the life, the job

Hi. Long time I haven’t written any thing substantial. I could find some excuses and saying, you know, I’ve been really busy. Well, truth be told, I’ve been juggling the same ideas and topic over and over again for more than two months now. Since the end of my last semester and the moment I’ve put my name on the Master Arbeit list. This is my last academic semester. Ever. It feels really strange, I’ve only known the academy, you know, like you’ve been on a car all your life and all of the sudden, you’re asked to walk.

Truth is. I’m having doubts about what’s to come.

I remember when I was a kid, watching the grown ups “going to work”. In schedule. In suits. Very nicely and gravely. I thought it was something serious. I thought it was something of utter importance. And I thought it was the ways things are. You go to school, you grow up and you get a job.

So here I am, between the “grow up” and the job words. Most people would tell themselves “yeah, I get out, I get a job and I live, I buy a house, get a car, a wife, a dog, a kid, a boat and a coffin”. That’s how most lives play out. Some stuffs happen in between, but nothing particularly grandiose. Most people can rest comfortably on the idea of a job. And retirement. But as I question people around me about their jobs, most are at least a little bit disappointed. Most are actually fucking bitter. Between “I can’t wait for the week end”, “my work pay the bills” and “it’s utter shit, I can’t stand my boss”.

Let’s say that your jobs pays the bills. But, wait, that’s it? you’re going to throw away 1/3 of your life to pay bills? No, no, more than 1/3, because when you hate your job, when you get home, you’re fucking too tired to do anything. And you spend 1/3 sleeping. Most week-ends from 20-30 you’re wasted as fuck, trying to escape the “shit life”. So, really, we only live 1/5 – 1/6 of our life. 20%. That’s not much.

When you “can’t stand your boss”, by signing that dreadful contract, you’ve given away your freedom to make major decisions. Now, tuesday, you can’t go out and sign that major sale anymore because you have to sit in that fucking office, pretending like you’re doing work. Is it really worth it? To sell yourself to some fucking security – by that, the salary. I bet all my fingers that we all have the capability to earn more money than our salary. But money’s not the issue. Freedom is. Decision making is. The job robs you of your major decisions. Of course you can still decide some shit within the office, wether we put a cactus or an orchid plant. Be nice, be cool, be fucking docile.

So, clearly, the job is not the goal. Even if it’s a good one, you would have spent your life making another one’s dream come true. If you’re working at 20%, it’s still 20% of your time. Those guys, in suit, in Wall Street got everything. Everything wrong.

So I’m on this moment where I think, okay, I should be an entrepreneur. Well, I’ve seen entrepreneurs. They’re worse than moms talking about babies. They talk about the jobs all the god forsaken FUCKING time! “oh, my job, and yeah, you know, the contract, well, yeah, investments and papers”. They sleep with their job, they wake with their job. I find it wonderfully admirable. But, at some point, you and your job become one. One dimensional. You’re a job. Nothing else. You’re not human, you’re your company. Which is absolutely inevitable if you want to make a good company. So the question is: how much do you want to sacrifice?

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So right now, as I’m skimming through school at a minimum effort, except for topics that I really love… I just keep dreaming. I want simply this: live. FUCKING live. You wake up, you do stuffs, you eat, you earn some money, you go practice some sport, you sleep. Next day, you wake up… you do stuffs, and you’re not responding to no one. Except the clients and the market. On tuesday, there’s nothing on the market. Fine, you go fly airplanes. On sunday, there’s a really cool deal. Okay, you’re in the office.

Life is not fucking 8-5, monday-friday. Sitting there, pretending to be present. Life is about making decisions and hierarchies between them. I can’t stand the fact that I need to be in the fucking office because the boss and the contract told me so. No fucking body tells no fucking body to do any fucking thing. We’re all humans. We all decide where we want to be and what we want to do. Hello! Fucking wake up! We all have faculties to decide. Why the fuck do some fucking douche bags tell some (sorry) other douche bags to do something? This hierarchy and unspoken rule make me sick. “I hired you, so you do what I say”. No fucking way! No fucking never way! I would never tell any employee that. Because if he does what I say, I’d made a mistake hiring him.

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Can’t we just live that simple life. Wake up, make great and not so great things, contribute. Give, receive.

“I don’t think of my life as a career. I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!”

What makes me really nervous is that I am a bit paranoid about this. I’ve thought about this since four years. Since I was in Copenhagen. We were working for free for some fucking moron, DGS, who doesn’t know how to run a business. //edit://: BTW, fuck with me, and I will spread the bad word and chase you until the end of the fucking earth. I was sleeping in basements and boats back then. I think that winter I almost froze… that’s where I had a hint of what was going on. I really want to achieve this parallel society. But I have the impression that it’s a hit or miss. That it’s a one chance thing to do. I am afraid that I can’t even do it and, ultimately, the system or what ever the fuck this thing is will bring me back within the wheel of stupidity. If it’s the case, I’m not sure if it’s worth living at 20%.

“be realistic” they say. “that’s utopia” they say.

All I want is a time and place where we get together, we are all equal, we make things together, we think together, we party together, we live together and we die together saying “wow, that was great”. As humans. Not fucking machines.

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PS: writing this down has taken a big weight of my shoulder. I know I sound rough. But truly, it’s a message of hope. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, you open that door in the morning, you’re greeted by friends and you’re getting busy with great projects. Everyday. That’s my dream and I want people that I care for to be part of it.

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