The Proletariat Christmas

The last two weeks have been pretty rough at the retail gig. The holidays have come and gone, save for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It's been rough. That's a phrase I've been saying a lot at work. I'm just a little stressed. That's another likely quote. How do you fight back against this stress, this holiday frenzy, eating away at the core of modern American society? 

Well, the thing is, you just have to rise above like the Black Flag song. Inevitably every little thing in our lives affects us at least somewhat on somewhat of a scale. One of the best pieces of advice my manager at work gave to me was, "no matter what happens, just go with it." At first, this sounded to me like a plea of defeat. But then you put it to practice and see how useful it really is. 

There are two kinds of customers in retail work: assholes and friendly people. There is no in-between. You might think you're a tough guy and that nothing anybody says to you can ever affect you but in reality, every interaction we have affects us in some way, however small, or large.   

Think of all the people you've met in retail work [if you work in retail] that you've ever had contact with.  Most of it is overwhelmingly positive, at least for me. I'm pretty much something of a celebrity at my job, just for the sheer fact that I'm a unique personality [I talk a lot to people about books, music, guitar] that people never forget me and want to talk to me more the next time they come in. I think that it just shocks people that I'm a big black dude that shreds the guitar like Hendrix and reads Heidegger. They will never meet a black man quite like myself ever in their entire lives. In that sense, I'm something of a novelty. The other side of it is the depressive, melancholy that comes with the retail experience. 

A large chunk of that melancholia would be bad interactions with customers. Customers who are overwhelmingly rude, customers who want to take advantage [return things with no receipt, demand cheaper prices, yell if it doesn't go their way, etc], upper management that tries to tell you how to do your job even though you've been working there longer than them, and the rest is just low-level grunt work that gets old fast.

There's also a sort of late-night depressive side of retail. When you work 430pm-1am 5 days a week for seven years straight you start to find that you're thinking more about the darker side of life at the later hours of the shift. Ironically it's at these hours that I feel the most awake, the most alive, in a sense. When I come to realizations. 

But wait. Here's the good news. This is happening to other people too. Not just you. The modern American workers need to rise up in solidarity. The middle-class, upper-middle-class, and rich people with their nice cars, their mocha frappuccinos, their office jobs, and their gym memberships know nothing of the true struggle of the proletariat.  If it were up to them they would stay rich and you would stay poor, indefinitely. And if you don't recognize this truth, then you aren't one of us. 

This is why it is so important to have a worker's movement in America. The modern American worker is losing so much right now. The rich are so happy with their fancy video games, their pornography, binge-watching their favorite Netflix TV shows. They know nothing about what it's like to be a true proletariat. 

The next worker's revolution is coming sometime. There will be no video games, pornography, or Netflix in it. 

The revolution will not be televised. Say goodbye to the bio-mass. 

Kickstart my heart

Howdy, everybody. Here I am back at it with another vlog-style post, life update sort of work. 

Work has been pretty intense. 40+ hours every week, sometimes only one day off. The holidays are here already. That's very scary for a retail worker like myself. I tried to request all the major holidays off. Not that I would actually get them off but I just had to try anyways for giggles. The pay is okay but not great. The work has become very boring. My only solace is that some of my coworkers are cool and some customers are cool. 

As a result of all this retail work experience, I've come to class consciousness. I'm not a full-on Marxist yet but you don't even need Marx and Engels to come to class consciousness. For that, all you need is struggle and contradiction [ironically also a part of Marxism sort of]. All this low-level grunt work forces you into action. You start to think about all the workers in their hierarchy. You see where you fit in and you come to realizations. Some good, some bad. Mostly bad. 

I'm this close to reading Adorno at this point. That's become my running joke lately: Retail work is so bad that it's forcing me to class consciousness. I don't really have as much time for my music, reading, or writing [that's why I haven't written book reviews for a while, forcing me to write these rants of the proletariat]. When you see how highly stratified American society is, and how the common man is treated, it forces you to wake up, to jump out of your small inner shell [my outsider musician shell], and look out into the world, and see for what it actually is. "If the doors of perception were completely cleansed, man would see the world for what it actually is." 

What do you do when you see this? Well, I'm not really sure there's anything I can do. That's just the way it is. It's possible that this entire society [America] is doomed, the government is corrupt to the core, and the environment along with wildlife is damned. Even if that was all true [I suspect it is honestly some days] is that all there is? 

"Is that all there is? If that's all there is, then let's go dancing."

Dialectics of a modern proletariat

Here we get to the crux of the matter that I was trying to get into in the last post, entitled Black Metal October, the dialectics of a modern proletariat. Oh boy...here we go. 

Clearly, I haven't read enough Marx and Engels, or Hegel to truly discourse on said subject, so instead I'll do a write up on my personal views towards the matter. 

Work is a wonderful thing. In moderation. Even when you're too entrenched for free time sometimes. I've been in the working world for some thirteen years now. It's had its ups and downs, but mostly its been the same since day one when I was nineteen years old in Wisconsin. "Same shit, different day," as the snarky co-workers like to say.  Touche.

