May Day

I have a job.

It’s a little peculiar. I’m 35 years old now, and I’ve been doing a lot of stuff for a while. But now, at 35, I have to be honest. I have a job.

I expected by this point in my life to have a career, some sort of trajectory, a vector; momentum, with a specified direction. And to be true, I have a sort of career industry. I have an education in a specified field coupled with years of hard-fought, positive experience with a number of very good references. And most people would call this a career. I work within this field, seem to have a positive reputation, and show up to work everyday with a smile and a good word for the people around me.

But it’s this nagging “trajectory” thing. A year from today? Five years?

Today is International Worker’s Day. This is one of the few holidays that I have actively celebrated during my adult life. But today, I worked for 14 hours and didn’t have time to eat. And my staff worked right beside me just the same, all day, no food. And this has become common.

And I feel fucking awful.

I have spent my life working toward achieving a position such as the one that I now have. And I have spent my life believing from the absolute marrow of my bones in the freedom of men and women to exist unburdened by wage slavery, believed that life is measured by its quality.

But here I am. I am that complete bastard.

I want to spend the rest of this night apologizing to these people, apologizing to every one of them who have trusted me to make their lives better. But there is nothing to apologize for. They are like me, and are thankful for the paycheck. They are quietly struggling in the same blind way, blunted by necessity and willing to give up the things we all know for the hope to struggle long enough to see a light, to see an end.

But when you don’t know where that end is coming from, then you don’t really have any direction.

And again, a failed trajectory.

I am sitting in my apartment in the dark listening to Billy Bragg and drinking stolen tea eight hours from my next shift, one hour from my last shift and wondering, only wondering what Arshinov would do with a corporate job and a small baby on the way.