/lit/ - Literature

>>14999975
[...]
I will have to go working eventually, there is no way around it if I don't want to end up in the streets, but hell guys, I am so afraid of what expects me in these 10 hours stretch which for me right now is nothing but a blank space, a big question mark, promising and deterrent all the same. Promising because NEET life will get empty after a while and this seems to fill the gap, deterrent because I can't imagine how I would fit for this and actually spend my time productive for ten hours straight. This is the main point here for me. While I have some discipline and some sort of structure over the day, I cannot imagine to be productive for so many hours in one peace, with maybe half an hour break, like this is overwhelming, it just seems undoable to me even if I gave it my best, and the worst part is of course there are then people around you, observing you and judging, so I will be on high alert for hours straight, day after day, how can anyone do this? I am scared and yet all the emptiness that I had to deal with sometimes affects my mental well being so there is something to look forward to, hopefully.

Yeah bro
People do it all the time
It's not really that hard
You only need a reason to do stuff the rest is meaningless

>>14999975
>don't even feel the need to concretise what sort of job they have as if all jobs out there were actually the same thing and there is barely any difference
this probably says a lot more than what's on the surface.
Never had a job and most likely I won't have to work (even a summer job or anything) before I am 26. I am as spooked by all the "work" talk as well.

>>15000062
>99.9% of people don't come anywhere close to that
>appear to be busy and playing politics
99.9% of jobs are largely bullshit jobs. OP, while you have the time, find an alternative so you don't have to do all the bullshit and you can work a few productive hours a day. Wallace wrote an hour a day

>and the worst part is of course there are then people around you, observing you and judging, so I will be on high alert for hours straight, day after day, how can anyone do this?
Hahaha oh man I'm just imagining a 27 year old man with his shoulders up to his ears and his speech robotic and planned like hes 17. Youre fucked dude.

>>15000739
Fuck you for not having to work. Obviously.

>>15000062
>>15000149
Thank you guys, this is quite insightful to me. I think on some level this is what I thought how it must be. I don't think I am very different from people who have a job so the idea that these people are somehow all super humans who can blast through the day as if they did coke from morning till evening is just a stupid misconception. Sure, it will probably not be easy or not as easy as you make it sound, especially for someone like me who has been outside of the system as long as me and who has to deal with social anxiety issues, but there are many people out there suffering from similar problems and if I made it till now without attending therapy, then if I have to get out there a good therapy should make this possible. I mean, it will be a hard adjustment for me on the other hand what could go wrong really, all that changes is that I spend my hours during the day differently. Right now I am not happy with how I spend these hours, so it can only get better really, especially long term, so there's that. As >>15000006 said, I struggle more and more to find reasons to do something, so an external structure like a work setting will help with that.

>>15000167
I am certainly not like I used to be when I was 17 and I don't know how you came to this conclusion. Right, I was a retarded insecurefag with 17 but I have learned my lesson. In adult life nobody gives a shit about you. Nobody truly cares about your wellbeing or about you as a person (family and friends if that is a resource to you might be an exception, but it's not that clear when you grow older in my experience). This also means that you are mostly free to do whatever you want, just don't annoy other people with your stuff. This is to me what chans are for where I can write about my issues anonymously without fearing any repercussions. Social anxiety is something else. Normally I can act appropriately in a given situation, the anxiety is rather invisible to other people. I know that it’s a subjective feeling and not an objective observation about how others think of me. It’s still there so I sure I’ll have to struggle, but this is the least of concerns of me what you are talking about.

>>15000908
>you are a dull parasite, a useless eater
to be fair, it looks like most of the population is. we need a return to useful work, but that would require annihilating the consumption lifestyle that the economies of the world rely upon

The trick is to make your time and hobbies productive enough to earn a living from, so you don't have to work for anybody. Doesn't matter how prestigious the position, a salary is just compensation for being somebodies bitch for 8 hours a day.

