Yeah omg. I have disastrously high clinical significance of ADHD, and I am TERRIBLE at never-ending jobs. I just want regular, unobstructed access to jobs that only last a few days, weeks or months at a time. I would be a VASTLY more successful person under capitalism if I didn’t have to sacrifice my spontaneity, lose access to novelty in my life, and subject myself to the conditions that foster burnout. …although I’m also autistic, so that level of routine disruption would probably mess me up too. Being an autistic with ADHD is a real “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type situation 😅
@@BirthquakeRecords As an adhd person myself I can only agree. I literally cannot work in a "normal" 8h+ job with shedules and crap. I had to make my own business where I can work the way it suits me and that worked out so well that I even can work for 12h now somtimes, as long as I can do it *my* way. (still not healthy tho) Also have "autistic personality traits" whatever the heck that means. lol Apparently, looking at recent research in the field, that´s not uncommon among adhd people.
Hi! Archaeologist here. I study precontact North American archaeology (so hunter gatherers). I just wanted to point out that hunter gatherer societies often stored food. There is a spectrum often used by archaeologists to understand subsistence practices, or how a group of people survives, procures food, etc. On one end we have hunter-gatherers that routinely store food and will stay in one place for longer periods of time especially during the winter months. We call these groups "collectors." There are also much more mobile groups that don't practice food storage that we call "foragers." Although it should be noted forager is also used as a synonym for hunter-gatherer in general. There is a wide range of subsistence practices that exist on this spectrum and it is very difficult to box a society into one or another category. I just thought I would point this out in case anyone was interested!
23:16 - "Workers organized, they had strikes... they did some terrorism." It's important to point out that owners of companies did plenty of terrorism back, like murdering workers who went on strike and fought for better conditions and wages.
@@seanfoley974 In response? often it was first! Nevermind that they considered striking "terrorism". NEVERMIND that the workers getting murdered often had nothing to do with the terrorism, and the companies knew it.
@@SolarFlareAmerica Yep, the first time Americans were bombed from the sky it was our own military doing it to striking workers. State terror always comes before labor terror. How else do you think labor terror is motivated?
Exactly my point. Most average people will hear that comment and quit watching it if not earlier. I honestly wish more people on the left took this into consideration, but it seems most people prefer passivity.
I was once on the phone with my pregnant friend who said she felt guilty that, due to a cramp, she was lying down instead of working. A few hours later she gave birth. She was literally in labor and she felt guilty for being "unproductive". True story.
@@crowmob-yo6ry "Oh no, a genuine example of capitalism beeing a horrible nightmare messing with peoples heads, making them miserable? I have no rebuttal to that but lack the self-awareness to question my own values and believes, so how do I deflect from that? Umm...uh yeah, transphobia"
@@groerhahn225 I know it’s a bad joke but pretending you think they were serious is even worse. You realize that they are saying that because they are transphobic, and they genuinely believe that trans men having a possibility of being pregnant is proof that being transgender is not real. This is not a question. I know that you know this. So, why even pretend that it is serious? You are only reinforcing their transphobia. This isn’t even a dog whistle, this is blatant transphobia. This is the equivalent of making an attack helicopter joke.
I'm disabled and in my experience, people do *not* like hearing anti-work sentiment expressed by the sick and disabled. I've been scolded and accused of welfare fraud and some other heinous shit by people I thought deserved my love+respect. Mild-mannered little nerds turning into cops and debasing themselves by wildly pointing fingers
Even if you work on VA disability, there will be people who go "Fuck you, I pay your salary!" "Go fuck yourself, can I have a raise, boss?" I'm combat wounded. People applaud me. When I'm against capitalism, I'm a filthy liberal.
