Ready Player Work – The Daily Screed

Maybe it’s a scam. And like any heist story we should start by meeting the players. I’ve been reluctant to really pin them down but maybe I should start.

Since before these started – since I started moving to reduce the cost of employment – I have been resentful and overwhelmed about day job.
The work itself isn’t terrible. In fact I have successfully minimized a lot of it, and in many weeks I can compress it to a fairly manageable number of hours of dedicated work.

But I only feel capable of working when I become Work – the somewhat independent self that’s in charge of all the aspects of my life required for employment. And I hate the hell out of becoming Work. It’s dreadful and terrifying and takes hours and I hate it.

Work is in charge of my marketable technical skills, the sort of directed research and practice required to obtain them, compliance with all the social components of white collar work, and for motivating the rest of me to dedicate time and energy to employment.

In that position they are mandatory for my survival under capitalism, and so I must frequently become them. Historically this relationship and identity switch is coercive and /that/ is the part I resent – being dependent on someone who regularly fucks me over.

The switching is hard. I have to give up myself to someone I don’t trust, let them do what they want with my body and my life, and hope when I come back things are in good condition and there’s enough room left for my actual life. They hate this too, and resent being dredged up.

When they were new they were always on. They consumed most of my minute when School or Cynic or their friends weren’t in charge, to keep my life at the level of stress necessary to keep it inflated. I was on all the time and they were sometimes a welcome distraction from other versions for being on. They were also a relief from survival fears, as a person who was capable of getting enough money to keep us afloat.

Don’t get me wrong, Work does super important things, and is aligned with my goal of doing as little labor as possible to have the capitalism tokens required to live me life. I appreciate the way they have kept us alive. But also it’s time for them to retire, just as soon as I figure out how to survive without them.

So I’m trying a thing. I’m going to make work a scam. Because in a scam I get to use the whole team. In a scam I can coordinate across different people with different skill sets. I can take advantage of situations where I have a good skill set and fake it in situations where I do not. I can start a task as one person and finish it as another, using the scam to keep us in sync.

So maybe work is a scam. Maybe Work can play bit parts to help me fake it while I build something less monolithic to stand where they did.

To start this scam ¹Technically what I’m going to ask for – at a meeting where my new boss intends to chastise me for not coming to meetings and not working enough – is official support to only take meetings 2 days a week, and to work heads down the rest of the time. In practice I’ve done that (or less) for most of the past 5 years, so it’s not really a … Continue reading I’m provoking my new manager, a Senior Director (who was my manager until earlier this month), and possibly HR all at the same time, all while being not very productive at my actual job. Maybe that will get me a new job with Sr Dir Bossman. Maybe that will get me a boss who just ignores me. Maybe that will get me fired. But it will give me momentum one way or another, and I feel like I can turn that motion into a scam.

Plus I like the part where I get to make middle managers feel bad. Work me does too. That all by itself makes it easier for us to work together, and helps fuel ²I’m not worried that I won’t be able to sell my labor, even if F5 gets sick of me, but it would require extra energy to start a new gig so having some extra fuel is reassuring. the effort required to do all this.

I can see I’ve also been stuck here because Shanda asked me to be, and I agreed I would. You’ve always been so afraid of money and jobs that even mine was too much for you. I told myself for years that you wouldn’t be able to support me unless I made the transition invisible. I am pretty sure that was accurate. But I’m willing to believe now that you can be with me and actually support me when I make this sort of change, or at least that you could get there before I perished. That feels like a lot more breathing room to make this work, and a lot less alone while I do something that will necessarily be stressful and disruptive.

ZiB

Stars for Later[+]

Stars for Later
↑1	Technically what I’m going to ask for – at a meeting where my new boss intends to chastise me for not coming to meetings and not working enough – is official support to only take meetings 2 days a week, and to work heads down the rest of the time. In practice I’ve done that (or less) for most of the past 5 years, so it’s not really a change and it should be easy for them to accept. But it would help me because I wouldn’t have to hide it anymore, and in theory could get actual support about it. I’m going to talk about it in terms of disability and accommodation, to give myself extra leverage and make them uncomfortable. And I’m going to escalate if I don’t get satisfaction, because in a scam when someone calls you out the first play is always to double down.
↑2	I’m not worried that I won’t be able to sell my labor, even if F5 gets sick of me, but it would require extra energy to start a new gig so having some extra fuel is reassuring.