Long Weeks

“If I were to reduce all my feelings and their painful conflicts to a single name, I can think of no other word but: dread.”

Hermann Hesse

Thursday

No job is worth sacrificing your wellbeing. None. Commitment in the workplace is a one-sided affair. The job cares nothing for your loyalty, it cares not at all for your effort. It is the secret to its success. You feel like you owe the company. A mysterious debt. It plies away at this guilt with no intention of ever returning our contribution.

The noble gesture of sticking out a contract is part of the deception.

Work is called the grind for a reason. It does exactly that. Demands from you something it will never return. Loyalty. It Grinds out all rational thought and replaces it with loyal servitude.

“Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.”

Charles Bukowski

Friday

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”

Sylvia Plath

Gym.

I have professional development this weekend.

It is called professional development so they can make you use your own time, not theirs.

They are, of course, the work—the Grind.

Professional development, in my own time, that I did not ask for, benefits the place I work for.

And the general feeling is that I should be grateful for their generosity.

Things are happening at the Grind that are causing pressure on Shell. Or potential pressure. It ois real, not imagined, Meehl would approve. I am helpless to do anything.

“The best predictor for future behaviour is past behaviour”

Paul Meehl

Helplessness when it comes to Shell is one emotion there are no answers. If my purpose is to make Shell happy, and I do not have the means to do it, than what use am I?

“We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”

Charles Bukowski

Saturday

“Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun.”

Sylvia Plath

Gym.

Back to the course. The Grind.

In fairness, it is an interesting course. I would enjoy it if I wanted to be there.

Working on a weekend has led to the ‘wine on holiday’ policy being suspended.

A half day tomorrow.

Sunday

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”

Jack London

I have finished Wolf: The Lives Jack London by James L. Haley. An incredible, short life that was deeply flawed. His dedication to Socialism was as tireless as his commitment to alcohol.

London was prolific, writing one thousand words a day without fail I will never read his entire catalogue. There is one book mentioned in the biography that I will read before moving on to my next author, John Barleycorn.

It is a fictional novel that looks deeply into his alcoholism and from most accounts his last novel of significance.