Frustration in A Major
A Labouretto
The sun was here this morning but now it’s gone. Replaced by a few stars. But I don’t care about the sun or the stars. What I care about is that I am inching closer to tomorrow, to Monday, the workday. Toward uneasiness and time worship. Yes, I worship the end of the shift where the sun is gone. I worship the absence of sun because that’s when I can come home to my wife and my dreams. The sun is too bright and demanding, it doesn’t let me dream. It wants me to labour. And there are no dreams in labour and work. There are only numbers. And tiredness.
There was a time in my life when celestial bodies meant more than schedule. I lay on the slope of the roof of my Kathmandu house listening to Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence album and stared at Jupiter or the Orion constellation (especially the redness in Betelguese) wondering what all that meant. There were times when I slept on the roof on a winter afternoon listening to Olivier Messiah and got absurdly lost in the hide-and-seek of the sun and the clouds. On those occasions, I wondered if I could look at existence as a slapstick comedy.
I had no work to go to the next morning. I could always skip my college classes and nobody apart from my parents cared. It’s different with work now, I get paid. People care if I take even a day off.
I had no pressure to work while I was at college (third-world middle-class privileges.) So college was a nice phase for me. I used it to study everything (apart from Computer Engineering). I’m still having to pay my price for that though. I’d probably not have had to labour if I had studied Computer Engineering and pushed everything else away. But I was too eager to learn. I wanted to know some truths before I died, which I thought could be any day. I did learn a few. For example, I know that the world moves by mouth and not hands. And this truth sickens me. No, not because I believe the world should move by hand but because I think I am way good to live off my hands. That’s why the labour anxiety. But yes, there was a time when I cared if the world moved by muscle or mouth. Now I’m an individualist a family man.
I once thought God existed and I was on a mission to know Him. But it all changed when I discovered will-to-power. Yes, I was obsessed with Nietzsche too. Now I wonder was it because Nietzsche was good or because I didn’t have to labour?
These days Nietzsche feels alien just like a Billboard rap song.
I don’t like my work. It’s not even a job. It was a pit I had to enter because I ran out of money and I wasn’t getting any writing gigs. I call it a pit, I call it hell. I don’t have that ‘respect your work, it’s paying your bills’ attitude anymore. It’s all bullshit. If everybody respected work, general labour would be the highest-paying and the most competitive job in the world. A better maxim could be, ‘respect your boss’s job, it will get you a great car.’
In my darkest, life feels like a tunnel. I can’t get out. There is no light in sight and my arms and legs are sore. I can’t look at the sun or the stars. I don’t have time. I got to eat all the time because I am physically tired. I got to sleep all the time because I am physically tired. I got to relax all the time because I am mentally disappointed.
An athlete pushes his body way harder than me
Yes.
But the athlete has job satisfaction. There’s pleasure in balls.
I have job dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction. Why don’t I get out?—I can’t.
How did I last a year and more?
In the most difficult moments, I pushed myself by imagining my inner stars like Bukowski, Palahniuk, Vonnegut, Carver, even Eminem and all those who had to grind inside a tunnel before they got to walk under the sun and the stars again. But they are getting weak now. The claustrophobia is so bad that those inner stars are dying inside me. I see them fading away.
But I can’t get out. I am trapped.
Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either. Even the pay is bad. No benefits either.
But I can’t get out. I am trapped.
The sun was here this morning but now it’s gone. Replaced by a few stars. But I don’t care about the sun or the stars. What I care about is that I am inching closer to tomorrow, to Monday, the workday. Toward uneasiness and time worship. Yes, I worship the end of the shift where the sun is gone. I worship the absence of sun because that’s when I can come home to my wife and my dreams. The sun is too bright and demanding, it doesn’t let me dream. It wants me to labour. And there are no dreams in labour and work. There are only numbers. And tiredness.
I want to use my brain for a living. Not their clock.