Ramblings and writing again
I wish I had something specific to say at the moment, but I don’t so I am doing this instead. Which is to say, my job has changed again, and now I will be working 4 days a week (good) from 8:30am to 7pm (horrifying). This is my last week of the old schedule, working 5 days but 2 of them remotely, and I’m struck by my own fear of having to go back in person. First, I have worked in person before, so less it sounds as if I occupy some kind of bullshit job privilege, I’m aware of how lucky I was, and still the adjustment is strange.
More than this though, it has me thinking about the upcoming changes in the world, the way in which this current regime is going to do everything in its power to erode what little labor protections currently exist. (To say nothing of the slew of other atrocities coming down the pipeline). It all feels surreal, and yet, predictable. Predictable because we live in a world in which the language used to understand the world around us, is built with a ramshackle scaffold . Much is made of who’s fault it is, but the honest truth is without any kind of basis with which we can critique these systems what are we left with?
Of course, there’s the Marxist view (one which I take) which can in many ways explain the world, but somehow this feels inadequate. Most people, (myself included to some extent) aren’t experts or even familiar with value theory or other forms of ideology. And still, even including those, this somehow misses the mark.
I guess I‘m reflecting on the upcoming year, the things which will be difficult, the things which all of us can’t even clearly foresee. I am trying to find something to do in-between things, not because I am under any illusions of what that will mean for the world, but more as some kind of strange exercise in trying to stem the onslaught of my own neurosis.
This isn’’t saying we don’t organize, isn’t saying that there’s no work to be done, just a random sort of way of trying to pull my own thoughts together at the moment. For one, I just want to do these a bit more quickly, in the beginning off the week, as a way of stealing a modicum of my time back from a job that is increasing making me feel trapped. In another sense, it’;s a way to feel a little less disconnected from things, as I find my time taking up in a new way. (For clarity because of public transit, my days will start at 5am and end at 8pm more or less).
Anyway, I hope to write more, to come up with some ideas to help pass the time, to make it feel a little less like swallowing a hot ball of iron. More t
o come.