paycheck pressure
One of the side effects of the pandemic is entirely too much time to think. Every day, it seems, I imagine a different life for myself, only to wake up the next morning and find myself in the same one. When this is over when this is over when this is over runs in a loop in my head as I dog ear another dream for later. When will it be over? I started 2020 full of questions, and a year later, I only have more. After being in college on and off for seven years, I finally graduated this year. Among my friends I’ve been the butt of a running joke: only you would go to school for so long only to graduate during a pandemic. "Officially” entering the workforce during such a severe economic downturn is distressing, and I’m very grateful to have a steady source of work at my disposal. Still, now that I’ve been spit out into the real world (whatever that means), I’m still grappling with the urgency of cultivating true meaning in my life, pandemic or not.
Fundamentally there are really only two things required to thrive in this human experience: self-expression and connection with others.* For our ancestors these things used to occur rather naturally in a close-knit village setting. Now we turn to jobs (and romantic relationships) to fulfill primal longings that used to be satisfied by an entire community. Other than the havoc caused by the invention of the nuclear family, a main culprit is the modern American obsession with work—that is, the flawed idea that our ideal life must coincide with what we do for a living.* That’s a lot of pressure to put onto a paycheck.
Why do we do this? Why are we assured that working for someone else is the end all be all? And, even if we manage to sidestep the altar of capitalism to achieve our shangri-la, why do we feel it’s not real unless it can be measured monetarily? Of course, there must be a way the bills, and we want to, at the very least, tolerate our day jobs. For the lucky few, maybe there is a dream job out there where self-expression and connection can coincide. For the rest of us, we can’t afford to wait for the perfect job (or for the pandemic to be over) to fulfill our essential cravings. We owe it to ourselves to think outside the box and find our own ways to feel heard and loved.
*listen to this podcast episode—if it resonates as deeply with you as it did for me, please let’s be friends, and maybe also we should form a commune together