I only sort of work here
Mar. 17th, 2022 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteThe Silicon Valley rat race is a certain constant size. This is because for every starry-eyed young volunteer charging into it, there is a transformed, dissatisfied veteran headed in the other direction. (Or a corpse plowed into the track.) And as they pass each other, they whisper, "you're making a mistake."
Last night I had a weird dream where I was visiting an old schoolmate at work and an ex-girlfriend appeared at the periphery working in the same room. I found this unremarkable and didn't pay much heed of her, but she was so traumatized by my appearance that she spoke quietly with some managers in the room and had them confront me. They kept asking me questions that were mumbled or garbled in the din of the office room and I tried to politely tell them that I couldn't understand, but got more and more annoyed, and they in turn got less and less polite and finally a security guard came up and escorted me from the building, doing some kind of "walk of shame". I woke up and realized that the noise in my dream was the heater in the wall getting louder and louder and then shutting off, over over. I unplugged it, used the bathroom, then went back to bed.
I've only had a handful of dreams about this ex, but this was the second I'd had in less than a week. Recounting it the next morning, it felt appropriate somehow that she had devised a way to get rid of me that involved jerking me around with poor communication. In the dream I felt degraded and worthless, as though by being career-focused and having a successful career - making more money than me even - she was part of an elite social group that I, with my only semi-serious attitude towards career, was not welcome in.
My choice to leave the super-serious career path had been a deliberate one, brought about by both need and a desire to change. But my time with her caused me to re-evaluate that choice, for a little while. So many people around me were pushing to make the maximum wage, or have the maximum impact, at almost any cost. They would have their names on more papers published, patents filed, plaques nailed to buildings. They would wander around in more extravagant chunks of beach-front property, fly on the more expensive trips, sit at the fancier tables with the sunset views, wearing classy business attire and shaping the fates of millions of people around and below them. I could be with them. I was among them, more and more often, for a number of years. I could just keep putting in more years like that, and keep climbing higher. See just how many rooms I could get my beach-front property up to. I would never call it easy - obviously it's incredibly hard work - but the choice to do it would seem easy to anyone with access and skills.
Right now the whole idea of pursuing that just makes me feel bored. Bored as hell. You want to shape your self-perception around how much power you can wield? What a fucking boring-ass way to structure your life. You want to drive yourself batty, obsessing over the exact highest impact you can have in a cause you have decided is vital to the survival of society, or even the human race itself? Bend your whole life around making that thing manifest? Well that sounds like a great distraction for you, but you go do it somewhere else because I find the arrogance that focus engenders appallingly boring. Or maybe you want to find someone who carries that same obsession, and fall into step behind them, fawning while that sociopathic megalomaniac rants and raves about quality and essence and nowness, because other people hear it and hand them astonishing amounts of money, and all that money can't possibly be wrong? Borr-r-riiing.
All that money. Here in the Silicon Valley, the money was here before you arrived, and it has already threaded into everything and everyone you see, and warped it. That sense of urgency and "disruption" you feel is not an accident, it's part of the program. It's fundamental to the cult you have joined. Your co-workers will take the place of your friends and family. Your commute will become your downtime. Your desk will become your dining table, and vice-versa. You will make more money in one day than whole families make in an entire year, and then you will hand a third of it to a landlord or a bank, and blow most of the rest on booze, jet fuel, and kale that withers in the fridge, and it will feel right because you are where the power is. Where else would you go that wouldn't be a step down? This is the only ascent that matters.
Here's a little piece of my family history, wedged in my brain, that acts as a kind of antidote to this:
Before they retired, both my parents were teachers. My father, for example, taught high school for 35 years. Roughly 30 students a class, four classes a day, two semesters a year, plus summer school. Over a career, he personally drilled math and english skills into the minds of ten thousand teenagers -- the population of a small city. It's not power, but it's a kind of influence. On a fundamental, unimpeachably positive level. And without fanfare, and with barely any recognition, and for unexceptional pay, because he was not part of an exalted power structure. He wasn't a disruptor. Nevertheless, thanks to his work, ten thousand people have been making use of those skills their entire adult lives.
