Right now, I wish I was a kid again, sitting on someone's shoulders, while he walked through the snow.
watch my breath come alive like december end but with the weight of my adult conciousness just right.
both youth and present melting into my palm.
2.47pm
AGAINST JOB-WORSHIP
Why are people always worried about other people’s money?
It’s always: get a job. Why don’t you have a job? You need to get a job.
Bitch, worry about your own job.
There is this idea that having a job gives someone worth as a person. That without employment, without producing capital for someone else, you become suspicious. A failed citizen. A burden. A problem. But why does everyone have to contribute to society through a job? A lot of people’s contributions through work are pointless anyway. Some are actively harmful. Some jobs exist only to make other jobs possible. Some jobs are just bureaucracy eating itself.
If someone chooses not to work in the normal way, or lives an alternative lifestyle, why is that treated like an attack? It is like people feel their own identity being threatened when someone else refuses the script.
A lot of people probably hate their jobs. So when they see someone not working, or working differently, or surviving outside the structure, something in them tightens. They ask: what do you do all day?
Bro, what I do is not work.
What I do is my hobbies. What I do is chill. What I do is write. What I do is think. What I do is make things. What I do is try to build a life that actually feels like mine. Am I surviving? Am I happy? Am I complaining to you? No. So why is that not enough?
When I say self-employed or freelance, I mean unemployed 80% of the time. That is not even a joke really. That is the material condition of being an artist. It is not constant invoices and glamorous independence. It is unpaid labour. It is waiting. It is applying. It is editing. It is building a portfolio. It is making a website. It is writing emails. It is reading. It is thinking. It is staring at the ceiling trying to work out what the next thing is. It is being between things most of the time.
But the difference is that when I work on my own practice, the labour goes somewhere.
If I work on my book of boxing poems, that labour becomes part of the book. If I work on my website, it becomes part of the archive. If I run an event, it becomes part of the scene. If I make a magazine, it becomes part of a world I am trying to build.
I am not against labour. I am against giving my life-force to structures that return nothing but exhaustion.
In a normal job, your input is often not proportional to the output. You can work hard and still end the day with nothing that belongs to you. Your energy disappears into someone else’s system, someone else’s targets, someone else’s brand, someone else’s profit. You can be conscientious and still be slowed down by bad management, pointless procedures, dead-eyed meetings, and people who do not care about the work in the same way.
I want to execute my vision. Simple.
That does not mean I never want money. I want money. I want stability. I want independence. I want a life. But I do not want work to become a moral costume. I do not want a job to be the thing that proves I deserve respect.
Work should not be the only recognised form of dignity.
Some people work. Some people care for others. Some people raise children. Some people make art. Some people are ill. Some people are resting. Some people are surviving. Some people are between lives. Some people are trying to invent a life that has not been handed to them yet.
That should be allowed.
3.45pm
just watched a video on twitter of two grizzly bears fighting. brutal. unbelievable. great display of jiu-jitsu and wrestling.
3.12pm
haribo's starmix are a performance-enhancing drug (on a long run).
1.44am
update: fish and chips were mid. i went on a date with a girl the other day. she started talking about her nine-to-five, and i told her she sounded like an advert for the company. there was an awkward silence. her job was in marketing. i find it fundamentally strange how fake proud people are about their useless day jobs. it's immediately obvious that they're lying, but the speech is so rehearsed that they expect you not to notice or not to point out the truth of their deception.
obviously, this doesn't really work when you've had more than four drinks in an informal setting. it was supposed to be said with irony, and everyone was supposed to laugh, but she didn't laugh. safe to say, there won't be a second date.
4.54pm
a fish n chip shop on my street just made it the finals in a competition for best chippy in bradford. and im fucking starving right now cos ive only had coffee today. man, its gonna be so fucking good. the guy that works there is always well groomed. in decent nick. gotta respect that. gimme scraps mate. i love scraps.
3.47pm
'you are hiding at the top of the stairs / where you can be alone'