It’s 5:00 pm on a Sunday evening and the list of “things that I still have to do this weekend” still runs into the dozens and any of them is hours long.
The truth is that my life these days is mostly neglected. Everything that is mine, me, about me, about my life, from friends to future to housekeeping to dental appointments is essentially forgotten. Neglected.
What have I been doing all weekend? Working, of course. Like a lot of Americans. We know this. It’s our culture. Every other movie and television program ever made is an implicit or not-so-implicit warning about living exactly this life, precisely because everyone does it. Do I blame my employer? Not really, no. I’m grateful to have work at a good job with a good title. Many, many people in tech right now don’t. I am getting paid to work on cutting-edge stuff. How could you be upset about that?
And yet it’s also clear that our society is broken. This is broken. I should not be at work on a Sunday evening, having worked all weekend long, wondering when I will get a chance to pop over to the drugstore, still unshowered, for just a few basics (maybe at 11:00 pm or midnight; it’s a 24-hour drugstore) so that I can start the week with toilet paper and soap in the house. I will work until I just can’t any more, as I’ve done all weekend, and then I’ll wake up Monday morning to the work week.
When will I mow the lawn? Engage in hobbies? Fix the plumbing? Go out and see the world?
Don’t be silly, that’s what rich people get to do.
Will I ever get to talk to a friend or do martial arts again? Who knows.
I need to figure out something basic about life. The problem with all the movies and TV shows is that they just contain the warning, not the solution.