You want me to what?

How a baby alien figures shit out.

Since I was maybe 3-4 years old I have doubted being a human. I’d like to give y’all a current example of reasons I feel this way.

I am currently in another period of burn out. The kind where if I had money I would be on sabbatical, taking time for me, I’d be languishing in a posh asylum doing pilates and eating a high cost diet of delicious fresh food to recover. That’s what I’d be doing.

Instead I’ve been doing deep dives on concepts I see talked about in terms of burn out and I’m confusion. The concept of the week is meaningful work. Now please, I’m not talking about you personally. Please remember reader I probably don’t know you like that and officially this is not about you, your experience being human or working or your beliefs.

Anyway I don’t get it. At all. I’ve been trying to figure out why these concepts gives me the ick so bad, they always have. Even way back in the first or second grade listening to a teacher go on at length about feeling things in a meaningful manner, of course she used different language but that was some of my earliest introduction to the idea.

My spicy little brain took some of the generally okay ideas and ran with them and wanted to set them on fire. For instance when we started learning to tie our shoes, I couldn’t do it. Y’all know, or if you don’t now you do I can’t tie shoes. My entire academic future almost collapsed over that and me not caring if I could do it beyond being forced to.

I remember sitting in tears with my shoe laces fucked up once because I wasn’t ogoing to play until I tied my shoes right and I just couldn’t do it and then I said the quiet part out loud. “I don’t understand and I don’t care. Why can’t I just-” insert no ties lacing solutions here. The problematic part was that I didn’t care. I did not see the point in derailing my education over that.

In my lil mind I could already read years beyond my peers, I was doing lots of beyond my age things and could not ever be convinced shoe tying was of vital importance to my ability to continue moving up grades. I still feel the same. Granted in modern times, I’d have probably been evaluated to see just how spicy my brain is coupled with some other skills I did not get at that age.

I also still can’t tell time.

So I use digital time pieces and tend to use no tie laces. Voila problems solved and I am zero percent invested in them really.

And there my friends is the problem.

For me when I don’t understand or vibe with a concept I’m supposed to care about or be heavily invested in, I have to dive deep to figure out a few things. Am I just being a baby jerk? Is the concept really something I don’t vibe with? Is it just more bullshit?

Today I’m stuck on the idea of meaningful in the context of work because as I've been researching methods to help with the burnout most resources talk about finding even a little and I just do not understand. I do not dream of capitalist work and find none of it satisfying. I do it so I don’t die on the street. If that weren’t so my ass would be at home, titties out eating fruit and making art.

Cue me trying to nail this down while feeling like so:

A big part of the problem for me is that my questions don’t have concrete answers and I hate it. I want data I can ingest and digest before I poo out a conclusion. However with these philosophical things the more I read and wrestle with myself and my conclusion the worse and more out of place I feel.

Real talk.

I do not believe personally that meaning on a good level and surviving the Capitalist hellscape are in the cards for me. I don’t find meaning in the things that help me subsist. I don’t feel great making other people money. I don’t feel much emotional attachment to finishing some work and knowing I did it well, I’m satisfied by parts of that process but not enough to make general being in the world worth it tbh.

This is where capitalism fails even more for me. I almost never mix my spiritual and emotional thoughts with capitalism because capitalism is antithetical to my spirit. It just is.

I am unmoved. Capitalism concerns don’t move my heart or soul. I spent years trying to talk myself into being better at American late stage capitalism and as hard as I tried I never really got it. I do it, I participate but I don’t get it. I don’t feel it.

And I am in distress. At first I couldn’t tell if it was FOMO or just my usual OMG Y CAN’T I DO THIS REGULAR HUMAN THING. It is the latter. I don’t tend to get FOMO over things I have no real desire to participate or enjoy.

This time I dunno. I think coupled with my increasingly terrible digestion that stress fucks up so bad. I check off the signs but THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO?

I cannot picture another job I could likely get where I would feel the meaningful work feels and thus fulfill or alleviate that part of my burnout. I dunno I mean unless I found a job where I’m handed information, given time, space and tools to do what is asked of me with it and have that be the only thing I do, that’d be cool I guess. But overall nah.

No I dream of work that does actually mean something to me. I’ll drop some links. My art is the bucket of meaningful in my life. And my post publishing career has been so much fun except for the parts dependent on capitalism but I’m writing whatever the fuck I want. Sharing it however I want and that is awesome.

I felt like I needed to reverse engineer the concept of meaningful work and I had to work backwards from what I felt counted as meaningful to me. My old fat blog was super meaningful to me and to the occasional others. My poetry book. My self care book. Yes that means a lot to me. So I do get the concept of meaningful work. Hell yeah!