Think about that, and think about how many other teachers are out there, exercising their incredibly useful and persistent influence. And you don't know jack about any of them. Sure, you know Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and you assign them a level of genius and vitality that is frankly comical, but ... even those two tastemakers had to learn basic math and english, just like everyone else, and some teacher made that happen.
Given that such a strong example of influential work can be right in front of your face and yet still invisible until you think about it, how much else could be missing from your picture? Or is something narrowing your vision; something you don't want to acknowledge? Maybe, just maaaybe, it's the status, and the power, and the money.
What if your vision has been distorted to match this landscape? What if that warm feeling of doing meaningful work that you soothe yourself with is actually a fake storefront propped up in front of something else, something more crass, like a feeling of superiority over all those people you "left behind" in your home town, or a feeling of personal security drawn straight from your bank balance? What if, in the ugliest case of the dot-com social networking company, your big important work at your big important desk is actually no more necessary than that of a drug dealer, generating short-term pleasure and long-term misery in strangers for a profit, and you left your soul on the curb years ago and didn't notice? Would you have the guts to leave? Maybe you leaned in too far and your face is in the bottom of a trough.
I know the position I'm in is not common because most people don't get the chance to be transformed by the rat race and then don't get the chance to claw their way out of it with their health still intact -- or at least in a state where it can be repaired. I consider myself very lucky. In general it's a great privilege to be able to do something you find satisfying for a sustainable wage, and I am even luckier still that I've had the chance to drop back down from the most punishing circles of the racetrack to a place that lets me have a life outside of work, while still making good money. It's a miraculous position. The people at my current place do work hard - we all do - but not so hard it kills us. The company isn't trying to take possession of our souls.
In addition to having my health and one foot planted back in the real world, this journey has left me with some insider knowledge: Many of the people running ragged in those higher circles are dangerously lacking in self-awareness, or willfully ignorant of the damage they do. The power and the access and the money are not necessary to do truly good work. They are just necessary to get the most extravagant property, the biggest lights around your name, and the most satisfying revenge on whoever doubted or wronged you long ago. If that's not your need, you really don't have to join them, ... or listen to what they say. And they obviously might not be the most fun to date either.
And now, I'm gonna go ride my bike.
Last night I had a weird dream where I was visiting an old schoolmate at work and an ex-girlfriend appeared at the periphery working in the same room. I found this unremarkable and didn't pay much heed of her, but she was so traumatized by my appearance that she spoke quietly with some managers in the room and had them confront me. They kept asking me questions that were mumbled or garbled in the din of the office room and I tried to politely tell them that I couldn't understand, but got more and more annoyed, and they in turn got less and less polite and finally a security guard came up and escorted me from the building, doing some kind of "walk of shame". I woke up and realized that the noise in my dream was the heater in the wall getting louder and louder and then shutting off, over over. I unplugged it, used the bathroom, then went back to bed.
I've only had a handful of dreams about this ex, but this was the second I'd had in less than a week. Recounting it the next morning, it felt appropriate somehow that she had devised a way to get rid of me that involved jerking me around with poor communication. In the dream I felt degraded and worthless, as though by being career-focused and having a successful career - making more money than me even - she was part of an elite social group that I, with my only semi-serious attitude towards career, was not welcome in.My choice to leave the super-serious career path had been a deliberate one, brought about by both need and a desire to change. But my time with her caused me to re-evaluate that choice, for a little while. So many people around me were pushing to make the maximum wage, or have the maximum impact, at almost any cost. They would have their names on more papers published, patents filed, plaques nailed to buildings. They would wander around in more extravagant chunks of beach-front property, fly on the more expensive trips, sit at the fancier tables with the sunset views, wearing classy business attire and shaping the fates of millions of people around and below them. I could be with them. I was among them, more and more often, for a number of years. I could just keep putting in more years like that, and keep climbing higher. See just how many rooms I could get my beach-front property up to. I would never call it easy - obviously it's incredibly hard work - but the choice to do it would seem easy to anyone with access and skills.
