Honestly, I do not hate having a job. I even kind of like working. There have been times when I was still at my computer at two or three in the morning.
After all, I chose this work, so I should also take responsibility for what follows. Even if it makes me feel bad—if I do not act, then that is my own problem.
Because an individual cannot beat a system, and there will always be someone more suited to it.
But I have also been thinking about how to understand work, and why we work.
1) Let me start with the second question.
Someone asked me something similar before. If I remember right, my answer was about realising meaning. That is still my answer now.
But if a job does not match that, then maybe it is only a temporary arrangement or a stop along the way. In that case, I thought, there is no reason to complain, right?
But I was wrong. “This job makes me tired” and “I feel tired” are two different things: fact and feeling.
I did choose this job. It does make me feel tired.
It does carry part of what I hope for in meaning. It may also be a temporary stop.
In other words, one fact does not cancel another fact. The feelings that come from those facts do not cancel each other either.
2) So what is work?
There is its practical side—something that supports life, which makes me think of the distinction between means of production and means of living, and surplus value. There is its class side, such as relationships and status. And there is its meta side: work itself as an end. I will not go further into the abstract part here.
Then I realised that one thing I had never considered when asking what work means to me was its class side.
I have always felt that I should be someone behind the scenes, while my work, or what I make, stands in front. I especially dislike the feeling I get when I become the focus. It is uncomfortable, but I know it is not fear or wanting to run away. I just prefer doing things behind the scenes. That is how I am too.
But without a maker, a work cannot exist. Especially when someone has a strong personal style, they cannot fully disappear. There is a kind of authorship. Even when people only meet the work, the creator is still there in its shadow. Recently I heard an example of a company's copywriter whose style was so distinctive that people said, “This writing is so obviously so-and-so.” But a copywriter has to write from the company's position—what the company would say, should say, and can say.
(Stop.)
It is a little funny. I have been so busy lately that I had no time to write, so I wrote something casually and ended up with this note. The point was to put up an audio diary called “People Are Really Good at Gaslighting Themselves”.
Around the middle to late part of March, I realised that the voice diaries I had recorded before might have a better way out. With some arranging from me, they started getting along with Obsidian.
I have mentioned before that I wished for a better tool to help me quickly get the information I want from podcasts. One reason is that audio is a linear medium. Without another tool, if you want to know what it contains, you can only listen from beginning to end. That is why I formed the habit of listening to podcasts at 1.5x or even 2x speed… terrifying.
So how did I use Obsidian to pull out and use the content in my audio diaries?
I will write about it next time. My mind has already made countless plans, but plans never catch up with change, so I will go with the flow and follow the moment.
This time, I choose not to gaslight myself!!