About a month has passed since I gained my permanent residence in the UK. A week or so later, I quit the job my previous visa was bonding me to. For some context, I have done comedy for just shy of a decade now, during the latter half of which it has become something of a career. At the same time, I was employed by various meaningless tech companies, which provided me with ample and stable income; and more importantly, legal residency in a country in which I could feasibly pursue that which I actually wanted to spend my time doing.
In honest reflection, it is safe to state that this year has been both the best and most difficult of my professional life. For more context, this was my last year in which I would be bonded to the Skilled Worker visa for my legal residence in this country, and the year that it became realistic that I might make a comfortable living doing comedy. My previous company asked relatively little of me, and so I was planning on coasting through, but a performance-improvement-plan which parleyed into a layoff complicated matters somewhat.
I procured another job within a month, and therein another visa, at what turned out to be a great personal cost. I chose tech as my industry of choice to support myself because 10 years ago it was a genuinely good deal regarding the lifestyle afforded for the level of effort required. Given that you could acquire the niche and troublesome skillset required to participate of course. But times have changed, and so had my circumstances. My final company was the first truly large company I had worked for, my prior employers being a string of small to medium “startups”. My first foray into the belly of the beast of a high-level capitalist enterprise. It was, of course, fucking miserable.
But after 200 applications, it was the only job I got, and I needed a job because I needed a visa. And so on. I made wholehearted attempts to combat said misery of course, and it is in these attempts that the *Futility* of the title refers.
I think despite working in tech, an industry that I did not care for nor ideologically align with, I was able to avoid much of the malaise of this situation by working from home as much and as often as possible. Being a purely technical worker allowed for this more than if my position required in-person interaction of course. But for some reason, most likely due to some self-serving aim, many companies, including my former, had made being back in the office mandatory. Which suffice to say did not agree with my constitution.
Many hours were spent hiding from fluorescent overheads in darkened bathroom stalls waiting for the day to be over. All while still finishing my quota of work for the day. And in combination, my comedy career had very wonderfully blossomed off the back of a project released in March. Which had my evenings used for meetings with many important and interesting people in America, discussing the very things that I had schemed so many tireless years to make a reality. It was, however, more work.
By June or so, I had worked my way into a state of perpetual exhaustion, running on not fumes but their residue. A situation which I did not take lying down. I employed the entire plethora of modern holistic tools available to me: therapy, meditation, long-distance running, and worst of all, a true testament to the extent of my desperation: yoga.
It is not that all this did not help. It kept me afloat. But not much more. As it turns out, you can’t meditate your way out of hating your job. And if you depend on your job for your legal residency status, or in other cases; your only hope of shelter, the feeding of your child; you have no option but to keep it. Hate it or not.
Much of the culture of wellness or *self-care* in a modern context places the onus on the individual to take care of themselves. But when placed in a context that is actively harmless (should this be ‘harmful’ instead?) to one’s physical and mental wellbeing, such actions are more akin to self-defence.
For large stretches my days often looked as such:
- wake ‘round 6 or so
- get ready begin running to yoga class at 7
- yoga class 7-8
- run to work before 9
- work 9-6
- run back home by 7
- meditate 7-8
- shower, dread, and sleep
A couple times a month I’d have a gig in the evening on top of all this nonsense.
And it kept me sane. But nothing more. All this self-work enabled me to continue to be a productive cog. Albeit, one that had been diligently plotting their escape.
And upon my resignation, much of this weight has lifted. I’m still doing most of that stuff. Except the yoga. And it is helping. Faster than I thought. I am slowly coming back to myself. Waking up, the days are luxuriantly full of time, and I am often at a loss for what to do with it all. I try to justify myself in leaning on the concept of fairness; everything that goes around comes around and all that. It feels as though this year I have given my toll, paid my pound of flesh, in the hopes of whatever is to come. With the awareness that I am in an unprecedentedly fortunate position, I will endeavour to not half-ass it.
