another, most of us have found ourselves sitting at a dining room table in front of a plate of food that we usually wouldn't touch with a javelin pole. Our host, eagerly looking at us, hoping that we delight in their creation as much as they took pride in creating it. You know deep down inside that this shit is ghetto, toxic even, but you fix your face, adopt a steely resolve, and shovel a mouthful onto your palate. You chew and somehow manage to suppress your sense of smell, all the while slowly dying on the inside. You eat enough to ease the fears of the host and put your fork down without having to explain why. You uphold your end of this social bargain. The reward: you aren't ostracized. The downfall: you'll likely be invited to dinner again.

Every 2 weeks I get a sizable check. Everyday I am expected to show up and keep showing up. This is the arrangement.

I was off for 10 days. I came back to work for 3 got frustrated, and left for another 5. Most of those days, I sat on my couch questioning work and my career. I picked apart my life choices: 

I work because I must support myself and my habit. What's life without a constant stream of things to sedate me? I could get married and be a housewife, but I like control. Being a housewife doesn't give me that, unless I start stashing money in secret accounts or convince him to let me manage the finances. Shit. That's work too. I don't have any wealthy benevolent elderly relatives who will write me into their wills or set up a trust in my name. I'm clever but I have a bullishly strong sense of fairness in my blood. So I cant foresee me coming up with a Theranos equivalent. I'm too practical to invent something like the fidget spinner and dupe people into buying such nonsense. I'd be a poor salesperson for my own product. So around 5pm on Sunday, I told myself "Self... you are going to work tomorrow and you will tell yourself the same lie that you've been telling yourself for years. Tomorrow you will believe it even when you don't. Why? Because we have bills to pay. Adulting to do. You've had 15 days to figure out a solution, and you didn't. So you don't get to whine. You take what you have been given and go get it done."

...This shit is still ghetto though.