FA+
Shop
The Talk
19 years ago
General
They sent me home today. Gave me a bag full of my filthy uniforms and said 'wash 'em, and if you come back anything less than spotless, you're not coming back at all'. Sure they tried to be nice, but the veil was thin. The message was clear: I'm not going to last very long.
I can't fundumentally change 16 years of incapacity for personal maintenence (sixteen because society has tried and failed to teach me to maintain MYSELF at least since I was five). I can't tell you how long even the most basic, menial tasks of upkeep have persistently embodied, even defined, anathema to me. Fuck. I wouldn't eat if it didn't cause essential agony to -not- for too long.
The rest of our social customs are centralized around the preferential demands of others and the upkeep of their convenience, and sure, that's fine; mutual backscratching is a hallmark of civilization. Unfortunately it never caught on with me. Even though I know it on a subconscious level, it's impossible for me to maintain a Living-In-Fear state in order to motivate myself to carry out immediately-pointless tasks that, to me, only serve to eat time and make for inconvenience and additional expenditure of undue funds and effort.
Yep, that's pretty much it; I live in filth because I boycott life responsibility.
And that is why I fail/suck/lose/am hated.
There's a piece of basic mental wiring that's missing in my head, the one that makes cleaning feel 'good'. I missed that particular brainwashing, where they program you to believe that you enjoy things like washing clothes, sweeping floors, and scrubbing dishes. You wouldn't think it'd be so serious, but I'm about to lose my job because of it.
That's why they sent me home today; they have no idea that the goading doesn't work, and I know exactly how this happens: In a corporation, people are just cogs, loose components that are jammed together in a semblence of working order. each place in the machine has mandatory specifications to live up to. If you had a machine and connector 386-b requires a support rod rated for at least 300 pounds of stress and you accidentally put in a rod that is only rated for 240, what do you do? You replace it. I'm about to be replaced and I can smell my doom sneaking up on me from behind...
Of course, right now they haven't decided that i'm a good sixty 'pounds' short of quota, they're only curious at that strange creaking noise coming from the maintenence compartment. I could attempt to hold out at that position, but the stress shall eventually snap me with little ado and fanfare. If I continue to creak though, they shall surely notice I am the improper component and remove me subsequently anyways. This is a damned if do/damned if don't situation.
I am obviously feeling very backed into a corner.
The voice of optomism says I can get better, "we aren't machine parts even if the machine treats us like parts", and it's possible for us to strengthen ourselves in various ways, and it is possible to pull off amazing changes that can cause us to grow and adapt. Sheesh, it sounds so tooth-aching sweet it makes me sick. You see, that lies on the same path that snapping does, with the only difference being that somehow the part magically doesn't shatter...
But this is a huge longshot gamble, and for what? to keep doing it for the rest of my life? it's a hard pill to swallow!
So I again arrive on the initial question, which I have shoddily veiled, though you may have guessed it by now:
Is it really worth striving for? Is it really worth signing your soul away to an existence of waste and drudgery? is it really worth becoming an emotionless work-a-day zombie of The Con?
The church of the subgenius would say NO!
It'd say, don't -make- the changes happen, -let- the changes happen--changes including 'percieved' failures. Do you want a job that will fail you? Why try to become something you're not! You are descended of the mighty YETI, superior to these pinks BECAUSE you are different!
"but what if every job is engineered to fail me?"
oh. *shrug* then you die.
shivering.
under a bridge.
...ALONE.
the fact remains that it depends on the madness of random chance and luck, and an insane, pervasive knowledge that a human being is a lot fucking harder to kill than you think, especially when it just stops caring about whether or not it's 'alive' in the first place (because there are bigger fish to fry) (REAL bigger fish, not like 'job security' and 'work ethics', but EMOTIONAL FREEDOM, knowing and accepting one's self, internal peace). It's still obvious that rich people are lonely and sad, while some of the most genuinely content and happy people in the world are normal poor folks that sit on the porch with lemonade on cool summer nights to watch the fireflies as the evening recedes to the gentle purplish glow of dusk.
I don't want to be some hypocritical debonaire businessman addicted to coffee and fifty yuppie medications proscribed by any one of their FIVE therapists and personal nutritionalists, who don't have time for their zombified, neglected, prozac'd and rittalin'd kids because they have a MASSAUGE APPOINTMENT! FUCK! FUCK NO! NO FUCKING WAY!
No, I wanna sit on my goddamned porch and eat popsicles to the soothing drum of a spring rain. I wanna watch children playing in the snow. I wanna see sunrises and sunsets and all that romantic bullshit everybody gets all misty eyed over--and you KNOW those stupid corporates all wish they could truly enjoy it... Most of them will never have the chance to see it, and those that do are too occupied, living on borrowed time, because they have to catch a flight for a stockholder meeting in Los Angeles in fourty-five minutes.
*shudder*
... are you going to tell me that that kind of reality doesn't exist anymore?
because if you are, you might as well just shoot yourself right now, because it'll mean NEITHER of us have anything to live for.
I can't fundumentally change 16 years of incapacity for personal maintenence (sixteen because society has tried and failed to teach me to maintain MYSELF at least since I was five). I can't tell you how long even the most basic, menial tasks of upkeep have persistently embodied, even defined, anathema to me. Fuck. I wouldn't eat if it didn't cause essential agony to -not- for too long.