Oh I’ve been there. When I quit my job when it was literally making me sick and sue-e-side-all, and couldn’t work for a few years, my husbands brothers wife’s parents (you do the math) HEADS EXPLODED. And I had a couple of very uncomfortable holiday dinners when I got stuck sitting next to the sister in laws Mom, who grilled me about what I do with myself all day. And I knew “Laying in bed staring out the window and waiting for sleep to bring another day until the misery of my existence passes” wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer.
i'm so sorry you both have had to and likely continue to have to deal with this shit. there is such a big lack of engagement with disability among radicals and it's been made inescapably clear during the pandemic when so many radicals acted with flagrant disregard for the lives of others. more power to you both!
My 20something managers gape at me when I tell them "I have finite time existing as a human being, my time is the only thing (other than my flesh) that I inherently possess. Therefore I will not give you more of my time than I can emotionally or physically afford to give up. I have firm boundaries"
I just wish I could kill the stupid voice in my head that is offended that I have been sick and disabled for years. Tuning other people out is way easier.
I graduated from a VFX program that explicitly told us "if you're not working, you're falling behind." They caught a ton of shit right after I graduated for running an ad campaign that said "You can sleep when you graduate." And they justified it because "that's how it will be in a studio". The cycle of abuse is a feature, not a bug.
Reminds me of F.D. Signifier talking about the cycle of fathers (specifically black fathers) pushing their sons to work hard and to not show weakness because they're preparing them for the "real world". In a way, the father really is trying to prepare them for the brutality of the Working world, thinking it's better if their child can survive out their even it ruins their relationship. In the process though, this just normalizes the brutality to the point where you can't even consider a different way for the world to operate.
the only good boss i've ever had once said to me (when I said I didn't want to take a vacation) "how can you support workers and socialist causes if you don't apply those same values to yourself?"
but you don't understand, if I stop working I'll die. everyone else can take time off without it reflecting on their inherent self, but i'm actually the lazy one so i can't stop working. (and that's capital's trick baby!)
i never liked holidays. its just one of those perks that essentially admits the point that you are being paid too little by your work. cant i just work everyday and get a fair wage? nah you gotta accept min wage and take a week of holiday every year cuz we say so. i dont bother with work anymore.
I cannot overstate how incredibly, stupidly good for my mental health my day job is. I'm a crossing guard! Every day of the school year, I go out to job (twice per day, three on a Friday) and I get both physical exercise AND do measurable, obviously, clear good things for my community. ...it has also made me hate cars. I just hate cars so much. They suck so bad, holy shit.
Can we talk about how terrible and not-the-solution electric cars and AI driven cars are? Like I get that they’re immeasurably better than fossil fuel dependent vehicles, but simply moving to another single person (and where I live, in San Francisco, often ZERO people) in a vehicle solution isn’t going to solve the MYRIAD of problems that cars have caused in our cities and lives in general. What we need is free and better public transportation. And yes, trains are amazing and should never have fallen out of favor and been replaced by highways.
@@goodgrief888 The worst part is how even if every car was electric, in many places in the US your energy is going to be coal-based, so the actual reduction is piss all.
@@DaFieFie I agree with the main point that electric cars are a slightly less bad version of gas cars, but as far as emissions go: 1) EVs are far more efficient than cars that run on internal combustion engines. We've taken for granted how cartoonish it is to power a car by making tiny explosions that move pistons to turn wheels is just a cartoonish way to power a car. ICEs are practically an oil furnace that also happen to put some of its energy toward moving a car. 2) Moving to EVs is part of a two part plan that involves moving as many energy sources as we can to electricity AND cleaning up the energy grid. You're correct to point out that doing one without the other is ineffective, but using that as an argument against electrified transportation is a bit like asking what's the point of installing solar panels and wind farms if we're just gonna have highways clogged with cars that are just directly burning fossil fuels anyway. We need both. Preferably the "electrified transportation" would be buses, trains, etc, but whatever it is needs to run on electric.
not me literally breaking down in tears at "You have not failed, you have been failed." As a disabled person on government income thats barely enough to keep food in my belly, who can barely walk to the bathroom most days let alone wash a dish, thank you for this video. I didn't know how much I needed it.
