Work [injected] Panic

Work makes me panic; It’s the whole mechanism; this new class of relationships and priorities, it sets me on a paranoid edge. I stand at the sink shifting through the stacks of dirty dishes, sorting and characterisng them into groups based on a dozen factors, loading them onto racks and shoving them into the gaping, crooked mouth of the ancient dishwasher whilst my mind spins onwards, detached. Physical reality wraps its tendrils around my brainstem. Thoughts flicker and loop. Will I be fired? Does everybody hate me? Am i too slow? Is my boss, the one with the fruit machine problem, secretly out to destroy me? Am i secreting the right false sense of servitude and dedication?

For weeks my sensorium has been so completely filled with working that independant thought has been impossible. Except when I’m on breaks, lurking around the smoking area eavesdropping on conversation fragments and drinking in the sea and sky with starving eyes. Recently though there have been moments. Murmuring glints of cognation that make me think i could possibly function on some level other than that of unrelenting repetition of actions. Just the other day, whilst brushing and mopping down the back corridor, shortly after 6am, I had an idea for a dissertation, an idea so good i wished I could go back in time and rewrite my own. The idea was to explore the moralistic undertones of traditional narrative structures and how these undertones sought to influence the social and psychological. This topic is of such a wide berth that it ties into at least a dozen fields; Linguistics, Memetics and Anthropology to name but a few. It’s these moments that almost give me hope that I can exist within the work structure without losing an important part of myself.

The Beginning of the End

Employment. It’s inevitable. Unless you’ve got a trust fund or are happy to dance the poverty conga-line of the benefits system it’s not really something you can escape. Bills must be paid. Food must be purchased. In order to live you must auction off your time to whoever will pay you for it. Chances are the that your job sucks too.

This is the way of things. Wouldn’t be so bad if you could section off a part of your being and dedicate it to work, have two distinct sides of you so that you could carry on an independant life seperate from work, but It seeps in through your orifices and starts to mould your spirit into its own diabolical shape, fills you with its shadow. It affects the way you think, the way you look at things, ways in which you react to different stimuli. Even when not at your place of employment, the diabolical shape impedes upon your thoughts and feelings. You are no longer the same person you were before you started working, your changed, and who knows whether or not you can ever get that person back, that spirit, that part of your soul that was untouched by the infectuous and scum-encrusted tenticles that seek to crush your mind. If only you could take a step outside of yourself, observe the process by which this erosion takes place, document it’s machinations so that when, if ever, you manage to break free of the vicious cycle of conditioned wage slavery you could retrace your steps, rebuild, and stand a chance of regaining your self.

This blog is an attempt and this. The diary of a wage slave, A kitchen porter at a luxury resort with more stars than you can count with half a hand. The names have been changed to discombobulate and misdirect suspicious minds. Or maybe they haven’t. Maybe nothing has been changed because nobody who works with Samzidat will ever read these words. Maybe only some things have been changed, just enough to throw these minds off the scent. Maybe this is in fact a work of complete fiction, the product of a brain in a belljar, haulicinating a life of servitude and slowly maurinating in its own miserable juices. None of this really matters. What matters is insight and understanding. What matters is the narrative, fractured as it may be, the documentation of process. Hopefully it’s worthy of a read, is of some use as entertainment or meditation; the reflections of a creature who has found himself ensnared in this universal antagonism of life.

This is the beginning of the end.