Crisp

Yesterday, I spent almost an entire shift scrolling down Anthropologie’s sale section, swooning over velvet curtains and bohemian blouses. I was not actively engaging with my clients, I was not writing my notes for billing, I was not researching affordable housing, and I most certainly was not having any clinically significant interactions. And I didn't feel a god damn thing.

So this is what burnout looks like: dread, hopelessness, and automated empathy. Everything feels like a chore. Time before work is soured by the looming countdown to clock-in.  How else would I ever find out that I am not meant to be a Social Worker unless I actually chipped away at it, for a full year.

It’s literally sucking the life-force out of me. I used to think and now I just plan. I used to be present and now I just show up. I am doing everyone a disservice around me by staying in a job I feel numb to. I would rather slave away in food service than work for a program I don’t respect.

I live in a house of three 20-something ladies. All with solid degrees, no drug addictions, show-up type ladies. And we all hate our jobs. How has this come to be? My generation feels the pressure to get a job, get the paycheck, and the the ‘things.’ Or the pressure to pay off student-loans or even cover the bar tabs stacked to keep ourselves numb from the harsh face of adulthood.

It is so clear to me how people get trapped in that 9-to-5 grind in a field they are ambivalent towards. We get fooled into realizing a vision of success that doesn't make us particularly happy. We take that job, we work those hours, we weather ourselves into capitalist worker bees too wrenched to taste honey.

Comb by comb, we build hives around our minds--trapped to believe we have no way out. Excuses pour over cracked soil where possibility is left to dry.

So how do we change? How do we muster the courage to say fuck it all? How do we find work that doesn't squeeze the light out of us?

James and I were walking Koba the other day, enjoying blooms and (rare) sunshine, when we began to play the “if you won the lottery” game. Of course, it always goes: “I would travel, and give money to this or that charity, and buy those Frye boots I've been swooning over, and go to Whole Foods and go HAM.” But the bit of substance in the mental experiment is this: what comes after the splurge? How do you fill your days? If money wasn't an issue, what would you be doing?

Here we go: I would build a kickass tiny house and get some property not too far from Portland, maybe Linnton or Hood River. I would be a doggie foster mom. I would do yoga every day. I would knit. I would read. I would make coffee. I would grow succulents. I would take a wood-shop class. I would babysit taft. I would write my heart out.  

Ah-Ha! Then, paralysis. A deluge of “I would’s” strangled by these inculcated ideas-- that we are unable to make a living off of ‘hobbies.’ What the fuck is a hobby anyway? Hobbies are for people who hate their jobs. If you’re passionate about it, pursue it. Become a master of whatever that is and it will not be in vain.

It takes courage to leap out of societal bounds. I am a person who is constantly trying to justify what I am ‘doing,’ as opposed to focusing on who I am ‘being.’

Here’s to pointing our sails to the “would’s” of life…..and to the eternal job hunt (yeesh).  


photography: Julie Blackmon