My mother literally sent me to an outdoor program that doubled as an arm of the troubled teen industry one summer because in her words "she didn't want me sitting around the house doing nothing all summer." As if I didn't have friends to hang out with, as if i didn't have hobbies that I enjoyed, as if we don't live where the summers are 100+ degrees with humidity. And guess what? I was miserable the entire time leading up to it and the entirety of said trip. The other teens in my group were nice and I enjoyed their company, but I have not and will not ever forgive that mentality.
Sounds like the kind of crap my mother would pull. It can be pretty traumatic to grow up with a parent who is constantly deciding your priorities, particularly when your friends get to hang out and enjoy their free time. I had this sort of thing happen to me so often that it was well into adulthood before I realised that I could decide my own priorities and what was/is a meaningful way to spend my time.
The whole point of summer vacation now is for kids to hang out and play. I mean, back in the day it was so you could work the fields, but for most of us those days are gone.
Yeah!! My mother refused to let me enjoy my time off from school too. Which is such bullshit, because now I miss my summers dearly like any other adult, and my last few truly free summers I didn’t get to enjoy because of her inability to let me have actual time off.
@@electronraygun6346 this so much. I hate talking about trauma because I come from a “rich” family (we were not rich and I’m, in fact, desperately poor now) so people always shut me out of the conversation without realizing that I spent 17 years of my life as a mindless drone. Growing up at 21 isn’t easy and shame on the people who believe trauma is only about “abuse”
I feel you but idk if I'm just messed in the head I feel the need to work hard and try my best, I'm diabetic and broke my pelvis a few years back but I've never let it hold me back, it dosnt get noticed much but never give up
My dad worked himself to death at the ripe old age of 61. He crippled himself as a diesel mechanic and died a few short years after the injury due to complications from treatment. He never regretted how hard he worked and maintained that everyone should work just as hard as he did.
I figured out the scam when I was in 3rd grade. I was a really smart kid who was bored in school so they had me take a test which I passed and they put me in the academically gifted program for English and math. So after a couple months I realized that all it was is just more work. You’re in a different classroom for those subjects, but it’s really just more work. I wasn’t any less bored. I was now just bored and busier. I was bored doing this extra work I didn’t want to do. So eventually I told my parents it was too hard (it wasn’t) and got myself removed from the program. And I just spent the free time in the regular class drawing or reading. I carried that lesson into higher levels of education. I avoided honors classes in high school because it was a bunch of extra work outside of class and I instead used my free time hanging out with friends, getting heavily into music, learning guitar and drums, learning how to build websites, getting involved in my school’s theater department. I used my free time and energy to learn things I wanted to learn instead of doing a bunch of assignments on stuff I couldn’t care less about.
This, and so much this. I'm personally unsure how I could change the left's attitudes but I hope they'll understand the importance of youth involvement. Imagine how much more effective their message would be. Then again, it's quite difficult with a little certain thing.
I wish I had known back then - I’m unemployed currently and feel like I’ve fallen so far behind on all the things that matter to me because my parents told me I’d get everything I want if I just wasted my time with honors classes and sucking up. So much of my strength just _poof_ gone.
@@iseetheendisnear2416 yeah same. I wasted my youth doing all the advanced classes instead of having a social life and I'm still suffering in my mid 20s from the social deficiency, and am no more successful education-wise than if I had just taken regular classes and probably got a 4.0 gpa.
This is kinda what I did too. Although I took it a different direction than you. At my school, just by taking an AP class, you auto got 1.0 added to your GPA for that class. So I took the AP classes and slacked the fuck off, I did almost none of the homework and aced all the tests, earning myself a nice C average, which got effectively bumped to a B (3.0) when averaged in for GPA. So I sure wasn't valedictorian, but I still graduated with a good sounding GPA despite having done pretty much no work outside of school hours. Just remember there's more than one way to scam the scam.
