I Long To Be Jobless

I am blessed with a full-time job. The financial security it gives me is fantastic. I'm currently saving up for something big, and I wouldn't be able to even dream about it without a stable and somewhat high salary.

At the same time, I am suffering. Not in any measurable way - the hours are normal, the tasks are fun, the job itself is great. It's just that... when I'm not jobless, I am not me.

I was a pretty bad student. After a certain point in my academic career, and we're talking childhood still, I just stopped being able to intuit the correct answers to exam questions and I had to actually learn concepts and use my brain in complex problem-solvey ways, and it just didn't like that, so it refused. I found studying to be impossible, I had no discipline (and I mean, why would I, I was a kid), and I was mostly really frustrated that I had to not only attend the classes but also do extra stuff outside of class to prepare for the next class, in order to actually learn. Up until that point, I had been learning very effectively just by attending and idly listening to the teacher's ramblings as I did something else with my hands, and had been acing pretty much anything they threw my way.

It was at that point that I realized something might be off with me. As I grew up and learned more about the world gradually throughout my teenage years, I learned about ADHD, self-diagnosed myself with it, and then had that diagnosis confirmed by a professional many years later.

My ADHD made me do things a little differently. Yes, I was creative, but I especially got incredible joy out of doing creative things while avoiding other tasks that were placed upon me. This pseudo-rebellion, this taking back of my agency, this Urge to Be, was very empowering. It was urgent to me, this urge, because my executive dysfunction was making me feel like I would literally die if I didn't do something, anything to give myself dopamine.

This might be hard to explain for me, and hard to understand for you, so if you don't relate to the feeling of being incapable of doing things for seemingly no reason, read up a bit on executive dysfunction if you're so inclined.

Despite being unable to complete the tasks I was actually given, such as homework or chores, I felt like I had accomplished something, like a Thing was Done that day, if I avoided those imposed tasks and replaced them with my own silly stuff that gave me dopamine and felt Giga Heckin' Awesome.

Well into adulthood, while I was still sans occupation, I would ignore my responsibilities if they were not too urgent, and disappear into my creative endeavors, which I would engage in for no audience other than myself.*

And sometimes, my responsibilities would become my creative endeavors, and in those instances where those two otherwise opposing forces merged, I became unstoppable. My college projects became outlets for me to find ways to bend the rules and insert my own flair into my work while still aiming for the highest grade,* for example. I cannot describe how happy I was to work myself to the bone for projects that truly did not need to be that extra, just to satisfy my own creative urges.

Especially in a corporate job like mine, things need to get done, and they need to get done in a certain way. It's up to me how fast or how slow I'll do my tasks, but at the end of the day the result would be the same whether it was me that completed the task or my coworker.

The cogs have to keep turning for the clock to tell the time, and it doesn't matter if the cogs are painted all sorts of different colors or if they have their own opinions about how the clock should work, because they can never make a difference in how the clock tells the time.

It's easy to think that our jobs don't affect us. Even if it's a slow day and I get to slack off a bit, it's impossible to not be affected by the mere concept that my time is currently being Occupied by my Occupation and thus it is not and never will be Be Myself Time.

"So just do your own stuff after work, what's the big deal?"

The problem lies in the nature of having a job itself. Despite not being allowed or inspired to act in rule-bending ways like I used to, my idea of success, accomplishment, done-ness, has been reconceptualized.

I feel like, once I'm done with work, I have Done the Thing for the day, and now it's Relax Time. It's Waste Time Time. It's not Put Myself Out There Time, it's not Cultivate A Skill Time, because those take effort. And though I have energy to do them most days, to put in the effort, physically and mentally, the urgency is just not there. My brain has already checked the Do The Thing box for the day, and thus this Urge to Be has dissolved.

I used to make music. I used to make videos! Little known fact: I'm a YouTuber! But see, it's so far down in this blog post as a piece of information about me, because since getting a job, I have not been able to make anything. My executive dysfunction, the thing that used to drive me to create, is actively preventing me from creating now. All I can muster is this blog post during a slow day.

Being™ requires you to allow yourself to be uncomfortable. It requires you to be okay with standing out, with being seen, with being vulnerable and overcoming, with Being. This desire to overcome can only come, in me, as a response to the inability to overcome something.

When I have a job, I've Made It. There's nothing to overcome. I can literally sit there and look at a screen all day doing nothing, and just because 8 hours have passed, my brain will check the box. And 8 hours will have passed. And I will have Done The Thing, somehow. And no music is made, and no videos are made, and no Being takes place, because I'm so Done with the Thing that now the thought of putting myself in the position of having to do another thing is exhausting. Not physically or mentally. Just conceptually.

But at least I make money.