The thing about work is that when you consider that you're going to the same place every day and working for money, that is actually a purpose-driven life [john grisham], in and of itself. That alone is satisfying enough for most people to even consider their job their actual status in life. "I'm a banker." "I'm a doctor." "I'm a cashier." "I'm a warehouse worker." And they would never even question trying to be/label themselves as something else like a guitar player [my own personal circumstance], or a writer [me again], or a painter, comedian, actor, gamer, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, mechanic, etc.  

The hardest thing about work [for me] isn't the work in and of itself. I've worked hard for thirteen years straight with only six months off. I've only been unemployed for six months since I was nineteen. Anyways, the hardest thing for me is keeping a good attitude on the job. It's always a good attitude thing on the job, as opposed to when you're off the job, because when you're off the job who gives a shit, right? 

So the question then becomes how do you stay positive in a working experience? I'm not quite sure there's any real answer to this. For me it always goes back to myself, my own inner mind, my mind's eye if you will [happy Halloween!]. As you can tell, I'm a pretty down to earth guy who's been around the block, seen some shit, met a lot of interesting 'characters', if you will. But again, it always stems back to personal experience. How do you stay happy when you're working all the time? 

The truth is I'm not really sure. But I have some basic ideas. You have to enjoy all your free time away from work to the max, 100% overload. Work hard, but play much, much harder, so hard that if people from work chilled with you outside of work they'd have no idea of the 'real' you, you're ultimate persona [don't ask, its a California thing]. 

So for me, this would include hanging out with friends, guitar playing, music listening, writing, and reading a lot, performing at open mics. If I skimp on these other things for whatever reason I can't be chipper at work, it just will not work. Why not? Who knows, I'm not a psychologist, I'm more of a philosopher, an avid amateur one at that. 

The other side of the work coin that we haven't spoken of is one of metaphysics. Because you are working at whatever job it is that you do, you are fulfilling a job that is key in the universe, you are taking a position that is important whether you know it or not. Phillip K Dick has a novel where this guy is doing crossword puzzles [or something of that nature] and without his knowledge, because of the fact that he is doing these puzzles, the government is taking his answers and using them as coordinates to help stop an alien invasion. Talk about a great concept. Consider this. Because you are doing whatever it is that you are doing in your life, you are filling a void that is missing in the universe. When you leave, that void goes unfilled and could potentially cause disorder, decay, maybe even chaos. You're actually important even if you're a pencil pusher. How about that? 

Start me up

Lately, I've been blogging about ideas I've had recently. About ideas, life, philosophy, and such. Here's another one in that same discourse. We all have long periods where we are thriving and excelling at everything we do in life. And then finally it hits you. You run into a brick wall. What do you do? Here's what I think. 

I've been on a climatic high ever since the end of last year. I've really changed my outlook, my way of thinking, philosophy, and in a lot of ways I've become a better and more evolved individual. I'm pretty damn happy with myself. But then that brick wall enters your path, where do you go next? The brick wall hit me today when I was at work when I suddenly realized that I can't possibly keep going at the rate I'm going at my retail job. Working 430pm-1am 5 days a week. It can't possibly last. Either I must get a job that isn't as physical or just quit entirely. Then it hit me. What am I going to do? [existential heavy breathing] 

The easy answer is that I'm probably just overworked and need a week off [which I, unfortunately, can't afford to do]. Or that I just need to relax more and take a breather, play more guitar and keyboard [music saves the soul]. However, it is meaningful to actually think about it in a more serious format. Otherwise why bring it up?

Keep in mind that this question came out of the feeling that I just don't have it in me. Too tired to do the physical retail stuff anymore. Why is that? I was just tired. But was I really? Sometimes you have to question everything. Even yourself. 

This led me to a conversation I had with a friend of mine yesterday. I was walking somewhere and saw a friend and he gave me his philosophy on work and life. 

"It doesn't matter how many hours you work. You can work very little hours but as long as you get the money you need to pay for rent/housing/food, that's all that matters. Enjoy your life as much as possible."  

Obviously, this is coming from a guy who is unemployed so at the time I was skeptical. But the more I thought about it, the more I put credence into it. This goes back to my predicament. What do I do? 

Enjoy life, keep working, but don't work so hard, don't push yourself, don't break your back for lowly retail store directors. In the end, maybe being a socialist isn't so bad. [lol] Hell, even Yang's universal basic income is looking fantastic nowadays to me.

I don't know for sure but I believe the idea of working is changing in the postmodern technological age. It might be that people who hardly work because they're already rich, or people that are businessmen who only work sometimes during the week, it might be that they are the culprits, promoting the destruction of the middle class, forcing them into a life of work and servitude, when those people could enjoy more time with their significant other, friends, family, or in self reflection. Is it us versus them? Or is that what the world wants us to believe? As that one song from Broadway goes, "Is that all there is?"  

Start me up. 

The modern proletariat refuses to die.