Did I write this because I’ve been listening to a lot of Annie Lennox? You’ll have to guess. I won’t tell.
I’m so tired of being “unemployed.” I despise that cognomen. Mostly because I find that it doesn’t speak to the work that goes unpaid, but also because the longer I am without gainful employment, the more it wears like a scarlet letter. The more it feels like I’m struggling. Like I’m walking on broken glass.
The only cure is to remind myself that employment is not always gainful, nor that all unemployment is without work. To remind myself that what I walk on may be broken glass, but that I need not let it cut.
As it stands, I am tired, but grateful. Grateful that in this time between trolling the job site listenings, I have been able to use it to write blog posts, short stories, and poetry and work on outreach and website projects for my fraternity’s alumni association.
Free time has been spent refreshing my skills in French and reconnecting with distant family members and friends I otherwise had not spoken with for periods at a time.
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Not all of this is work. But it is necessary maintenance. And regardless of whether or not I’m tangibly struggling, I am still engaged in a Camusian “Struggle” or “Rebellion.” A matter of recovering some form of meaning and structure and routine in a situation that could easily crumble to bedridden depression.
That plight of humanity is immutable. We have always been searching for meaning without being given any obvious answers. There are some who might argue this point, probably by way of religion or work, but I’ve yet to find an “obvious” answer that was not written by the hand of another person.
That includes Albert Camus and that includes myself, someone who finds meaning through both work and religion and is about to write it down.
When I say “religion,” I’m not referring to some religion that I might roll my eyes at. I’m talking about “the Religion.” That is any structure of belief that attends to the quest for meaning from a passenger’s point of view. The active part of “the Religion” is the observance of a ritual, not so much an action.
As a counterpoint, there is “the Work.” That is, any structure of meaning that attends to the same quest from the driver’s point of view. The active part of “the Work” is the effort of the ritual, the repeated actions that afford a person a sense of meaning by doing. To be clear, to observe a ritual is to do something, but in this case, “the Work” is to be the primary actor of any ritual or endeavor, capitalist or no.
A clear example of this difference is how one experiences music; when I click on the turntable and place Annie Lennox’s “Walking on Broken Glass” on repeat, I am engaged in “the Religion” of meaning. Vicariously experiencing Godhead or nirvana through that observance of the priest on her pulpit.
Were I to be Annie Lennox, composing and singing “Walking on Broken Glass,” poring hours of my time in the studio to find the perfect set of notes, the right harpsichord tones, and the talent to sing that sublime chorus, I would be engaged in “the Work” of meaning.
In this way the Religion and the Work function in opposite ways to provide meaning. The Religion is a method of meaning through escapism. The Work is a method of escapism through meaning.
For the past year of my life, I’ve been striving to do the Work. It’s always been a goal to do something, even if that’s a search for some capitalist employment. But when I’m up until 1AM with my friend Roshi, working on a newsletter or a blog post, a part of me wonders why this isn’t compensated in ways that can pay the rent.
It’s not why we do it. It was never the original reason why we signed up. But there is a sense I have that I am cutting myself to the finish line every time one of these projects comes up.
This is an illusion. It’s one constructed by the capitalist need to exploit every last possible piece of effort, every last moment of peace. It’s the motive behind “the rise and grind” mode of existence. It is insidious, representative of a system that cannot grasp that humans need time for meaning outside of the machine, nor realize that it fails to provide meaning with homogeneous regularity.
The primary drivers of the machine have decided that machine cannot be changed. That it must continue to grind, no matter how many rocks it eats and spits out, shattering the windows and spraying glass across the ground that their cogworkers must then walk over.
That is where I was. And that is where I refuse to return. But it feels like I’m being forced to.
And I dislike that airing this grievance just sounds like I’m bitching, but I’m sorry, I just wanted to remind myself and everyone like me that we might be struggling, that we might be walking on broken glass, but we need not let it cut.
With that said, I’m gonna go watch Becoming Led Zeppelin tomorrow, and while I promised myself not to ruin the Religion of the experience by writing about it, I might feel compelled to do the Work otherwise.
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The Casual Ramble 
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