>>14999975
the only way to achieve happiness is to contribute. contribution occurs within a context ("I hunt meat so my wife can get fat tits as she suckles my children and so i can dominate dave who is being an ass and hurting the tribe").

mass society leverages this motivation to contribute in ways that to a lot of people they don't realize. but to some people the pesky question "why" enters into their mind. if you were hunting for your wife's big, fat tits, you wouldn't even question it.

but now this impulse to contribute to a community has been repurposed for many. some can wing it, some can be amazing, some sit at their computers and just ask "why?".

they do it because they feel the need to contribute. if you don't have a community to contribute to, or can realize that community is hard to square with mass society, then you start asking that question. and there's no answer.

>>14999975
>>14999978
So you're saying that work is some kind of performance? You're definitely right. It's kind of like being in the military. Know your rank, kiss some ass, make sure you at least look busy. Not hard but, yeah, definitely a performance.

I'm the same as you in every regard OP and have wondered the same thing for years. I think people are a bit sheepish because as other anons have mentioned a lot of people don't do a whole lot at work.

People omit details in the same way when talking about sex as well, they say 'one thing led to another and we had sex' and never fill in the blanks. I can understand that it's a sensitive topic and you don't want to lay your private life and entire human experience bare like that but for someone who is never going to have sex it would help to have some clarification.

>>15001099
I'm a wee bit jealous of people whose work is generally just a performance. The folks who say how little they can get off with doing in their day-to-day, or that they have to be at work for Y hours but can finish the work in X hours and fuck around or just work slower to stretch it out. I work at a grocery store and god damn it I don't stop, and it has nothing to do with the instagram illness of the moment, my work has stayed the same before as it now is during as it will remain after. But meanwhile, our store is doing overnight renovations and it bothers me to see the foreman of the construction crew sitting around on a laptop with a hardhat on waiting to go inspect what his guys just did when they finish it. Because I know he probably gets paid supremely. But meanwhile I can't stop racing to clean up some mess that the idiotic monkeys who worked before me felt too entitled too have to stoop to doing.

Some jobs are definitely performance, but there's quite a few where, as some anons scoff at the 8-hour workday like "I can't even imagine being there that long, what would I even do?", meanwhile I'm in the boat of thinking I need another hour or two to actually get my workload done (and not that I want to be there 9-10 hours, I don't, but 7-8 hours isn't actually enough time for me to do what I need to do).

>>15000363
I gave up at like line 4

>>15000908
99% of wage slaves are doing absolutely nothing of value and you know it. Sure, they put in the effort to go to work whereas NEETs don’t but all they’re doing is stretching out real work to make profit for their boss. The vast majority of the US economy is debt financed profit maxing. Stop pretending that just because people go to work, they’re doing venerable deeds for civilization.

>>15000895
Is there anything you want to do? I would highly recommend you establish some sort of income on your own before you have to wage slave just so you never have to wage slave. Once you’re a wage slave, it’s much harder to get out.

27 year old 10 years NEET here. developing self discipline outside the system will put you ahead of most but it's not for everyone.

>>15001725
It sounds nice until you do it and realize there’s all these other things you didn’t know about until your experience them. I have a job where the job security is very high but there’s not a lot of real work to be done and what ends up happening is all of that work gets replaced with various forms of mental gymnastics, social pressures in engagements like meetings, committees, all kinds of shit. You end up basically having a job where you put in 50% effort to do a whole bunch that has 0% value and you are expected to don this corporate-type kiss ass mask and use buzzwords the whole time which for me is actually much more difficult than just working very hard. There’s also something incredibly demoralizing about it. Since we spend so much time at our job, it’s extremely depressing to not only hate it but to know it actually has no value whatsoever or is maybe even harmful. It really feels like most of your life is wasted. I’m young and thinking about joining the army in all honesty.

>>15000908
And you are a bland worker bot, useless cannon-fodder to the machine you look to as some kind of god to place yourself below

>>14999975
You're just one special little Steppenwolf, aren't ya?

>>15002861
My absolute nightmare

Poor wagie cagies
I pity them out of compassion
I simply cannot imagine having 8-10hours work days , i barely have enough time with not doing anything already.
Meditating, reading holy texts and enlightening hylics on /lit/ is very soul fulfilling

>>15000116
Not OP, but why do you think this is sad?

