Hello dear friends
I feel like I last wrote maybe a week ago but it’s five or six now. In spite of that feeling, much has happened.
I spent two weeks in Lebanon, for a start, which is a beautiful country and you should all visit. It has Jeita grotto and Balou-Balaa which should be on the wonders of the world list. The cities are intense and the food is wonderful and the mountains beyond imagination. Go.
I wrote most of this in the middle of a workday last week, because inspiration strikes at inappropriate times. I’ll leave the context to your imagination, but it was an office day and not a lizard-catching day, I’ll give you that much.
I feel like a wild animal that’s learned to put on a shirt, but I am half an inch from clawing my way out and diving into the woods. I feel so constrained and the seemingly endless ticking of the clock and repeated days and structure and timetables is slowly suffocating me…
We’re told in theory to practice critical thinking when in practice, any initiative, any deviation from the expected and taught, is discouraged or punished. THIS is the right answer. Through school, through work, under teachers and curricula and bosses and clients. Education is failing to keep up with society and life, becoming irrelevant with startling speed in today’s world, and the science in the office failing to keep up with science in the hallowed and protected halls of research, where access to knowledge is not a right, but a tax. And then the homogeneity of society is puzzled at, despite a social and cultural training throughout our entire lives funnelling us into tools rather than toolmakers, lasering us towards one tiny speck of light in the far distance, whittling away any unnecessary personality or individuality on the way whose attentions might cause you to deviate for half a second towards something you actually enjoy.
Uniformity is enforced, sparks of light flickering out wherever you look, forcing people into the boxes of greater good where they spend miserable lives, like a dog on a treadmill running towards the treat dangling in front of it, never able to reach it. The more we claw upwards, the further away our aspirations move.
My boss questioned my ‘motivation’ a few weeks ago, I think groundlessly; but either way, it made me think of what I have so far done with my life. I did everything the way we were told. I answered all the questions right. I sat the exams. I was funnelled through that precise school system. I went to university. And then I went back to university. I had a dream in mind, a career. I did everything we’re ‘supposed’ to do, things we are taught will make your life better, will give you the satisfaction society insists is just out there, waiting, as long as you make the right choices. And then at the end of it you will achieve the homogeneous dream: get a good job, save up, get married, buy a house, have kids, work cheerfully, retire comfortably, die happy.
And at the age of 25, sitting in a plain office, staring up at a double monitor showing me reports and maps, the realisation hit me: all we are promised does not exist. It is a mirage. I am 25, living in someone’s spare room with not a legal leg to stand on, on minimum wage, having survived on a shoestring alone for seven years, with almost no savings to show for ten years in part- or full-time employment (hi university), debt which is undoubtedly larger than any difference in my gross lifetime earning capacity between university attendance or lack of, my partner is stuck 2000 miles away in a bureaucratic sinkhole, my family is 200 miles away, and I have a distinct black hole feeling that All Is Not Quite Right. All dripping under the umbrella of Brexit, which lies under the marquee of Global Climate Disaster (yep, it’s always there, above every single one of us, and ready to collapse on our heads).
So I suppose if my motivation was suffering, it’s probably… just… that.
My boyfriend called me a nihilist after my last blog post. After googling what that is, I think he might, sometimes, be right. Not all the time. But there’s definitely a streak of it if you push the right buttons.
Yours gloomily,
Georgie
In Other News, It’s Not All Work And No Play
My office is not a bad one to work in, if you have to have one at all. We have a laugh, and we have a dog (improves it 1000%).
Someone’s got hold of the office number and has called several times asking for the boss, let’s call him Steve, as ‘he’s won a prize!’ You’ve never heard anyone so excitable as this conwoman.
‘That’s funny as I’ve never entered anything,’ Steve humphed, the first time.
Now, our favourite thing to do with these calls is put them on loudspeaker…
“Hello, is Steve there please? This is Louise calling from WhateverTheFuck Competition, he’s won a prize!”
As a matter of fact, Steve himself usually answers the phone.
“Steve?” he says. “Oh – oh yeah – I’ll just go get him for you.” He then balances the phone in the furthest corner of the office while we snigger quietly and uncontrollably.
After about five minutes of hilarity, he then picks the phone up again and says, “Hello? Is there someone on this line?”
“Hi, yeah!” Excitable Louise gasps on loudspeaker. “Is that Steve?”
“Oh – Steve – he’s around, I’ll just go and find him.” And Steve abandons the phone again.
And repeat. She stayed on the line twenty minutes once. Three repeats.
How we laughed.
thoughtsunqualified 