The Work Ethic

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live?

--Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

I have been meaning to write this post for such a long time, but I haven't really felt like it. The thing is that I don't make any money from this blog and I don't have an audience, so the pleasure/catharsis I get from writing a post is the most important factor when it comes to the decision to make the effort and I can't enjoy anything right now. In the last few months, anhedonia has become a very big part of my life, although it's not like I was really enjoying my life last year. I think that it's become more pronounced now that I actually have food on a regular basis and I'm not living at home anymore. I should be doing better now that I have a job, but I'm not.

A bit of background on the job: last year I applied for a data science programme and I was very excited to get in. It ended early last month and I got a regular job at the company, but I haven't been given any sort of project to work on. It's been oddly hard on me. Last month, I tried to rationalize away the nagging feeling of uselessness and just try to stay out of everyone's way. But the longer that it goes on, the more useless I feel and the more I blame myself for not somehow getting a project. I don't know how it works when you are a new employee at a job, especially in a department that is a little bit out of your field, maybe I need to 'be assertive' and make them put me on a project. That is probably something I could do, but I hate the fact that I would have to. It's starting to seem like the work world is meant for a very specific type of person. It doesn't matter if you are capable and creative, if you are introverted and/or metally ill, you're worthless. Last month when the progamme ended, I had a conversation with one of the mentors and he said that when you really love what you're doing, then you don't need any kind of supervision. Where does that leave the people who can't feel anything at all, let alone love for a job? Does that mean we deserve to be homeless and hungry? It's so incredibly cruel and coercive to imply or put out this message that if you can't overcome social anxiety and/or depression, you just get branded as having a poor 'work ethic' and don't deserve to make a living.

It's been very hard for me to not hate myself for being lazy and unmotivated and maybe that's another reason why it took so long to write this. I honestly feel torn between feeling guilty about being unproductive, using that guilt to motivate me and being angry at living in a world where I can't even celebrate what a big achievement it is for me to go from where I was a year ago to being able to get out of bed every morning and showering (almost) every day, because my value is so closely related to my productivity and usefulness to other people. I can't enjoy the fact that I helped build a web app because I am so busy hating myself for not being more assertive at work and not being more useful. I wish I had saved the Ligotti quote from the previous post and shared it here, it seems much more appropriate now. This world isn't built for people like me; the world does not run on depression time. Get on board or get out.