"Don't ever argue with an economist by the way, it's like arguing with someone who's really into astrology except that economists cause actual problems in the world, and don't have good drugs." I laughed out loud so hard, god damn :'D
After 5 years of fast-paced factory work I can honestly say the "hard work" meme not only fails to pay off, it's actually crippling the company. -The brutal non-stop pace scares away new employees -I'm genuinely not allowed to share my expertise with others because it means we spend less time being 'productive' -Pushing us to be more and more productive is causing us to make mistakes, increasing complaints and quality issues But of course, I can't express any of this in a graph or in a neat little metric, so it cannot be acknowledged.
It's not even just that. You CAN express these things numerically and econometrically - for example, there is wide academic agreement that unions lower inequality, increase wages on the aggregate, and hell in some cases can even boost productivity. So why doesn't your average neoliberal economist who has never had a real job hate unions so much, given these measurable advantages? It's simple: these people pretend that economics, and especially econometrics, are a hard science where all the 'correct' metrics that society 'must' maximize are exactly fixed and out of the quesiton. And guess what, these fixed an unquestionable metrics... are all the ones that unions don't pump up! What an amazing coincidence! And of course, they are also the ones that measure the well-being of workers the least. Basically the problem isn't that these problems cannot be expressed measurably. It's that when you do express them measurably, it just so happens that the entire neoliberal establishment will tell you that worker happiness, take-home wages and inequality are all completely useless evil socialist metrics, and that the only things that matter are corporate revenue and the total aggregate nominal GDP. How terribly convenient! Reminds me of when a think tank tried to disprove the productivity-wage gap, and did so by aggregating the wages of ultra-compensated managers with production workers and recalculating inflation to base it on industrial machinery pricing because normal people eat forklifts apparently.
"People in poverty could be scooped up and forced to work" Literally happened to my grandmother. She was 1 of 10 kids in a incredibly poor family in ct. state government took a bunch of the older kids and put them on a farm and they became slaves until they were old enough to run away. they were physically abused constantly. really fucked her up. she was so strong tho. I am legally changing my name in a little over 2 hours, her name will be my middle name.
@@seanfoley974 Socialism is firetrucks and ambulances and the very roads they drive on and of course those cops I'm sure you're in love with. It's not forced labor. Fucking get real.
@@seanfoley974 oh yes the socialist state of Connecticut. forcing people to work for corporate profits is the peak of socialism. next they're going to pay for the kid to go to college.
I got called lazy today at work by the person I was training. It absolutely blew my mind. Then the whole office went into this EXACT conversation. I think people are really starting to take note. This is a perfect video, thanks for all the grim laughs. 11/10
Okay that’s the second time this week that you’ve made actual human tears well up in my eyeballs when rewatching a video. Thank you for your humanity and compassion
“Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.” - Richard Linklater (GREAT vid Mildred, your best yet, imo)
I'm of two mind's about both inaction and action. I do think that going to either extreme is absurd, but because of capitalism pushes ALLL of of us to extreme action, there's bound to be rebound. more than anything though, i really dislike doing counterproductive things, and that's at least half of what most people seem to be doing nowadays, working job's that just seem to be making them poorer, driving car's that don't actually get them anywhere they want to be, and in relationships that just seem to be making them angrier and sadder. while i wouldn't label myself as a slacker, as someone who is a male disabled NEET, i'm probably called that many time's behind my back. i just tend to view it as spending my time and energy on thing's that i think will improve my health and well being, spending time on things i actually care about, and actually ENJOYING life. there's so many both in my family and wider community that set out to do so, but get so enmeshed in how capitalism and society defines these thing's, that they fully forget that as children, it was US who defined it for ourselves.
aye me when asked "what will you do" like for a carer, by family, when I can't get it out of my head that hard work's all a scam, and after already being likely disabled from rotating shift work (perpetually tired ova here yet still somehow relating to mildred's comment about needing to move/work always or die of paralysis like a shark) :: dumpster dive, squat, drift, and evade violence doers.
