I’ve been thinking about things I don’t think about anymore. That makes sense, right?
Fine, I’ll elaborate.
So I’m writing this from my office in the basement of my house. I do all my writing here now because it has a door and I have children and dogs and because I can’t grab a laptop and go to the cafe these days. Not sure if my favorite writing cafe is coming back, actually. The office is a great place to lose myself in writing. I can get way into the piece, have no idea what time it is. It’s great. I do miss, you know, humans, sometimes, but I don’t miss keeping track of them.
I’ve worked in offices since the early nineties and that means being aware of the complex yet illusory social webs that necessarily operate therein. One human is in charge of other humans, some of whom are seen favorably, others less so. A set of humans working together on a common projects but they have tremendous variation in which component they work on plus variations in experience, skill set, work habits, and personality, which inevitably leads to resentments and jealousy and alliance and covert battles. An aspiration by one worker to climb higher and have power over the people who are now their peers, and then they navigate that ambition to varying degrees of success or failure. And all the while, all these people, from the CEO to the humblest clerk are just piles of meat running around in clothes. They are biological equals in a shared hallucination of structure.
Here in the basement, mostly alone unless a dog wants to go out or a kid wants to show me something they made, those trappings are absent. I have editors, sure, and companies I’m negotiating with. I have three different agents I talk to on the regular. But I’m running a one-employee company for the most part where the entire workforce walks my dogs sometimes.
And it feels - oh what’s the expression - so fucking good because of what I no longer need to keep track of. The weight of trying to figure out what everyone thinks of everyone else, of keeping track of that as it evolves, is gone. And it’s helped me understand the path ahead for the construct of “work” in America. It’s a gig economy, sure, smaller headcount and more micro-companies. But covid has exposed the construct of “the office” as being outdated. We don’t need leased workspaces with matching chairs as much as we thought. We can stay in touch other ways and get as much or more done. Some people need to be together, some companies need to have more people on payroll but way less than we knew (or were led to believe).
This means that in terms of psychology, the mind, the mental health: our worlds can be lighter than we knew. I no longer carry the backpack full of bricks that was the awareness of everyone’s feelings about each other. I am unencumbered by maintaining the illusion that any human was “higher” or “better” or “more important” than any other. That wasn’t a system I wanted to buy into but I had to buy into it anyway in order to get through the day and do my job.
Sometimes there were donuts in the break room, though. Kinda miss that.
This isn’t a direct reference to the place I most recently worked, by the way. It’s about all them offices.
Don’t put psychic cinderblocks in your head
Grudges are really such a burden, aren’t they? Staying mad at someone can feel like a noble act sometimes, like you are the bearer of the truth and you will bravely fight this battle forever, but it just. weighs. so. much. Like the offending event was bad enough and then you tote it around with you all the time. Maybe you do it. I do it. I try to do it less because my back hurts and my shoulders are sore.
Here’s one way I’ve been looking at it and I think it works sometimes. Rather than think about how that offending person is WRONG or EVIL or DEVIOUS, think about two things:
That person was DUMB at that time.
All people are sometimes DUMB.
And forgiveness is great if you can swing it. Tall order sometimes. But instead of forgiveness, maybe can find a way to just drop it as an act of kindness to yourself. Change your “fuck them” to a “fuck this” and give yourself a break.
I’m John Moe, your foul-mouthed self-help guy.
Media alert! Listen to me say things!
I’ll be on the air tomorrow (Tuesday, Dec. 15th) on KUOW in Seattle during Bill Radke’s show, The Record, between noon and 1pm pacific. I’ve known Bill for decades now and have worked with him on a variety of shows. We’re pals.
We’ll be talking about the coming wave of PTSD in a post-vaccine world (as discussed a while back here) and in general about mental health and the holidays. But don’t be scared! It won’t be a depressing conversation!
You can listen with their Listen Live button on the KUOW site.
About time / for a nap
The Cleveland baseball team is changing its racist nickname. Before the racist nickname, 106 years ago, they were called the Naps after star player Nap Lajoie.
Speaking for the clinical depression community, I hope they go back to Naps in honor of naps, napping, and those who enjoy naps. Additionally, I hope their uniforms involve sweatpants.
It really is gunna
Speaking of depression (were we? aren’t we always?), here’s the perfect Christmas song for Team Saddie.
All pandemic I've been home, and I've had no comfy sweatpants. Pants are a pain in the ass (ha) to buy, especially when they don't come in any kind of standardized sizing, and you can't shop in person. (Which sucks too, differently.) Today I got a pair of sweatpants in the mail that are actually, FINALLY, everything I need them to be. I am almost as excited about this as I am about racist sports team names changing and facebook maybe getting broken up for being a big monopolizing jerk. I think I'll take your advice and have a celebratory nap. With sweatpants.