Work worries

by Ben Jones

I am sitting here at my desk with the idea of putting something down ‘on paper’, but I’m almost certain that nothing will come. I haven’t written a word outside of text messages, Twitter, and Facebook, and the odd hand-written reminder, in the last two weeks. The reason for this, I believe, is that I have had a job to do. A real job, like ‘they’, the masses, all do day, after day, after day. I have been filling shelves with food for two weeks as well as making calls for the charity for which I have worked for four years, and I have barely had a moment to myself. I have woken up, gone to work, been told what to do, done what I’ve been told, come home, slept, and repeated, and throughout this entire time I have often been aware of a cloudiness of my mind, and an inability to properly focus on anything other than the menial tasks at hand. I have worked alongside people whose lives have been consumed by this ‘busy’ routine, and whose days consist of nothing more than the simplest of thought processes at the workplace and the supposed enjoyment of numbing themselves in front of the television (the television! I have grown to fear the television, but I won’t talk about that today) at home, before repeating the miserable process the next day. This routine is excepting weekends (‘Here you are, have a small portion of your life to enjoy yourself with’ – ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Man’) when people like to do ‘nice’ things like ‘going for dinner’ or ‘watching a film’, never allowing themselves more than five minutes’ peace lest they should actually develop a disconcerting thought about the meaninglessness of our wonderfully material existence.

I can feel the constructed necessity of earning money pulling at my life down one road, but I want to take another path. If this fortnight of non-stop ‘real world’ work has taught me anything, it is that I don’t want to be a part of it. What is a life which is handed to us with terms and conditions?  We’re all in a web, and I look around and everyone else seems to be so happy to be stuck that they don’t even blink for fear of upsetting the balance, but all I want to do is kick and scream and tear at the strings (which, of course, will only cause me to become even more tangled).

When I was fifteen I had it all planned. I was going to be heterosexual, I would get married, and I would have children, and I would be a lawyer, and write books on the side, and I would wear a suit. In one way, I wish I were stupid. Stupid people live so quietly, and happily. (This sounds awfully arrogant, but I believe honest expression is the most appreciated form.) At the same time, I want to embrace my yearning for something more, and make use of it to my benefit, and the benefit of anyone who cares, or is able, to take note. I can’t help feeling that from here onwards everything is going to become only more complicated, only more of a struggle against the rules imposed over our lives, and only more of a disappointment for someone who, at aged fifteen, thought that earning money was his chief aim. That is not to say that I am not tempted by money now, but chasing a vacuous dream has somewhat lost its allure since the daydreaming days of my mid-teens when to be ‘normal’ seemed the height of fantasy. The ideas I’m chasing now are still unclear. I need time to sleep soundly before the images will properly form in front of me. If I can somehow shake off the shackles of work, and earning, and fabricated, meaningless, life-consuming responsibilities, then maybe I will figure things out.

So, I’ve written something. I have been granted a few hours of my life to myself this afternoon, before the slog continues tonight, and I have got a little bit of something off my chest. I feel like every time I write anything I am covering old ground, but if I can still write then I suppose I must still have something to say, even if it isn’t coming out as I’d like it to.

I’ll try to write soon.