That doesn't always work. Maybe some people can lie to themselves that the 8+ hours they spend grinding away in some fluorescent hellhole for 40 years is fine if they can just avoid thinking about that 1/3 of their precious short time on Earth, but that doesn't work for everyone. Compartmentalizing your misery is not healthy, and it DOES eventually catch up to you. Trust me.
disqard|1 year ago
I was like GP, and worked on fulfilling side-projects for years (after family goes to bed).
Like you, I'm beginning to see that it isn't working well any more. Though I've built some very useful things for myself, being productive in this all-but-invisible manner still leaves much to be desired.
gretch|1 year ago
For example, I'm not frustrated that I have to spend 8 hours sleeping. I simply accept that's the world I was born into, that our bodies require sleep, so I do it. I imagine you probably accept it in the same way. If we were to criticize this from a perspective of "this is a dumb design and we should change it", then maybe we would be frustrated by it.
Now when it comes to "bullshit jobs", I feel the same way. I was born into a society where some % of my job is bullshit but I can be paid for it anyway. But it really doesn't bother me that much, it's historically a great transaction, and I'm not responsible to change it (is it even a bad thing that needs to be changed? even if it's dumb that doesn't mean bad)
I simply spend some hours of my week doing this arbitrary thing, just as I do for Sleeping and Pooping. And as soon as I'm done, I put it down and go live my "real life". I've never thought - "wow 15 minutes spent pooping everyday? I'm wasting my life"
So what's the difference between the bullshit job and pooping? Well maybe there's a perception that these 2 things are different categories because 1 is designed by other humans and can therefore be changed. But I don't actually think it is changeable because it turtles down to some quirk in basic human desire. It won't work in the same way that you can't just tell people "Hey don't be curious today" or "don't be vain" or "don't be greedy".
I accept that our current iteration of society has been defined somewhat organically, much like the way our body has biologically evolved. And that I need to "poop" at the societal level.