If I didn't have to "work" to survive, I would create. Constantly. I'd take breaks from creating and use those breaks to experience the creations of others. Then I'd use the inspiration I get from the creations of others to create *more*. Creating is what makes me happy and makes me feel fulfilled. I dream of a day when I could just do that and not have to worry about making enough money to avoid homelessness, illness, and starvation.
It's all about that hierarchy of needs. If one person can do the work of 100 when it comes to all our basic needs, and we have as many people as we do, there _will_ be those who get fulfillment from any job. There's no _need_ to force people into work that they don't enjoy.
@@Cellidor I agree! The unfortunate thing is that when I learned how things *could* be different, it didn't really make me feel better about my situation. In some ways, I suppose it's better, but in many ways it's worse. Because the reality is that I'm stuck in this situation. There's no way out of it unless the system itself changes, and that's not happening any time soon. So for myself and many others, there are no real solutions that aren't entirely dependent on being lucky or magically having less physical and/or mental health issues.
This is very cathartic to watch. I’ve been grappling with the internalized labeling of “being lazy” and “apathetic” all my life due to my inability to do school related work at home due to trauma. Helps a lot.
Yeah I know. ADHD makes it hard to because I get bored easily. I am productive if I care. I am more interested in Cooking and Art. However I have to be productive like being an accountant. Accountant make bank and stable. Yes. The idea of doing one thing forever and little time for anything else is depressing.
I had trauma/bad mental health at school and home and 20 years later am starting to unpick how I feel about myself. I spent so much time in bed unable to do anything and still think I’m lazy for it :( thinking back I managed to build a pretty ok life for myself and that was hard work! Just adding my story because I’m sure there’s a lot like us out there…
👋🏾 I work with children who have different learning issues @@Detaur. Trauma can be crippling to the brain's ability to learn. In layman's terns the brain will focus on the trauma as a method of dealing with it (even when sometimes you're not consciously aware of it) over anything else. It will try to force through that memory, feeling, thought, etc. because it "thinks" it is helping. Don't get me started on how related feelings of fear, anxiety, anger can destroy a person's ability to learn. I too deal with some issues (how I got "into" my profession in the first place). They can be dealt with, even conquered, over time. It upsets me to no end that you didn't receive the help and empathy you required as a child. It could have made a huge difference. You're not "lazy" or "apathetic", don't give up! Keep fighting the good fight. 😊
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
The thing you said about musicians is literally the thing that I've been saying for ages to OTHER MUSICIANS I LITERALLY WORK WITH. Like as a musician myself, other players I work with genuinely believe that their labour has no value which is why they're willing to take $60 gigs and a few beer tickets for hours of music. But clearly people love what we do, we pack a room full of people and get them dancing and singing along. If we need to get super literal about justifying the value we bring, we're literally helping people restore their labour power but that feels like a sterile way to frame it.
I'm musician as well. Part of the problem at least with the local venues is they see themselves as a bar with music instead of a music venue that also sells alcohol. They don't make enough of a deal about the music and are afraid to charge appropriate prices for tickets or the cover charge at the door. I think they think most artists and bands that play there aren't worth the hype instead of working making the artists or bands a big deal. It would be a win win for artists and venues. I play around Minneapolis and a few venues lately seem to taking this approach. The venue my band is playing this Saturday doesn't open until an hour before the music. They are now a music venue that serves drinks and food.
Unironically, Jesus was a socialist icon. I'm not even Christian, but he kind of slayed. He literally flipped tables, and destroyed the property of exploiters. He hung out with sex workers, and stood up for disabled people.
@@VVVVV99611 ooh we got an edgy one! Congrats! The OP is just saying the people re: 25:30 straight up reversed a famous Bible quote 180 degrees to have the opposite message because it benefited them.
