Hi there, fellow wallowers,

For those of you who don't know, I'm not a full time writer. I have a day job and I carve out time to write around it. When I'm not either procrastinating or doomscrolling while trying to get my head out of work mode and into a creative space, that is.

Whilst doing one or the other a few weeks ago, I saw a terrible take floating around on the hellsite formerly known as Twitter. I don't dunk tweet and I tend not to engage in a lot of discourse because outrage is a precious resource I refuse to provide on the cheap to technofascist dickbags, so I didn't post about it at the time. But what it amounted to was that work-life balance is fake because if you work and have a life it's automatically a balance. And like, hon, don't do the work of capitalism for capitalism. Eyeroll, move on.

Except, I started thinking about what work-life balance actually means. And wondering if the concept stems from the work of labor unions like the National Labor Union back in the 1880s. You've probably seen union materials for the 8 hour workday floating around: eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what you will. A slogan, by the way, which was apparently written by Lucy and Albert Parsons for an 1886 May Day parade in Chicago, which goes in full: “We’re summoning our forces from shipyard, shop, and mill: Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!”

I think it's certainly safe to say that people at that moment (and even prior to it) in history were thinking about when and how life might fit in around the all-consuming grind of work.

But it turns out, after some digging, that the actual phrase work-life balance wasn't used until the 1970s and came into common use in the 80s––which is, not coincidentally, around the same time the word burnout was first introduced into our lexicon.

Because, while limiting the workday to 8 hours was a huge accomplishment considering the horrendous working conditions of much of the 19th century, even limiting work to 8 hours isn't enough for people to thrive in capitalist society. Balance is tantamount to treading water. And those eight hours for what you will? They get so quickly eaten up by the demands of "adulting": commuting, grocery shopping, paying the bills, running errands, seeking medical care, caring for family or pets, cleaning house, etc.

It's almost like capitalism doesn't want us to have any time to make art, or lounge about enjoying the beauty of the world, or just touch grass even.

Anyway, tl;dr: work-life balance is a thing you have to fight for, actually, and lots of us are realizing we need to fight for more than just balance.

Union Strong! Union Proud! Everybody say it loud!

October Project Updates

• I am currently digging into some craft books as I think through how to reorganize the beginning of my WIP, because I need so much scaffolding at the start of my stories but then I have to do SO MUCH HECKING WORK to remove the scaffolding later. Books I'm using:

  • Jennie Nash's Blueprint for a Book

  • Lisa Cron's Story Genius

• Production for the third and final season of The Way We Haunt Now is slowly chugging along. One of the perils of a super large cast is that wrangling audio takes time. But, I've now received almost all of it and I'm excited to end this haunting in style!

More October Recommendations

• Cassandra Khaw's The Salt Grows Heavy, which I listened to in audiobook, is beautifully grotesque and gut wrenching. I'm like 90% sure it's the expansion of this short story from a few years ago which I loved tremendously.

• Verso's collection of free ebooks on Palestine. Get your information from somewhere other than social media. And please make sure you aren't slipping into antisemitic rhetoric as you rightfully call for a Free Palestine!

Thanks for wallowing with me, here's a pumpkin I drew for your troubles.

Happy Halloween!

Courtney