dreaming of labor actually
five months of unemployment diary
At the end of January, I got laid off and shortly after started reading Big Magic when I probably should’ve been reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. Maybe my instinct was right though, because the world has gotten to a place where my mom is telling me that I “better make some good music’” instead of foolishly attempting to succeed in this job market.
I am very lucky and I am very grateful to have the support system that I do. Financially and emotionally, my loved ones are what allows me to spend this time without a job earnestly trying to figure out a suitable path forward for myself. And my unemployment checks. However, trying to figure that path out has filled most of my days with a series of crises I have to stave off by going on walks and going to the gym and getting drinks with money I’m pretending to have.
When I journaled and manifested at the start of this year, as typical in New Years rituals, I covered a lot of ground– but I did not speak once of my day job until an entry on January 7th.
I wrote,
“I’m feeling apprehensively good about the new year…I’m also scared. If things go how I hope, that also means this year will hold a lot of change. A new job and my art out in the world.”
I knew when the year started that I was going to have a different job by the end of it, though I thought it would happen on my own terms and I definitely didn’t expect to be confronted by it within the month. I’m now five months into joblessness and based on my Gmail inbox, not much closer to having a job, plus I’m still very unsure of what I want. I am much closer to something. That something may just be my intimate entanglement with discomfort.
And yet, I read Big Magic and want nothing more than to listen to my creative callings and build a life around them despite the further plunge into discomfort that will require, accompanied by more financial risk. It feels like a worthy pursuit most of the time but other times feels so fucking stupid. I’m trying to figure out how to make Tiktoks. I’m spending the little money I have saved up to record my music knowing there’s a miniscule chance anyone will hear the songs. Everything I’m working towards, if accomplished, would be torturous to some extent. If and when I do get a salaried job, I probably won’t enjoy it. If I were to be successful as a musician, it would still involve unwanted labor and consequences. At the end of the day, I do it all just so I can get dinner with my friends.
This is the first time in my life where I have no idea what my life will look like even two months from now. I have a lot of confusion about what's easy and what's hard as it's related to what's right and what's wrong. Would it be easier to accept a cookie cutter corporate life? In some ways yes, because there's a more certain path laid out for that and it would more consistently make more money but if it’s not what I really want, that would make it hard. Also, you know, AI and the fact that I’m struggling to even obtain a 9-5 job… The life I would rather have, in which I pursue my creative passions and am able to do so professionally, would be hard because it’s very unlikely I would make money and also being creative and putting your work out is embarrassing and vulnerable and kind of crazy. I don’t know if there’s anything easy about it other than it would feel more true to who I am.
OK let’s take a moment to take stock of what’s gone down with me the past few months and use it to try to assess my future.
Positives:
Applied for hundreds of jobs
Got many interviews
Have written more than two songs
Wrote an essay and here’s another one
Went to Spain
Recorded three of my songs and the process is ongoing for two more
Am a little jacked
Painted two chickens and their pig daughter on the beach
Read a few books
Cooked a LOT like a LOT
Haven't vomited this year
Made a few tiktoks despite crippling fear
Negatives:
Fainted once
No job offers except for one which turned out to be a scam
Am a mess
Existential dread
This isn’t my fault but State of the World
If I am an enemy of yours, maybe stop reading because it seems like I might have actually accomplished a lot! Most of the time it doesn’t feel like much but that’s because I am unfortunately one of my enemies. It took me some time to wrap my head around this huge change and I am inconveniently nearing the end of my unemployment checks but I am trying and succeeding at nurturing my creativity. I don’t always choose to and most of the time my execution is bad but I am trying.
Right before venturing off into a bright future of unemployment, I read Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, by Shrayana Bhattacharya. The book examines the lives and desires of Indian women as related to their narrow economic freedoms. India ranks in the global bottom five in women’s economic opportunities and participation, in the dismal company of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, and Iran. That bottom five is overwhelmingly South Asian. India grew immensely post 1990, a usual sign that women will start working outside of the home, and yet that was not the case—in fact, post-liberalization, the economic status of Indian women has sharply turned for the worse.
In the midst of some objectively bad news, learning this made me reflect on how unlikely and miraculous the possibility of a life like mine is—one where I can get compensated for the work I do in order to lead an independent life, unburdened by gendered economic constrictions. Even now, post lay off and claiming unemployment, I will still have the means to pay my rent by virtue of my job search.
Growing up, both of my parents worked outside of the home. At one point, my mom became the sole provider for our family as my dad underwent chemo for the cancer he did not survive. Her having a career while being a mother was never something that I questioned but I realized with my dads passing, how essential her professional commitments and capabilities have been for not only her survival, but the survival of our family.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve reframed the moments when my mom would be out of town for work and my dad was left unknowing how to braid my hair or provide food for us, other than Maggi, takeout, and heating up whatever mom had made for us in advance. Every day that my responsibilities grow in weight and it becomes harder to take care of myself, I cannot fathom the work of parents.
And still, imagining all of that difficulty and exhaustion does not even touch how insane it is that I have a life of economic freedom and so did my mom, and even more rare, so did her mom. I get to sit here and take advantage of my time being unemployed knowing that I will probably be employed and paid for my labor for the rest of my life till I die or retire, whichever arrives first.
Listen, I am starting to have doubts about that. The job market is abysmal, AI has and will continue to replace me, blah blah blah. I could be fucked. Sometimes I feel quite hopeless. I know hope will appear another day. You know the vibes.