In an alternative life, where I have little commitments, I would be embracing the opportunity of different jobs, night or day, in my home town or abroad. I remember being on a night walk with my friends. Not a soul in sight on a major road of our town and in the distance we can see a semi parked at a gas station, from there we discussed what it would be like to have such a job, the things you would get to see. If I had nothing to lose, as many young men would, I would work an undesirable jobs such as this. Someone from work would tell me stories about how they would truck cows from here south, down to the United States, even down to South America. One time, on a job at work, we were assigned to a cheese factory that had large silos and a grey mood to the outside of the building, it had an extreme essense of industrialism, just like any other building you would see. Upon entering, I marveled at the complex machines laid across a giant factory, all the maintenance workers huddled around random machinery, randomly testing and prying at the machines for the hours we were there. Such hard work to build all this, to make processed cheese? In the distance between the vines of piping and valves, I could see a man mindlessly wrapping blocks of cheese in plastic wrapping, wearing a white coat, hairnet and a mask, as all others there were doing.
A whole world and job behind every grey building. A persons life, their commute to work, their procedures, their work friends and foes, their lunch break, their daily suffering, wishing for this third of their day to end, waiting to go home and forget about their now. My friend once told me that he had a funny thought, speaking about life as if it is a video game. He would see godrays and think, 'wow these graphics are good!'. I had a similar thought when I entered the factory, I was astounded by the attention to detail and saw that it is impossible to grasp the idea that behind every building lies a complex social system of other people with their entirely own lives. I feel like it is important to remind yourself of this, as it keeps you from the sort of egotistical 'main character' mindset that plagues our generation today.
On my job search a few months back, I had images of all the ways I could give my labour. I could have worked the night shift as a janitor at a high school, cleaning the empty hallways while everyone slumbers, living a cycle opposite from everyone else. A dream (in an alternate life) would be to work as a security guard or a janitor at a giant mall or building at night. I could wander mindless, doing my job and listening to the type of music that would fit that job well (something like this). I would be ethereal.
If you work enough hours in the day, you begin to feel that dead feeling of invincibility, where your brain is on complete autopilot. In an alternate life, I would work an extremely difficult job for over 12 hours a day, risking my body and my relationships and making a lot of money in the process, I would get that braindead feeling if I did that, working on an oil rig or the likes. Ever since I began working full time, the time has been flying much faster than i'd like it to. I just work a regular day and then have the self realization that is it already thursday, the week is almost over and that it certainly does not feel like so. Will the rest of my life be like this?
Our self sacrifice is important, I would not be ignorantly glorifying our slavery if the only thing I could spend my money on is myself. What is the point, working so hard every day, if it is only to please yourself? This is why family exists. I work hard now and save really well so at least when I am alittle older, I can be there for my family and my friends. I don't want to be a slave to money forever. It's just an intriguing idea that our system has so much depth, the jobs we choose to have come with life experience and define phases in our lives, until we settle down with a career we keep. I gotta find another job soon, just for some saturdays, and this goal I have set for myself has reminded me of the intricacy of vocations. The idea of working at night helps inspire the whole reason for this text. Sometimes I work a second job after my day job and am done when the sun is down. Something feels good about working 10+ hours on a friday and flopping onto a comfy chair at home, content with the pain in your back. It is going to be alright, just show selflessness and stop worrying about how full you want your life to be. We are extremely lucky as humans to live in the time we do and see and learn so much everyday thanks to our modern lifestyles. We are spoiled indeed.
I am rambling on, I am really enjoying this website thing, I hope I can look back at this in years and continually add to this whole website, it'll be a nice little collection hopefully someone can get something out of, anything at all.