labor and self-actualization
chasing career change during the fall of democracy
hey y’all,
today i’m sipping on a tiramisu cold brew from yonder coffee in downtown durham. i’ve been coming here about once a week or so after work to focus on writing my book and applying for jobs. sometimes i need a change of scenery to get out of the funk i’m in after i log off for the day. one thing i love about north carolina coffee culture is that many coffee shops are also cocktail bars/beer gardens, so they stay open late into the evening.
the alcohol sales and increased tips as customers get tipsy makes the later hours worth it (i hope), and i’m grateful for a cozy spot to work after 5p.
i’m in the midst of pursuing a career change. i know this is likely unwise given the current job market and political disaster, but i can’t keep chugging along the way i have the last 5 years. the tough part is that all of my specialized skills have, almost overnight, become undesirable. i am attempting to prove that what i have to offer is worth paying for in a job market that no longer cares about human beings.
what are any of us justice, culture, and creative “experts” supposed to do for money? i could wax poetic about the evidence-based campaign for universal basic income, but the reality is we are not in a position to consider such solutions. we are under the thumb of an authoritarian war machine that is not hiding its desire to kill us all.
that’s an easy cliff for me to jump off of right now, so let me take one step back. we have many problems, and only so much time in the day. my current predicament is that i hate my job and i desperately want a new one that takes less of a toll on me emotionally. on the tin, this is not that hard to achieve. i actually got a job offer a couple of weeks ago that i didn’t take. so what is the barrier?
i was chatting with my colleague during our 1:1 this week, and we were lamenting our similar circumstances. she’s a generation above me, with even more financial obligations than i have. she introduced me to the term “the golden handcuffs.” meaning, our salaries and benefits are too good at our current workplace to justify leaving, even though we are on the verge of admitting ourselves to an in-patient program every day. i think this is actually why liberation stalls, and the great huey p. newton, may he rest in power, agrees.
our economic system breeds complacency in two ways: 1. by making you so poor that you don’t have the time or energy to fight back; and 2. by providing for you just enough that you don’t want to sacrifice what little stability you’ve achieved. i work in talent acquisition, and one of the things we learn is what our skills are worth. the longer i’m in this field, the more arbitrary this measurement begins to feel.
as i look at the market trends, the knowledge economy is in its biggest recession in my lifetime. “brain” jobs are just not important anymore. huge swaths of workers who have made their brains their market value are being laid off from the most profitable companies in the world. my skill set is in solving organizational dysfunction, curing toxic work cultures, ensuring equity and inclusion, and building strong, trustworthy leaders. so you can imagine how undesirable my resume is right now.
the reality is, dysfunction is the point. especially in nonprofits. mission-driven organizations who are actually achieving their missions will eventually be obsolete. that’s actually the point. we are trying to solve big world problems that improve people’s lives, right? so if we do that, we don’t need to keep existing. under market capitalism, this is not a lucrative model. if there are no problems to solve, there is nothing to justify being funded.
labor, in its origination, was for improving and maintaining society. before the industrial revolution, people developed skills to meet their own needs and the needs of their neighbors. the product of their effort was tangible. this could be my immigrant child upbringing, but i truly believe i’m hardwired to work. i love to achieve my goals through genuine effort and perseverance. everything i have in life, i want to have genuinely earned. i want to be proud of what i have achieved.
nowadays, anything can be a job as long as it makes you and the entity you serve money. even if it actively harms our society and alienates you from the fruits of your labor. you can make AI-generated slop and push it out on every social platform with ads and call yourself a “creator.” i’m in this sisyphean hell with the rest of us — wanting to do something else, but not willing to do just anything for cash. further, the things i want to do don’t pay because they have no market value.
we are all trying to extract resources out of a dying economy. it’s like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. as things get scarier out there, the less willing i am to take professional risks. even if i know i need to in order to be fulfilled. the long and the short of it is: i need my income and my health insurance to live. i have a bottomline dollar that i have to make every month, and none of the jobs i want will pay me that.
you might be thinking, “that’s life, baby,” but it isn’t for everyone. there are a select few in our world who, from the moment they were born, have never once have to do this kind of mental calculus. they convinced you and me that this freedom is an exception that they have earned, and the rest of us must toil to be worthy of being free. i reject the notion that this freedom is a privilege. it is the standard by which we should all be living.
western ideas of humanity would have us believe that fulfillment is a first world problem. i’m sure you’ve seen this before:
maslow argues that self-actualization is the destination, and that it is predicated upon building the lower blocks of the pyramid first. but did you know that maslow developed the foundations of his theory by bastardizing the teachings of first nation tribes? (this is editorializing a bit. he greatly appreciated the cultural teachings of the blackfoot nation and had an open disdain for his fellow white people. still, it wasn’t his knowledge to claim and i have a strong aversion to the colonization of learning. nuance is everything.)
like most western thought models, maslow’s theory of meeting our needs is linear and requires upward class mobility. we are always on a one-way track, attempting to build up our resources by any means necessary until we can become fully realized versions of ourselves.
i am not a linear thinker, and modern science does not support this theory. how often have you heard “healing isn’t linear”? indigenous theories of meeting needs are neither linear nor individual. in fact, they propose we arrive here self-actualized and our life’s work is to take care of each other and preserve culture. our needs are circular and reciprocal. their prioritization depends upon 1. our present circumstances, 2. our available resources, and 3. our neighbors.
these themes reappear across non-western cultures. perhaps they might even spark some familiarity with sikolohiyang pilipino (from my first issue). in other words, this too is kapwa. that gnawing voice at the back of my skull telling me that it isn’t supposed to be this way is my ancestral DNA desperately trying to reach my consciousness.
i don’t want to spend my life doing a job i hate while i try to fit the things i do like around my work schedule. i resent that reality. i don’t want to sell you something with this newsletter. it’s not a secret marketing tool. but, i do want to write for a living, and this part of that of that truth. i live in a society that does not assign financial value to my gifts, so i must do something else in order to get paid.
i wish i didn’t need to get paid at all. currency is an entirely made up concept. what would it take for us to come up with something else? i have often prided myself on understanding that to survive the system you have to work it. i’m starting to think there is no surviving it without changing it. maybe the best i can hope for is to spend my life doing a job i feel neutral (at worst) about while i fit the things i like doing around my work schedule. maybe in striving for something more i’ll discover what else is possible.
xoxo,
kuya von
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