The Concept of "Work" Needs a System Update
I don't wanna work I just wanna boil by a pool all day.
Hi friends!
I’ve missed you! Hope everyone is holding onto the dregs of their sanity tightly as we make our way through August. I had a short and sweet trip to Toronto during which the weather was lovely, the Prime Minister announced his divorce — thrilling to be in Canada for the occasion — and I saw a lot of family members with only one notable event of misbehavior, a good show all around.
The trip was also rich with self discovery as I now know that working remotely while traveling makes me irrationally angry. Just because work can travel with me doesn’t mean it should, and at this point, I truly believe that with everything going on, we should all be vacationing like Europeans and slamming our demented little laptops shut until mid-September.
At one point this year I was thirsty for work, but now I’m back to supervising the line at the content factory and I’m finding it supremely annoying when the work that I do to earn a living1 usurps the energy I use to live the triad of my life’s purpose: chilling, tracking the vibes, and writing this newsletter.
If I’m a bit patchy in sending this over the next month or so just know that I am still on the journey of finding work life balance and that taking on five projects at once was kind of an insane idea. The freelance market be damned, no one should be toiling in this time of global boiling.
The state of work is beyond the pale. On one hand we have delulu corporations, worried about commercial real estate value and optics, trying to shuffle people back into offices. That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg. I would rather be home where I can randomly workout at 2pm to get a few endorphins going after a morning of Oscar-worthy video call mask work.
There is no reason for us, the burnt out computer class, to be forced back into commuting. Give us the dignity of some personal space as we Slack ourselves into oblivion.
With the exception of a few notable projects, what I do for a living is in the top 1% of nonsense.2 A nonsense I am decently compensated for when I can muster the strength and borrow the pills to create it. But the people who actually keep society running — who do the work that we once deemed essential — are not making enough money to live. Back before the channel changed on the matrix again, when we were in the thick of lockdowns losing our minds from inside the house, it was easy to see whose labor was most needed, if not highly valued.
As much as we’re being pressured to slough off the pandemic era and slip back into a way of life that no longer fits (and is way more expensive than we bargained for), it simply ain’t happening. UPS drivers, essential workers in the truest sense since our lives would cease to exist if we could no longer order every stupid fucking thing online, just negotiated a new deal that has full-time drivers set to earn about $170,000 a year within five years if the union votes it through. Apparently that pissed some tech workers off, but I don’t think there’s an amount of money that would get me to drive a truck around a major city in 2023 with the road rage and the traffic and the heat and the physical toll it all takes on a body. I think they deserve even more and that this is just the beginning of a major shift in how workers are compensated.
As for us keyboard clickers, the existential angst looms large. We stare at screens all day so whatever we’re doing is basically intercut with images of the climate disaster du jour — the world is literally burning, and here we are leaving comments in a deck and color-coding our spreadsheets. Lord have mercy.
Many seem to be worried about AI taking their jobs, but for me, that thought is a relief. Let’s feed the machine this newsletter and my Instagram posts from the past decade and have it go to town. I will then be free to pursue my post-apocalyptic fantasy vocation of growing and milking the oats for the lattes in our egalitarian commune.
Anyhoo, apocalypse aside, all work and no long al fresco lunches is just not the way of life for me. I can’t wait to lay down and put my feet up this weekend. Fingers crossed someone invites me to a pool — I will bring a nice sangria, with the good stone fruits from the farmer’s market.
Hope everyone has an easy end to the week and sending my best wishes that all your leisure dreams come true.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz
If you are my boss and/or client and have somehow stumbled upon this missive, please know that partnering with you is THE exception and despite any red flags you are reading, it is my absolute honor to deliver the deliverables, they will be the most beautiful deliverables ever delivered.
A nonsense I hope to continue producing as I enjoy maintaining the lifestyle I am accustomed to — now booking into 2024, with better boundaries.