D'you really give a fuck?
A persistent cough, first felt on Thursday, exacerbated surely by heavy drinking on successive Friday and Saturday, is keeping me up this Sunday night. The robitussin having failed to stymie the grating at the upper reaches of my respiratory system, I have turned to the written word to soften my night. Notebook resting on my lap, acoustic music (Dylan, Travis, Keziah Jones) harping through the small speakers, I'm reflecting on where my year long hiatus is taking me.
Where was I when I decided to put the brakes on back in August? In a professional rut. I would get to work at 8am, motor on bile until past 10pm, leave the office, eat microwaved leftovers of leftovers, and not stop thinking about work until sleep finally overtook me at 2am. On Thursday nights, I'd step out with the team and forget things. On Fridays, I'd try to obliterate myself on single malt. In short, I just gave too much of a fuck about one thing - work, the central pillar of my life. To be fair, I knew that things weren't right, and I took all that my friends said on board. I blamed the job, I made plans, I stood up dates, and all along I knew all I needed was just... time. Or at least, a better appreciation of time.
And now that time has been granted, how do I feel about... work? Well, to be frank, I just don't give a fuck.
Now, I can't wait to get through the day to the evening, to spend a couple of hours deep in the heart of the library, to drink happily into an oblivion of my own choosing, to write words with ease and without shame. Whilst I take care about the work I do at the Institute, it doesn't plague me after hours. I let it go, because my interest veers back to a literary course, a critical course, one that was always there but remained undertrod. So, is not giving a fuck the cure to unhappiness? Not really. To say such a thing would be facile and if anything, it's the symptom of a mind better divided. Neither should it be reflective of any sense of dispassion on my part - desire has instead been re-purposed, channeled through the sluice of self-examination into a pregnant reservoir of freedom. At the moment, I'm seeing it as a therapeutic question, a question to control the mind, like a paper bag over the mouth of the hyperventilator.
Could I could go back to my job, or take another, and still feel this way? Or would the dam give way to a gush of furious stress and absorption, sell my mind back into slavery, working for the Man? I am building, building away, and hope that this sense of matter stays true.
Note: I haven't forgotten that I would share thoughts on The New York Trilogy. I'm putting together my thoughts, piecing ideas as I did essays at university. I was so taken by the book that I spent Saturday morning in the reading room of the London Library (Londoners - I recommend this place as a paradisiaque hideaway), having raided the shelves for anything Auster-related I could find. I still plan to write my thoughts up, but at the moment everything is in notes. My academic specialisation having been literary criticism, I intend to retrieve my critical faculty and do justice in what I write.
Where was I when I decided to put the brakes on back in August? In a professional rut. I would get to work at 8am, motor on bile until past 10pm, leave the office, eat microwaved leftovers of leftovers, and not stop thinking about work until sleep finally overtook me at 2am. On Thursday nights, I'd step out with the team and forget things. On Fridays, I'd try to obliterate myself on single malt. In short, I just gave too much of a fuck about one thing - work, the central pillar of my life. To be fair, I knew that things weren't right, and I took all that my friends said on board. I blamed the job, I made plans, I stood up dates, and all along I knew all I needed was just... time. Or at least, a better appreciation of time.
And now that time has been granted, how do I feel about... work? Well, to be frank, I just don't give a fuck.
Now, I can't wait to get through the day to the evening, to spend a couple of hours deep in the heart of the library, to drink happily into an oblivion of my own choosing, to write words with ease and without shame. Whilst I take care about the work I do at the Institute, it doesn't plague me after hours. I let it go, because my interest veers back to a literary course, a critical course, one that was always there but remained undertrod. So, is not giving a fuck the cure to unhappiness? Not really. To say such a thing would be facile and if anything, it's the symptom of a mind better divided. Neither should it be reflective of any sense of dispassion on my part - desire has instead been re-purposed, channeled through the sluice of self-examination into a pregnant reservoir of freedom. At the moment, I'm seeing it as a therapeutic question, a question to control the mind, like a paper bag over the mouth of the hyperventilator.
Could I could go back to my job, or take another, and still feel this way? Or would the dam give way to a gush of furious stress and absorption, sell my mind back into slavery, working for the Man? I am building, building away, and hope that this sense of matter stays true.
Note: I haven't forgotten that I would share thoughts on The New York Trilogy. I'm putting together my thoughts, piecing ideas as I did essays at university. I was so taken by the book that I spent Saturday morning in the reading room of the London Library (Londoners - I recommend this place as a paradisiaque hideaway), having raided the shelves for anything Auster-related I could find. I still plan to write my thoughts up, but at the moment everything is in notes. My academic specialisation having been literary criticism, I intend to retrieve my critical faculty and do justice in what I write.
posted by nickwong8 at 9:29 am
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