Car Crashes, Arrests & Insanity

It’s been a little over two months now that I’ve been working full-time at my insurance job.  And what a short, strange, but extremely long-feeling trip it’s been.  I was hoping to learn a lot about the insurance industry, but that hasn’t been the case, and my manager referred to me as “very curious” like he wasn’t convinced that was a good thing.  I have learned how some people develop drug and alcohol problems, seek out dangerous situations, look for romantic love as a solution to dehumanization, eat way too many coffee cakes (okay, I knew that) and kill themselves (okay, I knew that too).  I also learned why people (well, at least some of the ones with jobs) get arrested at protests.  These are simplifications, which is why I kept saying “some people”, but if your job is as tedious as mine is, I’m not sure how you can get away totally unscathed.  I’ve had other repetitive jobs, but at least my body was somewhat active.  Here, I’m not engaging my body or my mind, and I feel like a shell of a person–an anxious shell filled with vegan coffee cake.

As an activist, I usually stick to relatively safe activities, like making signs or writing press releases.  It’s not often that I think about “risking arrest”, but I was recently asked to consider if I would.  Although I’m sure that in reality, nothing would terrify me more, all I felt was excitement, even relief.  The truth was, I would rather be arrested, spend the night in jail, and bail myself out with my own money than go to my job.  The thought could not be un-thought, but what should I do with this information?

Since I use Reddit to collect stories of people whose work situations cause or worsen depression, I knew that I wasn’t alone in thinking the way I did, that I would rather be arrested than go to work.  I remember one thread where people shared their fantasies of getting in car accidents on the way to work.  It was not an unpopular thread, either.  I used to fantasize about getting injured or having a mental breakdown so severe that I needed to be hospitalized.  I didn’t really think about the injury of course, just the time off work.  Why do so many people have these kinds of fantasies?  I think part of it has to do with the fact that we’re so bored at work, we will welcome any type of excitement, even if it’s negative.  When I worked at an office with a lot of unnecessary drama, I think boredom was the reason people got into it.

Quitting my job is not my fantasy, because that would just emphasize how trapped I am, choosing between this job and more unemployment.  And if I did quit,then I would have to consider the shame: for giving up, being “bad at coping” with work, being immature and impulsive.  If I got arrested for a cause, maybe my activist friends would think I was a hero, instead of just someone who is late to protests because I had to be at my job.  If you or I were injured in a car accident, maybe friends and family would rally around us, instead of wondering why we quit when we have to pay our rent and bills.  There’s also something appealing about a choice being made for us, when we feel unable to follow our intuition because of said rent and bills.  It’s the same reason people procrastinate until they don’t have any choices left.

Come to think of it, I did have one fleeting fantasy about quitting: and it was about quitting the job with no one finding out, like a laid-off 1950s dad who puts on a suit, gets in the car, and makes a show of going to work, but then sits on a park bench all day.

 

Thanks for Visiting!

Thank you to the brave folks who visited my table at Portland Zine Symposium last weekend!  There were definitely some people who backed away slowly (or abruptly) when they saw “unemployment”, but others thought it was a good topic!  Employees from the Portland library were there, getting new zines for their collection, and picked up some of mine, which was rad (this zine symposium was sponsored by the word “rad”).

“Serious writer” face

What I genuinely thought would have mass appeal: Depression

What actually has mass appeal:  Cacti

 

 

Unemployment Movie Club: The Shawshank Redemption

*Possible spoilers, but come on, this movie is 20 years old and I’m probably the last person to see it.*

I’d heard about The Shawshank Redemption, but never saw it until fairly recently, before I got my current job.  All I knew about the movie was that it’s a lot of people’s favorite, it takes place in a prison, it’s very long, and it has Morgan Freeman.  Finally seeing it, I had a strong feeling of justice restored, but not for the reason intended by the filmmakers.  Earlier that week, I was rejected from a job because I had “very low energy”.  This really messed with my head, as I know I have low energy and was trying hard to be more energetic than usual.  I always think that faking it is supposed to get you somewhere, but it never gets me anywhere.  Watching The Shawshank Redemption, it occurred to me that Andy Dufresne was exactly the character I needed, when I needed him:

ANDY DUFRESNE IS A LOW-ENERGY MOTHERFUCKER.  TOOK HIM 20 YEARS TO DIG A HOLE.

And he’s the person you cheer for in this story, who shows us all how to hope and find freedom despite our limited circumstances.  At the job I got, I’m not expected to have an energetic personality, which is good.  Less good is the expectation to work at an unrealistic and quite punishing rate of speed.  There’s not a lot of respect out in the workplace for 20-year holes.

Overall, I am definitely struggling with my new job, and feel that I should have never been hired for it.  I’m always waiting for my next break in the day, and then counting the days until the six-month mark, when I can apply for other jobs at the company.  (Will I last six months?  I’ll let you know!)  In this environment of unpleasant and stressful waiting, The Shawshank Redemption crosses my mind often.  At the risk of sounding…like someone who calls everyone “comrade”, I think the prison of that film could be taken to represent capitalism, and Andy’s escape as a metaphor for how difficult it is to escape capitalism as an individual.  For my last Unemployment zine, I was going to write about “Is it possible to escape from capitalism?”  (Like, can we escape capitalism by living in the woods, a yurt, a Tinyhouse, an anarchist squat, etc.)?  I’m glad I didn’t write that piece, because The Shawshank Redemption answers that question better than I would have.  Andy gets free, at great cost and difficulty, but what about everyone else in the prison?  Are any of us really free when others are oppressed, and all that?

…and Morgan Freeman was there…

The idea of “the prisons we build in our minds” seems important to the film.  This idea of being free in your mind, while your body develops, say, crippling carpal tunnel syndrome, is of an urgent importance to me as well.  Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this mindset takes a lot more training that I have.  It’s like expecting a sudden spiritual awakening just because you’ve gotten one more terrible job.  You know, like the one Buddhism says is possible but ain’t going to be easy?  My deep yearning for mental freedom, which goes back to my early days of unemployment, is probably the main thing that interested me in Buddhist practice.  They even have a term for this desire, samvega.

Like Andy Dufresne, I try to make meaning from the meaningless, but I lack his patience. (Slow and lacking patience is a miserable combo.)  I can’t be accused of having a bad attitude towards this job, or to paid employment in general, because I’m constantly putting forth this huge effort to have a positive mindset.  To put the experience in some kind of meaningful context.  Isn’t that a basic human trait, the ability to tell a story, no matter how fractured?  It’s not easy to do at my job, and maybe not at yours, either.

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