The rest of our social customs are centralized around the preferential demands of others and the upkeep of their convenience, and sure, that's fine; mutual backscratching is a hallmark of civilization. Unfortunately it never caught on with me. Even though I know it on a subconscious level, it's impossible for me to maintain a Living-In-Fear state in order to motivate myself to carry out immediately-pointless tasks that, to me, only serve to eat time and make for inconvenience and additional expenditure of undue funds and effort.
Yep, that's pretty much it; I live in filth because I boycott life responsibility.
And that is why I fail/suck/lose/am hated.
There's a piece of basic mental wiring that's missing in my head, the one that makes cleaning feel 'good'. I missed that particular brainwashing, where they program you to believe that you enjoy things like washing clothes, sweeping floors, and scrubbing dishes. You wouldn't think it'd be so serious, but I'm about to lose my job because of it.
That's why they sent me home today; they have no idea that the goading doesn't work, and I know exactly how this happens: In a corporation, people are just cogs, loose components that are jammed together in a semblence of working order. each place in the machine has mandatory specifications to live up to. If you had a machine and connector 386-b requires a support rod rated for at least 300 pounds of stress and you accidentally put in a rod that is only rated for 240, what do you do? You replace it. I'm about to be replaced and I can smell my doom sneaking up on me from behind...
Of course, right now they haven't decided that i'm a good sixty 'pounds' short of quota, they're only curious at that strange creaking noise coming from the maintenence compartment. I could attempt to hold out at that position, but the stress shall eventually snap me with little ado and fanfare. If I continue to creak though, they shall surely notice I am the improper component and remove me subsequently anyways. This is a damned if do/damned if don't situation.
I am obviously feeling very backed into a corner.
The voice of optomism says I can get better, "we aren't machine parts even if the machine treats us like parts", and it's possible for us to strengthen ourselves in various ways, and it is possible to pull off amazing changes that can cause us to grow and adapt. Sheesh, it sounds so tooth-aching sweet it makes me sick. You see, that lies on the same path that snapping does, with the only difference being that somehow the part magically doesn't shatter...
But this is a huge longshot gamble, and for what? to keep doing it for the rest of my life? it's a hard pill to swallow!
So I again arrive on the initial question, which I have shoddily veiled, though you may have guessed it by now:
Is it really worth striving for? Is it really worth signing your soul away to an existence of waste and drudgery? is it really worth becoming an emotionless work-a-day zombie of The Con?
The church of the subgenius would say NO!
It'd say, don't -make- the changes happen, -let- the changes happen--changes including 'percieved' failures. Do you want a job that will fail you? Why try to become something you're not! You are descended of the mighty YETI, superior to these pinks BECAUSE you are different!
"but what if every job is engineered to fail me?"
oh. *shrug* then you die.
shivering.
under a bridge.
...ALONE.
the fact remains that it depends on the madness of random chance and luck, and an insane, pervasive knowledge that a human being is a lot fucking harder to kill than you think, especially when it just stops caring about whether or not it's 'alive' in the first place (because there are bigger fish to fry) (REAL bigger fish, not like 'job security' and 'work ethics', but EMOTIONAL FREEDOM, knowing and accepting one's self, internal peace). It's still obvious that rich people are lonely and sad, while some of the most genuinely content and happy people in the world are normal poor folks that sit on the porch with lemonade on cool summer nights to watch the fireflies as the evening recedes to the gentle purplish glow of dusk.
I don't want to be some hypocritical debonaire businessman addicted to coffee and fifty yuppie medications proscribed by any one of their FIVE therapists and personal nutritionalists, who don't have time for their zombified, neglected, prozac'd and rittalin'd kids because they have a MASSAUGE APPOINTMENT! FUCK! FUCK NO! NO FUCKING WAY!
No, I wanna sit on my goddamned porch and eat popsicles to the soothing drum of a spring rain. I wanna watch children playing in the snow. I wanna see sunrises and sunsets and all that romantic bullshit everybody gets all misty eyed over--and you KNOW those stupid corporates all wish they could truly enjoy it... Most of them will never have the chance to see it, and those that do are too occupied, living on borrowed time, because they have to catch a flight for a stockholder meeting in Los Angeles in fourty-five minutes.
*shudder*
... are you going to tell me that that kind of reality doesn't exist anymore?
because if you are, you might as well just shoot yourself right now, because it'll mean NEITHER of us have anything to live for.
All I want to say is, we do what we do for cleaning more or less,
because you don't want to be the smelly kid in class. Not because there's
responisbilty to it, not because it's supposed to be 'fun' just for the simple fact,
you don't smell like crap. That's all.
As for bothering with keeping your job, I'd say just washup and do it.
I don't think it'll look good on any application, resume, or anything else,
when one of your last employers say we fired him because of, Not because he was lazy, didn't do his work, or wasn't on time.. but because he was a bad image or sommat that the'll make it sound fancy.
And I've probably missed the whole point of your rant, and seem like I'm dissing you. But I'm just stating the facts.
And by the way, No one can stop you from the simple pleasures in life.
It's all well and good to say it'll make a difference now, but what matters in this range of thought is that it'd take overcoming more than 75% of my entire life's routine to manage it... *sigh*.