On Work

The prevailing view about work in this society is pretty basic: you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you are able-bodied and capable, you are expected to have some sort of job, be productive, make a living, keep the world running….and if not, you are a lazy, good for nothing free-loading miscreant.

I’ve certainly felt this way at one or more points in my life. I don’t feel this way now. But I still hate working with lazy people. I still would rather do a job myself than count on someone who isn’t giving the job their full attention. But worrying whether or not someone has a job or is working hard the entire time?

I couldn’t care less.

When I think about my life and how I’ve spent it so far,( I’m 45) it breaks down into a series of relationships, places I’ve lived, people I’ve met, things I’ve done, schools I’ve attended, and whatever job I was doing at the time…when I remember something, it is usually connected to one of these factors. (conversely, as I’ve lived in the same house for 11 years, been at the same job for 10 and been with the same partner for 15 years, it becomes harder to use this method to remember things). But how many of these things define me? How many of them define you?

Let me put it this way: do you love your job? Or is it something that you just do because it’s easier than doing nothing? (then again, what could be easier than doing nothing?) Or do you fall in the dreaded category of actually hating your job?

“If you hate your job, quit!”

(Oh lord, how I hate when people say this. It’s usually some lucky person who has no memory of what it was like to do something you don’t like just to pay the bills.)

As if that were the only factor. As if nothing else mattered other than my happiness on the job. As if getting another job that may turn out to be just as bad or worse than the one you presently have isn’t a crushing heartbreak of a journey. As if getting another job wouldn’t come with its own set of problems. As if you weren’t simply blowing off steam when you said you hated your job and maybe just needed a few minutes to cool off…

But love…love, love your job…?

I guess I started thinking of this recently after watching the magnificent documentary film about soundtrack composers, called “Score.” At the end, in the wrap-up, composer Hans Zimmer (wearing his velvet jacket and sitting on a velvet chair looking like the happiest man on earth) says, with no irony or sarcasm “I love, love, love what I do.” These words inspire me as much as they depress me.

Can you say the same thing? Can anyone?

Is it the lack of effort? Lack of imagination? Lack of passion? Lack of funding? Lack of motivation? Lack of opportunity? Or a combination of all of these things, and more?

I don’t bemoan where I am in life. The bigger problem is why is it like this for anyone… I don’t want to suffer and go back to where I was 20 years ago, unable to do basic shit like buy carryout food or drink in bars or even worse, having to donate blood plasma to make rent….but I also don’t want to get rich and leave everyone behind and say “Fuck you. I made it, why can’t you?”

But the system is: get an education, get a job, work until you die. It’s a waste of life except for the very few who love what they do. We don’t all love what we do. Some of us just “do” what we have to.

It just shouldn’t be this way, period.