Then I got stuck on getting that feeling from my corporate capitalist adventures of being employed in America and yah nah. Again my spicy brain works against me. I see all of the contradictions. Seeing the pattern I also see where I can’t or don’t know how to fit into the pattern so I just stare at it until I get upset. And then I have to ask my friends because I got nothin man.

Today I’ve come to the followinc conclusion.

It ain’t for me. I need to stop thinking about this or I’m just going to be miserable for forty nine reasons. All I need from capitalism is the ability to play the fucking game I guess. My only real goal in dealing with capitalism (this includes employment, bills etc) is to not die. I think that might be as good as I get.

I’ve wrestled with these concepts since I was a child and only in the last few years have I given myself the high five to just stop the bullshit I can afford to. My thoughts about jobs and working are as follows.

I don’t want or need family.

I need and want to be paid enough to live nearish to where I work. I want to live indoors. I want an oven. Accessible laundry. I wanna be able to eat okay.

That’s all I want.

Anything else is gravy.

I also know I won’t get that in the current time line. Unless the rent market absolutely nosedives in the next year or someone decides to pay me double what I make now, meh. And I’m as detached from that as I can be but it is still close to the heart. I look every now and then and see a lot of the bullshit. At this point, all I can see are the htings and paths and whatnot that are not accessible to me because I feel how I feel and am how I am.

Emotionally? fuck alladis. I don’t want it or need it. Am I going to get a break? No. Without significant intervention, surviving under capitalisms and being happy and healthy don’t seem like things I should aspire to because I know myself and know I will take it personal as fuck and thus feel worse. I can try to correct myself and try to give fucks beyond if my bills are paid but that feels fake so I probs won’t do that.

If I can[t change it I need to stop worrying about it because it isn’t helpin me be less burnt out.

Today I feel like I can let go of my struggle with the general advice about burn out. Fuck it. I’ll do what I need to in order for my lil fam to survive but I’m going to do my best to stop feeling like such shit about it. I feel bad because I’m the breadwinner and I’m not a great provider. I try my best but yah no. I’m a terrible trad husband.

I’m running on economic terror, existential dread and feeling apart from the human experience. I will also say I’m fine with that. I’m okay. I’m all right. I’m up and movin around. I got groceries today. I’m wearing warm comfy socks. I bought some underwear this morning. I’m DOING IT! I’M DOING IT I’M DOING IT.

Look at me 40 years after my first thoughts about capitalism and my distaste for the whole situation to right now.

I can say with my whole chest, I’m burnt out but I’m still going. I don’t need platitudes, I don’t need posi inner thoughts, I don’t need anything I can’t pay bills with.

I’ll leave this from a piece (every other link here is free don’t fuss at me about a minor paywall I will publicly talk about you) I did a few years ago that kinda encapsulates how I feel right now. I won’t claim victory or to have figured out burnout. I see no way out but through and here I go.

I will not let the current situation in my country ruin me.

So yes. Sometimes I’m going to give someone my lunch, give someone my emergency dollar, give a loved one the last 5$ in my paypal so they can have lunch, I will pick up the fucking birds and hold them until they fly away because that is who I am.

Don’t take it to mean that I’m not resisting or fighting the current regime of fuckery. I am. I find it deeply subversive in this current political climate to stick to my morals and ethics and be kind.

I love hard and loud. I will give, I will be who I am even though it puts me in danger.

And if I find another hummingbird sitting on the ground alone, I will hold her in my hand while I shake in terror until she can fly away. Because I’m afraid of her but I love her too.

Wrap up.

I remain terrified.

I’m angry.

I’m still moving. I’m claiming the W.

All this said I still take tips. I still got patreon, you can buy my shit on Amazon etc. So I haven’t given up but I’m going to try really hard to let go of the idea that the right article will unlock my feelings about these things. Can’t unlock feelings that don’t exist. All I need to do is remember that even if I felt different it might not make life more pleasurable.

And that my friends is where the comfort and end of FOMO is for me. I can tell myself that yeah I don’t have the feelings or thoughts about working a lot of folks do but, that don’t change shit. I can feel how I feel but I am not in a position in life to act authentically on my gut so here we are.

At the dayjob. Hustlin the side hustles. Writin the things and occasionally advertising that I am tryina make bill money with arty things. I’m doing as much (more) as I’m capable of right now. I’m not necessarily pushing myself the way I used to. I haven’t run out and gotten a retail job I don’t want but lowkey need. I found my family a new place to live.

I’m doin okay.

So I shall be over here fuckin perplexed by a lot of emotional attachments to capitalism. I’m going to get some underwear today. I’m going to eat something nice and treat myself well.

Signed,

Your Confused but trying little alien friend

Shannon