Fuzztopia: Follow the Smoke toward the Riff-Filled Land

[$harkToootth]

You poor guys with kids...you never get a break...
We had to work pretty late last night. It's not that big of a deal for me cause I work virtually and I have no obligations in life outside of work.
But, my colleagues...like...they were coming back from their kids birthdays and other important milestones just to appease a client. I find that sort of thing more horrifying than any body horror film.

[Invisible Man]

I hope to one day produce a work of some description with the lofty design to achieve something similar.
However my economy of diminishing returns in regards to time/energy/money makes it difficult.
At this stage Im settling for not going broke and not fucking my kids up too far beyond norms.
And yet the more I settle in and firm my grip on mediocrity, the less secure and sane I feel about anything.

So deepens my existential depression.
So, perhaps, tightens the coils of my reaction to positive disintegration?

I know I havent PMd you back, but in a nutshell, thats whats been eating me lately.

Yep. Especially the bit about being beaten by a shit system that everyone knows is shit. Everyone is simply too afraid to say 'hey maybe we should all collectively agree to waste less time and therefore live more fully in whatever ways seem best to us.' I'm being reductive, but that's basically the promise of technology. We have the resources we need to make things work so long as we're not dipshits about mobilizing them. But we are dipshits.

One fantasy is to put yourself in a place where you can make those calls, however microscopic their effect might be. My 'next move' (which will never happen, largely because I've made it clear that my 'LEADERSHIP STYLE' is basically anarchic) would be to become the president of the place I work. And I think about how I could fuck up what we do in radical ways...like most institutions of this type...do? i.e., you're not tied to a desk, you don't keep regular hours, your work is useful, but doesn't consume your every moment (waking or otherwise). I'd last a few months before I got shit-canned.

My little sub-field is the interplay between technology, utopism, work, and cognition. Not that I have time to play in that sandbox anymore, but...these problems still chew on me.

Venus project, anyone?

You poor guys with kids...you never get a break...
We had to work pretty late last night. It's not that big of a deal for me cause I work virtually and I have no obligations in life outside of work.
But, my colleagues...like...they were coming back from their kids birthdays and other important milestones just to appease a client. I find that sort of thing more horrifying than any body horror film.

Nah man it's the best. It's just that the mountaintops of home life are so far from the canyons of work life that it starts to give you whiplash. Psychic violence. I had to work late last night, too. Missed bedtime. I guess I'm just soft now, but any time I miss bedtime I feel like I'm spiraling into a murderous rage at a job that won't let me say goodnight to my brood.

[$harkToootth]

I think I meant a break from 'expectations'. I'm sure it's hard to please both work and home.
I can't even please work, even with my advantages, alas, I'm a different breed .

[drolo]

[Invisible Man]

So phallic; so right.

[drolo]

I thought I'd put my last days as an employee to good use, for the cause you know...

[Invisible Man]

It that a sad ending or a...happy ending?

[drolo]

no idea yet to be honest, a new beginning ?

[$harkToootth]

"Hello boys...I've come to be the apprentice blacksmith for this new found land. It's been a long day and I've been eating lots of medieval Arby's so don't mind me. Doust thought to spare thy drawers"

[Gone Fission]

Fuck, I was probably too far down in a "my job is killing me" hole to notice or be able to deal with this thread before the necro bump.

Figured to put feelers out for a big change, start over and learn something new in a different area of my profession, and cut my losses on the huge chunk of time wasted where I am. My boss catches wind and asks why I would leave my mythical "big role in the future" where I am. It's because there's a fucking disconnect between that BS promise and my present where my talents are wasted. All my mentors have retired or moved elsewhere, my peers have left for greener pastures. There is nothing for me left to learn from the people around me and hasn't been for years but no one really seems to notice. I could sleepwalk through my job until retirement and no one would notice because it has become that easy. And I don't make the big calls about how things are done when the judgment of those who do . . .

So what're you looking for? More agency? More impact? More wealth? Or...???

Lacking agency and impact, I'm about ready to say fuck it, find my inner nihilist, and go mercenary. I think either agency or impact could be sufficient to make the current job tolerable, but there's no fucking way I'm gonna get to test that counterfactual at this rate.

So, yeah, fuck it all. Fuzz commune.

[rustywire]

An uplifting reminder:

[goroth]

Fuck, I was probably too far down in a "my job is killing me" hole to notice or be able to deal with this thread before the necro bump.

