Lately I haven't been inclined to diarize much. Probably many people know the mood where either examining one's own feelings or thoughts feels like opening a scab that should heal; or the only thing that could come out is a poison that would be boring and fruitless for others to read.
Generally I'd say there's not much to complain about.
But I've settled down to a rather self-centered and likely unfulfilled material life. While what I say or do is mostly reasonably conscientious, it is somewhat 'going through the motions'. The true source of kindness (the 'charity' of the Corinthians) i.e. the wellspring of happiness and willingness to share it with others, is drying up a little.
For work I am also conflicted specifically. A few things are great. But I've also begun to feel that whatever tools I have in terms of talent, thought, and dedication, are beginning to be used to the wrong ends at work. Ever since the confusion surrounding the short-term work contracts for my team, I've also never entirely stopped feeling bitter and disillusioned. It isn't intentional, but it is just the result of something that I guess in biblical terms would be called the 'iron entering my soul.'
If I still felt that the wellbeing of my colleagues and me were the most important thing in the company, and seen as such by everyone, it wouldn't be so hard. But now it seems to me that whatever the project of the moment happens to be, is seen as more important. Since it's not a large-scale life-saving operation or a grand scheme to improve the future of the world, I find that morally degrading and logically disproportionate.
That isn't meant to 'knock' the company I work at, because there is a lot to admire.
But I'll have to bring up the goody-two-shoes quotation from George Eliot's Middlemarch: "Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another." I am not my colleagues and I do have my own thresholds and measurements. I was able to work even beyond my strength for five years because it went toward what I feel is a good aim. But I've hit a few lows since then because I've begun to feel doubt: I was downcast for example on my 5-year anniversary: getting celebratory messages just as I felt that work was making me so unhappy I might need to leave it but I don't know where to go, was pretty painful. I need to figure out the moral problem — what good can I still do? what good am I giving up by still being in the company? — or instead just understand if my reasoning is being misled by burnout.
I want us to incrementally work toward things that are good for the human and natural environment, but I also want us to be very truthful about the obstacles that impede us, how many benefits there will truly be, and the fact that we might not be all that important — nor do we have to be.
And, to be honest, I'm enough of a socialist(?) to also just value a living wage for my colleagues and me. Even more, for the sake of my family, and for the sake of the industries and organizations and individuals whom I'm now able to help finance thanks to the wage. A bonus is that it's enough of an income to also do job training or learn things, and that it comes with affordable health care. I think these are the building blocks of human dignity and everything that contributes to quality of life. But the added sum beyond that seems like a buffer that will help with expensive end-of-life care (or, optimistically speaking, university tuition — but only for others, since I am thankful every day I am no longer in academia) for others or for me in future, but not really something I need right now.
This broader ecological goal and the simple fact of seeing people being paid fairly for the services they offer, not 'raising x metric by 30% by quarter y,' is to me a worthy Platonic ideal.
And I still like the basic integrity of the simplest fiscal transaction: a client offers money that is proportionate for a service you can provide with integrity and ethics, and you do your best to earn it.
If that motivation fails, I don't want to explode or really begin to distrust people as Papa did when one of his workplaces went sour. But I'm just wondering how far to go down that road before I bail out.
In between I'm quite happy, but in the 'down' moods... Being unemployed in my twenties was awful — I felt so uncomfortable about meeting anyone outside my own household when I wasn't able to answer the question 'what do you do?' that I really despaired — so that I can barely face the thought of being between jobs again.
I also have to consider my work team and that is, alongside my mental health (although, again, it's a little hard to balance one misery against another), a strong argument for staying. — Not because the teammates can't do without me, but because I've pledged them a service and can only in fairness withdraw it when they no longer find me that useful. And I've had enough valuable relationships to appreciate thoroughly Cordelia's analogy in King Lear: some people in your life are like salt — life is livable (if we ignore for the moment the necessity of sodium for the functioning of the nervous system) without them... but it is never the same and you feel the difference daily. And in the end I just feel that I am going to stick it out, but — again — I need to figure out how to do it without feeling my soul withering day after day.
***
In some moods it reads a little whiny; but I might as well quote some Wordsworth , learned during my school days, to finish:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
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