>>15000908
OP is probably smarter than 90% of people

>>14999975
>>14999978
please be shorter the next time you open a thread

>>15002861
The army is corporate culture times ten. Avoid.

>>14999975
>>14999978
OP, I feel for you. You remind me of someone I once knew, long ago, who was so terrified of this same approach that he just shut himself down.

Don't shut down OP, don't flutter the thought. Working is hard. Socializing is hard. But it gets easier. The longer you do it, the easier it'll be.

>>15004413
>i barely have enough time with not doing anything already.
ok

>>14999975
Please tell me more about your life.

>why is "work" a void in terms of a daily routine
Think about it, OP. Being employed means you are an acting representative for someone else's business. In other words, it's not your own affair that you're carrying out--you are paid a wage in exchange for giving yourself over to someone else's direction for a period of time, helping them to carry out their affair with clients/customers/owners/etc. When you're "at work" you're on someone else's time, rather than your own. Thus, for you, it is not included in the list of activities included in your daily routine. This does not mean that work performed under employment cannot be personally stimulating (or degrading) in any number of ways--it remains true however that it is still someone else's business, and technically speaking you are voluntarily acting on behalf of someone else, so long as you are at your job. When you walk up to any cashier, you are interacting with that person as though they were the owner, the actual initiator of the business which is occurring between you and them. The actual person who is acting cashier is necessarily interchangeable.

If you would have ever worked a job this would all be plain to you. It doesn't matter how enthusiastic you are about your work--so long as you are merely employed you are only ever representing someone else, not yourself. That is the reality of daily life for most people. For however many hours of the day their time is not their own, and their activities are not their own.

>>15006286
If this seems bleak to you, just consider what most people use their own time for. They get off work, or they are unemployed, and what sort of interesting business or private enterprises (one's own affairs) do they start? Watching the television, having sex, chatting and gossiping about things--in other words, things happening to them, rather than initiated by them. Real activity is something which happens intermittently for the large mass of humans. If not for employment, most people would not contribute anything which could be called actual business--instead it would mostly be idleness and we all know what sorts of things happen in idleness.

Liberation of the worker as it is typically conceived is a farce. No form of government or social structure can given emancipation to anyone--it is the result of self-will and can only be so. If not for the capitalists, who would carry out business? Who would start enterprises? That is to say, who would engage in business rather than idleness? I am not saying that all capitalists are necessarily enlightened or emancipated--not at all. Only that, under our current system at least the avenue remains open to everyone that they are allowed to completely direct themselves if they so wish, and are not coerced into subordinating themselves to supervision by some other will. Circumstance is someone all of us, including those of us who are emancipated must deal with--so it is no excuse to say that most of us must "necessarily" give our time over to others. Employment is the alternative to self-mastery, it represents a stepping stone away from serfdom, but it is certainly no path to selfhood on its own. That is up to you.

>>15006250
I don't regularly post here anymore. I went over to a calmer and slower board with a different kind of audience. Just wanted to post this here because I still like /lit/ the most from 4chan and I thought I would get more profound replies about this topic here. To be honest there is not much interesting to say about my life. I finished school normally and from then on I simply didn't have a clue what to do with my life, and as depression got worse and old contacts faded, I didn't want to do much of anything really but escapism and read but that doesn't last for too long.
I can only tell you don't become like me, life does not has to be depressing if you make the right choices. I spent the last 8 years struggling with mental illnesses, with the worst of them being depersonalization for me, and it's only for about a year that I overcame this more or less. I am still a very messed up person and it's hard for me to keep a stable routine going but my perspective about my life and the future has cleared up.

>>15006286
>>15006373
Thank you for this post and for op for starting the thread. As a 25 year old neet that is struggling with finding a way to self sustain and trying to choose between self governance and mastery vs. being employed and stable I found this thread particularly comforting. Bump for anyone else that is in this boat, I would have been less for having missed it.