Right now the whole idea of pursuing that just makes me feel bored. Bored as hell. You want to shape your self-perception around how much power you can wield? What a fucking boring-ass way to structure your life. You want to drive yourself batty, obsessing over the exact highest impact you can have in a cause you have decided is vital to the survival of society, or even the human race itself? Bend your whole life around making that thing manifest? Well that sounds like a great distraction for you, but you go do it somewhere else because I find the arrogance that focus engenders appallingly boring. Or maybe you want to find someone who carries that same obsession, and fall into step behind them, fawning while that sociopathic megalomaniac rants and raves about quality and essence and nowness, because other people hear it and hand them astonishing amounts of money, and all that money can't possibly be wrong? Borr-r-riiing.
All that money. Here in the Silicon Valley, the money was here before you arrived, and it has already threaded into everything and everyone you see, and warped it. That sense of urgency and "disruption" you feel is not an accident, it's part of the program. It's fundamental to the cult you have joined. Your co-workers will take the place of your friends and family. Your commute will become your downtime. Your desk will become your dining table, and vice-versa. You will make more money in one day than whole families make in an entire year, and then you will hand a third of it to a landlord or a bank, and blow most of the rest on booze, jet fuel, and kale that withers in the fridge, and it will feel right because you are where the power is. Where else would you go that wouldn't be a step down? This is the only ascent that matters.
Here's a little piece of my family history, wedged in my brain, that acts as a kind of antidote to this:
Before they retired, both my parents were teachers. My father, for example, taught high school for 35 years. Roughly 30 students a class, four classes a day, two semesters a year, plus summer school. Over a career, he personally drilled math and english skills into the minds of ten thousand teenagers -- the population of a small city. It's not power, but it's a kind of influence. On a fundamental, unimpeachably positive level. And without fanfare, and with barely any recognition, and for unexceptional pay, because he was not part of an exalted power structure. He wasn't a disruptor. Nevertheless, thanks to his work, ten thousand people have been making use of those skills their entire adult lives.
Think about that, and think about how many other teachers are out there, exercising their incredibly useful and persistent influence. And you don't know jack about any of them. Sure, you know Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and you assign them a level of genius and vitality that is frankly comical, but ... even those two tastemakers had to learn basic math and english, just like everyone else, and some teacher made that happen.
Given that such a strong example of influential work can be right in front of your face and yet still invisible until you think about it, how much else could be missing from your picture? Or is something narrowing your vision; something you don't want to acknowledge? Maybe, just maaaybe, it's the status, and the power, and the money.
What if your vision has been distorted to match this landscape? What if that warm feeling of doing meaningful work that you soothe yourself with is actually a fake storefront propped up in front of something else, something more crass, like a feeling of superiority over all those people you "left behind" in your home town, or a feeling of personal security drawn straight from your bank balance? What if, in the ugliest case of the dot-com social networking company, your big important work at your big important desk is actually no more necessary than that of a drug dealer, generating short-term pleasure and long-term misery in strangers for a profit, and you left your soul on the curb years ago and didn't notice? Would you have the guts to leave? Maybe you leaned in too far and your face is in the bottom of a trough.
I know the position I'm in is not common because most people don't get the chance to be transformed by the rat race and then don't get the chance to claw their way out of it with their health still intact -- or at least in a state where it can be repaired. I consider myself very lucky. In general it's a great privilege to be able to do something you find satisfying for a sustainable wage, and I am even luckier still that I've had the chance to drop back down from the most punishing circles of the racetrack to a place that lets me have a life outside of work, while still making good money. It's a miraculous position. The people at my current place do work hard - we all do - but not so hard it kills us. The company isn't trying to take possession of our souls.
In addition to having my health and one foot planted back in the real world, this journey has left me with some insider knowledge: Many of the people running ragged in those higher circles are dangerously lacking in self-awareness, or willfully ignorant of the damage they do. The power and the access and the money are not necessary to do truly good work. They are just necessary to get the most extravagant property, the biggest lights around your name, and the most satisfying revenge on whoever doubted or wronged you long ago. If that's not your need, you really don't have to join them, ... or listen to what they say. And they obviously might not be the most fun to date either.
And now, I'm gonna go ride my bike.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-29 10:07 pm (UTC)Definitely.