Back to work
It's always a struggle, getting back to work after being away.
You head off, full of expectation, your case neatly packed, through the tedium of airport searches and clanging grey airport terminals with their uncomfortable, functional furniture on which a thousand thousand arses have previously sat and farted; you arrive; you immerse yourself in another land, another climate, another place, another way of behaving that's detached from a world of commuting, or sitting in a bleak, draughty office with just the whirr of the air-conditioning to provide some kind of music; your spirits might soar as you imagine everything you could do when you return home; then you sit at a plane window, overlooking clouds, or tiny villages and roads, or at a train window, watching "someone running up to bowl"; and you imagine the world is full of possibilities.
Away, somewhere else, everything is alien but not frightening; a holiday is a place of comfort and security, but escape, novelty, strangeness that you can paddle in.
You can feel the sea foaming over your bare feet and the sand oozing between your toes; you can see the things you've only seen photographs of, and now you're looking at them with your own eyes.
You can feel the sun on your back, the warmth around, different sounds, music, see the moon in the sky, but somehow it looks different here.
Then, from that world, you return to the ordinary world, the mundane, the familiar. As you return, the possibilities decrease.
You could be going anywhere, then you could be going anywhere in the country you live, then anywhere in your town, then anywhere in your street, then, all of a sudden, nowhere except the place you always end up returning to - the place you forgot about, or remembered, while you were away, but the place that you weren't for so long, and now you are again, and everything returns.
Not just the sense of cosiness or predictability that you might feel comfortable with when you're in that place you call home, but all those feelings too, all those emotions that you managed to escape for a little while, when you were somewhere else, when you were someone else maybe, when everything seemed possible, when you dreamed a little more than usual.
The walls begin to close in. Only a few things are possible. Those possibilities aren't endless after all; they're fairly stiffly limited, and you've got to go back to the same places, and do the same things, where you always go, and you always do.
Sitting in the office. The overly bright strip lighting causing shadows everywhere, bouncing off the piles of papers. Everything as it was. Nothing changed. You've missed nothing. You are not irreplaceable. Things didn't fall apart while you were away. No-one really missed you very much, and nothing really happened - just the same rearrangement of the same set of tasks, just with your assignments spread around other people, who had to work harder because you didn't want to be there. You're not really the lynchpin at all, and you never will be. Because this is you, and you're not really ever going to be anything - not here, not anywhere, probably not in any way you want to be. You're pretty much expendable, and that's never going to change. Keep your head down and just keep going. It's not going to change, any time soon, or any time at all, and there's nothing you can do about it. You're lucky to have something to do at all, even if you are a drone. Don't pity yourself. Just accept it, and get on with it. There's nothing else to do.
Back to work, then. Back to work. The unchanging series of things to do, slightly different but not different enough each and every day. The same tedium. The same slow realisation, spread across a thousand hours or more, that this is it, and this is all there ever might be, or will be.
But at least you got away. Escaped for a while. Tasted something else. Had a glimpse. Work isn't so bad, if it brings you glimpses. Sometimes that's all there is, and maybe it's foolish to imagine there might be more. Why imagine? Just make the most of what there is, and get on with it. Back to work, back to work. It's not so bad. Time moves along, and you can grab your car keys and your coat, and get out of there. And then begin it all again tomorrow, waiting for another day to pass by, like water.
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July 26th, 2010 - 20:58
Or you could be straight out of University wanting to work and find yourself stuck on the dole for a year. Applying for hundreds of roles and never even getting a response. Knowing that your next holiday abroad is going to be years away. The grass is always greener and perspective is everything.
July 27th, 2010 - 02:05
I, in my capacity as a …oh, I don’t know …lets say I’m a Doctor, recommend a few drops of LSD, and a nice long walk in the countryside – parts of Kent are just simply quite beautifully post-card-esque – far away from, and I hate to phrase it such, but, …the SYSTEM! (makes me feel a bit stereotypical, but it is what is it and it gets the conceptual point across. No laughing at the back!). Much like the traditional ‘trip’, it helps one to ‘get away’ from the usual horror and decay that one finds thrust upon thyself continually, and in such heavy, barraging, discouraging flow. However, one (well, this one at least) feels so refreshed, that the usual melancholic setting of such melodramatic malody is refurbished in a new light; and one finds one way once more up the path of life lived with merriment and rapturous delight.
(Although I daren’t think what will happen to this charming site if that actually happened). (I mean, I don’t think reading the Daily Mail is even remotely compatible with what I just wrote). (Why, even reading about yourself reading the Daily Mail increases my bile thricely, so it does). (.)
Anyways, it completely re-invigorates one’s soul from its very core*, I say (not the Daily Mail, t’other stuff before), and – get this, Tony – can even renew one’s dwindling love of the England** that we so inhabitate suchly.
WARNING:
Side-effects may include: lack of focus, increased difficulty in urination, too much focus, bliss, realisation, the possibility of chucking in your job/life to go live in the wild amongst the trees and the fauna, erectile conundrum, and ‘false-nose’ appeciation syndrome.
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*Set & setting dependant. Consult your local dealership.
**OK, kinda dependant on all kinds of crazy factors, but it can, I swears it! (Try to avoid the people) …(it helps, is all I’m saying).
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DISCLAIMER: Working the long, slow night shift right now (at a secret, undisclosed (redundant?) location). Thanking you for helping me, unwittingly, (you sly devil, you) to pass the time with mirth and so much shirked responsibility.
I take no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for what I have said.
Or what happens next.
July 27th, 2010 - 08:12
Disconnect?
Modern life is fundamentally upsetting.
July 27th, 2010 - 08:21
I’d say that it’s worth remembering that one always has a choice and possibilities before one. One could, for example, hop onto a train to London at 12.15pm and have completely disappeared into the great metropolis by evening, turning one’s back on all that one knew before. In practice it would be extremely difficult for most people to do this, because of family and friends and commitments and so on. Likewise one could randomly punch the next person one sees, after all, there’s nothing to stop one but the potential consequences. It might not be much, but to me it has always been very helpful to remember how much freedom we actually have if we wanted to take it.
July 27th, 2010 - 08:34
Quit if you hate it so much.
July 27th, 2010 - 10:06
Crikey, I feel sorry for you!
July 27th, 2010 - 12:32
If “welcome back” is inappropriate, sorry!
Top of the Inbox, we need you to tackle Desmond/ Channel 5. My desk please, earliest convenience. In triplicate.
July 27th, 2010 - 17:04
Brought tears to my eyes. I don’t know what else to say.
July 27th, 2010 - 21:02
I’ve managed to avoid your kind of working life — I swore I always would after 9 months in a solicitors office in EC4, aged 17. Mind you, I’ve spent a good part of the last 15 years sorting my severely autistic son out, to the point where I’m now almost completely fucked, mentally and physically. Even if I had been spared this messy, exhausting life, which I didn’t choose, I would have stayed with my quest to do interesting things, from getting stoned on the dole to working as a receptionist for a local authority housing department to shovelling shit at a riding schools to teaching E2L infants. You too can have this lifestyle. Just do it. The truth is out there. The pay is crap, though. Sometimes.
July 29th, 2010 - 11:33
Your descriptions of office drudgery evoke Fight Club’s sleep deprived montage of Ed Norton’s numbed daily existence before he met Tyler.
You should probably find a new line of work before you create an alternate personality and found a terrorist organization.
Or not. That does have a certain appeal to it.