Have I talked about this already/ If so, I apologize, but I am way too messed up from sleep to look it up right now.

I realized recently that the best job in the world for me would be one where there was always another job to be done. Where once I completed one task, I could just grab another, and fo forth and so on until I was satisfied.

Evidence : back when I worked for my Uncle Sonny, the only times I hated the job was when there were no customers and there was nothing to do.

My boss, Blaine Skerry, told me “just watch TV’, which made sense because I was surrounded by TVs. But I couldn’t. TV was way too slow and passive for me. I was at WORK, god damn it, and I needed something to DO.

I am at my happiest when I am at my busiest.

Now if only I was better at busying myself.

Video games don’t count because they are not productive. They give the illusion of productivity, granted, but like all things virtual, it is nowhere near as good as the real thing. And that little shot of dopamine when I complete a tasks (or in video game terms, a quest) is nowhere near as strong.

“Achievements” don’t mean shit compared to accomplishments.

This is hitting me hard right now because as far as I know, I am sans tasks right now. I am awaiting responses from the two writing gigs and the text companion gig does not start until (hopefully) this Thursday now.

And I am actually tempted to log in to UpWork and look for yet MORE work to do in order to fill the time.

I need to work, god dammit. Working is so much better than video games and Facebook. When I am working, I am actually in a good mood for once, not just too distracted and/or absorbed in something to worry about stuff.

It feels so good to have a load to pull. The ox needs the plow. To have something productive and therefore worth doing for a change is a joy. Bliss.

And I got to visit that joyful, blissful land for all too brief a time recently, and I want more. I want to go back. I want to go there to stay.

I have seen my Narnia and it’s full of joyful productivity.

Plus, inherent in these tasks is the feeling of being useful. Of contributing. I have been an unwilling but helpless nonparticipant in the work of life for way too long a time and that can’t possibly end too soon for me.

If you can’t work, you can’t grow up. Going off to work for a living is the modern equivalent of being allowed to hunt with the hunters or gather with the gatherers. It means you have taken on adult responsibilities, and it is through them you will continue the process of maturing that you have been part of for your whole life.

That, and money is an awesome thing to have. Or so I have heard.

Come to think of it, it’s the money that confirms that you have “done good”. It’s society’s way of saying “your contribution to the collective is being rewarded with the ability to reap rewards from said society”.

And in a broad sense, the size of your paycheck is the degree of society’s appreciation. In the smaller increments and especially at the low end, that is measured in direct rewards like being able to afford small pleasures like indulging in your hobbies or being able to buy fun things with it.

But in larger doses, it buys something far more important to humans : status. That’s rwhat the fancy new car or the new swank address are really about. It getgs confusing because with said advancements in rank also come upgrades in lifestyle, including access to luxuries, so it can seem like it’s the material pleasures alone that are the reward for your contributions.

But those material pleasures would lose a lot of their joy if you didn’t associate them with successful, high status people. That’s what confirms to you that society considers you a superior kind of person.

WIth all the status baggage that entails.

That’s something we never really talk about in society. We all intuitively grasp that a rise in status, especially if accompanied by wealth, can turn a good person bad and bring out a really ugly side of previously wonderful people, but we almost never sit down and ask ourselves why that it.

I think a big piece of the reason why is that society in no way prepares us for advanced status living. Our belief in equality and the fact that we are (sort of kind of not really) a classless society leaves us entirely unprepared for what happens when we are enjoying a substantial inequality of status in our favour.

So we fall back on our instincts and our instincts are harsh. They tell us all kinds of things that are not compatible with a modern egalitarian democracy. Things like “everyone lower in status than you must show deference and respect to you at all times and you are free to punish them if they do not do it to your satisfaction. “, or even further down the rabbit hole, “if people of lower status do not do what you say or behave the way you think they should, this is a direct challenge to your authority and you must quash it immediately and harshly or you will lose status to them”.

I think we would be better off if we had some widely popular tales of regular people gaining status and dealing with the emotions that suddenly arise in them that point them down a dark and twisted path, and how they overcome that in order to both retain their friends and retain their sanity.

Is that what Entourage was all about? I never watched.

And it’s easy to say that you would never be lke that, but until you are actually dealing with the issues, you don’t really know.

I, of course, would only become more awesome.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.