We're All Suckers But It's The Only Way To Gather Nutrients From The Soil
work, hope, despair, socialism, ducks, butter, and blueberries
Was that you guys yesterday? I did an online book event and book events, real or virtual, usually draw 20-50 devout reader/fans. This one had 200. I already have way more subscribers here than I expected so maybe. Thanks, horde! (pictured below: you guys).
I do this weekly show on Instagram Live with the estimable Ana Marie Cox where we are two friends checking up on each other during COVID and the race war and the mental dissolving of the president and the burning of the American West. During hard times, I’ll just say. There are also recommendations on tv shows and fantasy novels.
A while back on the show, Ana said that hope is not something you can just sit back and expect to receive all the time. Sometimes you have to go look for it. You have to track it down. Do fruitful labor (more on fruitful/fruitless labor in a moment). And yeah, it’s hard as hell but you need hope to get by so put on your boots and go track that shit down.
It’s a bit like waiting for inspiration to make art versus going out, turning over rocks, pounding on doors, and digging holes to find inspiration.
I couldn’t find a non-corny photo about the earnest but necessary struggle to find hope so here’s one of a duck wearing people clothes.
Even when you find it, it’s scary because it might let you down. You hope that something good is coming your way but then it doesn’t. You hope a family member will get their shit together but they do not. Even small stuff like you hope that new album by your fave-rave musician will be smokin’ yet it does not smoke.
And that disappointment gives rise to the phrase “don’t get your hopes up.” But don’t let the result of the hope be its only value. If a hope gets you by for a week and then disappoints, at least you had that week that was a bit more functional.
One useful exercise is to commit for one week to saying out loud what’s giving you hope in that moment. And say it to someone, don’t just mumble it to yourself. Saying it to a partner, a friend, a human being forces you to be articulate about your hope and thus bring it into clearer focus. It also invites that other human to reciprocate and then you get a little extra hope in a dish on the side that you can sprinkle into your life as you see fit like a hopeful salad dressing.
Speaking of hope and, uh, not… If you have dealt with something like depression you may be familiar with the sinking feeling that when it comes to the concept of work, you’re being had. That your toil, your sweat, your attention, and even your humanity is being eaten away for the benefit of others and there’s no way out of that cycle unless the cycle discards and starves you. It suxx, with two x’s.
Maris Kreizman wrote this thing about her missing ambition and, as someone thinking about the human mind during stormy times and someone trying to arrange an employment situation, it really hit home for me. It asks whether the system of hard work and striving is ultimately a sucker’s bet.
It made me think of the fundamental sucker game that is American employment. There’s an epic, generations-old swindle that you never work hard enough and that only by outworking everyone else will you succeed. Thus, it’s not enough to work 40 hours so you work 50 but the implanted message tells you to work harder so you get up to 60. It’s a bit like reckless driving on country roads that have a speed limit of 30. Eventually you’re going to crash.
As a culture, we’ve bought into this idea that pushing ourselves harder in order to help those above us is somehow virtuous instead of a harsh fee we constantly pay in order to be permitted to survive.
I wonder if the logical path for humans is to be a socialist when you’re young and hopeful, a capitalist when you get sucked into the game everyone else is playing, and then a socialist again when you’re older and wiser.
Maris is quicker on that uptake than I was.
At my next employment situation, it looks like I’ll be a contractor and thus have the luxury(?!) of running my own company. So it won’t be *me* working for *them*, it will be *them* hiring out a *company* whose sole employee is *me*. It’s new, I guess, and it gave me a chance to name my company, which is always fun. This means the job won’t require sitting in an office somewhere keeping up appearances when there isn’t that much to do.
I told my therapist that if I only have 30 hours of work to be done some week (a luxury compared to many people’s situations, I know), I can shift over to other projects for the extra 10-20. “Or you could just not work as hard,” she said, “because right now you’re still buying into the capitalist con job.”
It’s some Stockholm Syndrome shit. And if you have an interesting mind that has a penchant for trotting off to dark places when you’re not looking, it suxxx. Three x’s!
Wow. Okay. Let’s find some deck chairs for our minds, let them relax for a moment.
First, a necessary ten minutes of people who love their work making butter.
And here’s a place where they pick a lot of blueberries without ever touching the blueberries. They use a special rake!
Buttons.
Really enjoyed being part of the horde yesterday at the book event. For some reason, the bit that I keep flashing back to is your comment that you'd like to do a book event that incorporates petting puppies or mini horses. If that happens, I will *travel* for it, friend. Until then, I'll be over here hugging my stuffed animal bunny and unicorn. Be well!