Searching for Utopia

This blog was supposed to be the writings of someone working as a technical writer.

The part about me being an employed technical writer was true up until last Monday when I woke up and simply could not go to work.

Let me explain.

I’ve had days where I would wake up and the Brat that lives in my head would say “Oh man, weren’t you just at work yesterday? I think staying home and playing video games and reading would be more fun today.” but that other little voice in my head – I call her the Drill Sergeant - would say “You will go to work. It’s your responsibility to go to work and be productive because that is what adults do. Get moving.”

I’ve always just obeyed and that other voice telling me I could do something more fun than work would go off and sulk in a corner. I figure this is true for most people – and that most people obey their own inner drill sergeant.

Last Monday started out no different. I woke up, grumbled about getting up at 5:45 a.m. just so I could make it to work by 8 a.m. and then got up and showered. While in the shower I wondered at the sheer stupidity of having to get up this early just to be on time to a job that wasn’t doing anything in the way of making me happy. Furthermore – and this is where the Brat started getting her ugly on – why the hell should I spend 40 hours a week wishing I was elsewhere? What purpose is this serving? Could I not be happier doing something else?

The Drill Sergeant kicked back in and told me to get my butt moving and whine on my own time. So, I got my things together, put on my coat and shoes and went to the door.

Normally, Joe and I say goodbye at the door and off I go. This time, I just looked at him, looked out the door. Looked at him, looked out the door. For 15 minutes. Normally, I don’t keep him too long at the door in the cold morning air in his bare feet – and Monday it didn’t even register. I stared. I listened to the sounds of traffic and birds and looked at the grey sky and my feet stayed firmly planted.

I went back inside, put my bag down, took my coat off and disappeared into the bathroom where I proceeded to empty the contents of my stomach. I cleaned up and went back to the door. When Joe came out of the bathroom I was standing like a catatonic idiot with my coat and backback on. I think I’d been there for maybe 20 minutes or so. I’m not sure.

I kept thinking, “If you leave now, right NOW, you can still get to work and only be 15 minutes late. You can make that up on your lunch hour and just say the buses were running slow today. Get. Going.”

I simply stood there. The Brat was digging in her heels and throwing a tantrum. A quiet, dignified tantrum, but the message was clear: “No. I can’t do this anymore.”

Finally, Joe slid my backpack from my shoulders, then my coat and directed me to the couch where I sat and stared at the door for a long time.

Then my brain melted in the form of incoherent babbling and crying. I called my boss – I had enough sense of responsibility to do that – and she said the same thing the Drill Sergeant said. “You have to to go work. It’s your responsibility! This puts me in a very awkward position.”

As if I weren’t aware! It had taken just about every ounce of responsibility and courage I had left to call her at all – and that was it. When we hung up I had my second meltdown of the hour and it struck me: I didn’t care anymore.

And that’s the part that scared the hell out of me. I didn’t care. Me. Little Miss Responsibility. And it wasn’t the sort of not caring that comes of having a crappy attitude and no work ethic – it was the sort of not caring that comes of feeling nothing, of feeling blank inside.

I’ve always taken my responsibilities very seriously. You get up and go to work. It’s what adults do. You do your best at work to be productive, useful and professional. That’s what adults do! You collect your cheque and use it to the pay bills. This is just how it is.

If the people you work with are rude – you simply smile and act professional and polite. If they give you a good dressing down and call your ethics and abilities into question without cause, you smile and act professional and polite. You tell yourself that just because the people you work with are incapable of acting like adults doesn’t mean you can walk away, shirk your duties or stop being useful and loyal. Welcome to being an adult; it sucks. Deal with it.

My belief in that vanished in an instant.

I didn’t want to crawl in bed and hide from the world – but I knew I needed out. No more waiting, no more “paying my dues” with employers who didn’t see me as an investment, who didn’t pay me what I was worth, who were rude, condescending and generally just jerks. I’d been putting up with all of that for years assuming that this is just what the working world is like.

Monday was a wake up call for me. I am a writer who never writes. I’ve written almost nothing in the last year. I scribbled the odd journal entry most of which read something like this:

“What the hell am I doing here? I feel like all the best parts of my brain and abilities are going away because I neglect them.”

Writing seemed like too much effort. I wasn’t doing it at work why should I do it at home? Why would I spend my spare time sitting in front of my laptop writing when I could be doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom or getting groceries? I almost started think that writing for fun was stupid and childish somehow. Embarrassing even – like being caught picking your nose.

And everything I might have written was a lot like this entry and I was too scared to write it. What if my employers saw it? What if someone who knows my employers sees it and tells them? What if I got fired for not wanting to treat my time with a company like a prison sentence (“You just have to serve your time and you’ll get noticed!”)? How would I ever pay the bills? What would I tell Joe? What kind of responsible adult would I be if I got fired just because I didn’t go to work?

No more of that for me. I’m taking some time to find the joy I used to have in writing. I need to redefine what I want from a job.  Just getting a cheque is no longer enough for me. I want to be a writer who writes – and I want to be reasonably happy while I do it.