Figured to put feelers out for a big change, start over and learn something new in a different area of my profession, and cut my losses on the huge chunk of time wasted where I am. My boss catches wind and asks why I would leave my mythical "big role in the future" where I am. It's because there's a fucking disconnect between that BS promise and my present where my talents are wasted. All my mentors have retired or moved elsewhere, my peers have left for greener pastures. There is nothing for me left to learn from the people around me and hasn't been for years but no one really seems to notice. I could sleepwalk through my job until retirement and no one would notice because it has become that easy. And I don't make the big calls about how things are done when the judgment of those who do . . .

So what're you looking for? More agency? More impact? More wealth? Or...???

Lacking agency and impact, I'm about ready to say fuck it, find my inner nihilist, and go mercenary. I think either agency or impact could be sufficient to make the current job tolerable, but there's no fucking way I'm gonna get to test that counterfactual at this rate.

So, yeah, fuck it all. Fuzz commune.

I'm kinda feeling the same things.
I love my boss, love my colleagues, and enjoy my job. I think. But I've just got this growing unease, and yeah, the whole future carrot dangly thing. My skill-set is such that I could easily get a job doing the same thing somewhere else - I'm lucky there - but it is also a very specific skill-set. I saw an add for a data analyst at a music startup in stockholm, and fuck... I could almost do that sort of stuff. But I can't at all. So I'm considering going back to school, but have to figure out a way to do that while paying dem billz. Higher ed is free here, so there's that, but there isn't a whole lot of part-time education and flexible learning as the whole system is kind of designed around young folks studying full-time and leaving on a tight budget. So I dunno. I think if I genuinely hated my job or my boss it would be easier to work out what I think.
Gonna try and find a part-time course, you know just a single unit, somewhere on the webz that could get credited towards my unfinished degree in econometrics. See if it seems like a good idea to go harder.
I dunno.

TBH I think we're all going to become unemployed within our lifetimes due to AI, and that a universal wage will have to be implemented. That will solve a lot of shit. But it will also be painful along the way.

[Gone Fission]

Universal basic income still leaves some of the personal motivation stuff on the table for a lot of people. People want meaning and significance, that whole impact and agency angle that baremountain posted. If UBI came in, people would have more leverage on the agency front but a feeling of impact might crater for a lot of people.

Besides, in my country I don't see the UBI without the guillotine as a predicate. And that ain't happening. Complete oligarchic looting is about to be enshrined in law and no one is all that bothered.

[$harkToootth]

Holy Penis I think I bored myself writing my own response, so please don't read.

I'm not a neurologist but I think 'agency' is important to our whole 'rewards system' in our stupid brains. The human being is meant to 'think' and 'move'. So the body moves, and the brain is meant to solve puzzles (coming from our hunter gatherer origins). If I can find a decent source (i.e. NOT wikipedia) I would post that instance where this tribe indigenous to the harshest parts of Siberia were given free housing and food by the Russian Government...and then were like "Nah, this is lame...see you Soy Boys l8r". It also reminds me of the couple of instances where indigenous people of North America captured settlers...and the settlers did not want to return to their structured society.

Not saying we need to go tribal (I'm not a social creature so that is one of the least appealing things on the planet to me [traveling in tribes]), but yeah certain bodily and mindful things do need to be met for something you are going to spend the bulk of your time doing (your job!).

I had something interesting happen to me recently. You know that whole 'thought experiment' where you ask if someone would take a high paying job to just sit in room? I always thought I could but turns out...I can't even sit in a room for 24 hours doing stuff I like to do I was supposed to go to this 24 hour movies marathon (in a theatre, not sans streaming) and the day before I was like..."I'm not fucking doing that!" and watching movies is something I love The thought of sitting for 24 hours gave me straight up anxiety (I am usually a pretty stress free, anxiety free person but when I pre-meditated these thoughts...it was overwhelming).

I learned too late in life I like working with me hands. Should have been an underwater welder or some shit. I probably would have liked the solitude.

Not sure if anyone saw that (really amazing) NOVA special on the origin of man but I was straight up jealous of those girls digging in the caves. I have a longer leaner body type so I could have fit in those tight spots with ease.

[BetterOffShred]

I went back to school at 33 to escape most of what you all describe above, but let's be real, all jobs end up having weird-ass politics and dick measuring of some fashion. People are douchey and when you put us all together the real fuck-sticks emerge. That's why they pay us, nobody would put up with the bullshit for free. The job may be a dream come true and you get to play your trade in all the greatest ways imaginable, but there will always be the snag secretary who says you did the paperwork wrong, or the idiot Bro who wants to compare horsepower in his Escalade to your Tercel, or the boss who's kids and wife hate him because of the intangible malfunctions that have made him detestable as a husband father and co-worker.

The good news is, I started my new career at 37 so I'll be able to retire when I turn 217.