Back to the Grind

This is an excerpt from my own blog from August 2004. "I hated my work and purposefully distanced myself from the values of that strange corporate world for fear of becoming a sucker for it. I was fascinated by, envied, and ultimately resented the people who were (or seemed to be) buying into it and truly enjoying it. And now I feel like a hypocrite - that job gave me the opportunity (i.e. the cash) to go and explore all the things that I have explored these past months and, to top it off, I have this desire for more not because I think it would make me happier but because I know that it is NICE. So is my conclusion that I have to make it happen for myself, which would mean going back to what I was doing before at least 12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week? It is not, because I cannot bear the thought of having another Monday morning conversation about how terrible it is that week has just started, and another Friday afternoon conversation about how nice it is that the week has finally ended and letting weeks and months and years go by framed by these superficial and pathetic conversations. So I will have to take my chances and see what works out, but at least I know what I don't want to do. Of course, it is not that dramatic at all. Work is just work and as my former boss said when I resigned: "You know, no job will be perfect, that is why they pay you to do it." How very true."

Well, a job is a job. Reading this again I feel like a failure and a coward. I did not manage to fulfill my goal of never working in a place where there is a time-keeping software. I did not manage to figure out another way. But of course, a defining factor is also how much they pay you to do "the job" and (so far at least) I feel better about doing this being paid twice as much money as I was paid before. They are nice to me here. They took me to one of the best restaurants in New York on my first night. I got a significant raise without having worked a single second. My office, which is on the 30th floor of a big skyscraper, is beautiful and I have a view of the Statue of Liberty and all the large ships that go out to the sea. (A constant reminder of the freedom that I gave up.) New York is sunnier than London and people here don't seem to feel the need to engage in the above-mentioned pathetic conversations as much, in fact, they barely talk to each other - they just get on with it. I get to live here in the nicest apartment I probably ever lived in.

And yet, I know I will have to be very careful not to fall back into that numb, depressed state of mind that I was in during my last year in London. I can't quite feel all that (bad memories and illnesses are like that - it is difficult to replicate the actual feelings), but I remember the lump in my stomach every time I looked up at St.Paul's Cathedral as I was walking to my old office in the morning. My strategy is to view work and its place in life differently. A few minutes ago I went down for a smoke all the way to the waterfront where a fifty-ish, tall and tacky-looking American man babbled on for about 15 minutes about how he was really a painter and not a "business development consultant" (whatever that means). He said that he "liked" his job a lot, but that he didn't "love" it. His passion lays in making paintings of popular songs' lyrics for rich people. Meanwhile a rasta-haired, black junkie was rummaging through the garbage can for cigarette butts and I thought maybe I just don't have to "love" it. I mean, why do we feel this pressure to apologize about doing boring jobs for lots of money when we could be doing boring jobs for no money or, worse, have to look for our livelihoods in garbage cans? Maybe I can just put the "love" part aside for 10 to 12 hours a day and enjoy the rest. Tonight I will do just that at one of the best Italian restaurants in town where my recruiter is taking me to celebrate my job and the 10-15 thousand dollars my firm probably paid him for it...What's wrong with that?