"It's hard enough just to be a person" This hit hard, I'm unemployed and yet this video felt extremely relatable, my mental state feels like a full-time job of anguish, living is hard enough work for me and the time I spend not doing something productive makes me feel lazy and not deserving of happiness. This mentality that Capitalism pushes infects so many parts of our lives, not just work and labour, the ways in which in intersects with people's rights and the opinion of minorities as lazy and asking for special treatment are a strain of the same infection.
@Chandler Burse I don't think it's quite like that. Back in those ancient societies it wasn't like they had to produce goods and services in order to pay the bills on their home every month. They worked together as a community (staying productive) to build homes and provide food for each other without asking everyone to give a monthly payment for it. Everything they did was in productive benefit of each other by providing a service for a service. Once that service was rendered it was considered "paid", they weren't then continually taxed on it and certainly didn't have the mindset that every service they provided needed to be more profitable for one of the parties involved over the other.
Don't let anyone try and convince you working on your mental state isn't worth it. I've been slowly working social anxiety out of my system and it's the reason I'm happy again
Even as a child I remember coming to the agonizing realization that it was mandatory to be institutionalized. You had to be on the ledger of SOME dysfunctional, self-perpetuating, flesh-eating institution that didn't care about individual people in the slightest, whether it was school, work, prison, or a madhouse, and it was heavily encouraged to remain in the first two. You HADto be assigned to some kind of torture machine or you'd be knocked down to a worse tier of torture machine. To me all these institutions amount to the same type of thing, and these structures both serve to make abuse ambiguous and put money in the pockets of people who already had plenty.
I would say, there is even a higher wheel, a small special wheel called 'consumer', where a select minority of humans who are just lucky enough to either not have to work that much, or even at all, get to reside, thinking that life is an endless accumulation of junk, and thus never to be sated, as there is never enough. Of course, it would seem that all of us are encouraged to join the 'consumer' wheel, as it the goal to be pampered by the working class, but it is extremely expensive, and moreso, it is even owned by yet another higher class that can quite voluntarily decide it is all pointless except it makes them more money
Isn't that just saying it's hard for humans to work well together when there are too many of them to account for? That's not a terrible fact it's just a logical consequence. At the same time, it's hard to achieve large feats without a lot of humans, so there is a benefit to working together depending on the situation.
me too, right as my undiagnosed adhd started catching up to me. i began to self-destruct so completely that my will to live and regard for myself honestly haven't really recovered to this day. at like 12 i became a "medical mystery", and have gotten to experience 3 of the above, sometimes all at once - very fun! it's very cool for a kid to spend an entire adolescence feeling like life is a hydraulic press you can't escape, and to actually be technically correct in those feelings! i would never trade in the empathy and experience i gained from it, but i wish neurotypicals would stop refusing to learn from those of us who had to learn too much WAY too young.
I’ve had depression, anxiety, cPTSD, and thoughts of self-harm since I was a kid. These last two years have been some of the worst I’ve experienced, and I’ve had no choice but to work full time to support myself throughout all of it. I’m now on short term disability because I was having frequent panic attacks at work and developed an ED trying to keep up with the work ethic of my neurotypical coworkers. It’s really hard to get help, but it has to be done. I’ve worked so hard to try to pull myself out of poverty, worked multiple jobs while a full time college student, and now I’m so sick I’m unable to work. Hope my story helps someone else reconsider bending over backwards for a system that will treat them as disposable regardless.
same here pretty much. been working full time since i was 15 with only a couple gaps in employment, once for 7 weeks off on disability to have a kid. i have cptsd as well and snapped a couple weeks ago, currently am partially hospitalized for ptsd. i have been terrified and unable to really take advantage of the help because not working is making it impossible to feel ok. ty for saying all this. i really hope you’re in a better spot soon
@@mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmm..m Same to you. I hope Thought Slime’s words have found you well. It’s ok to rest. Our value as human beings has nothing to do with the profits we can produce for megalomaniacs.
Similar boat, though I reached the point of critical burnout just before 2016 and it's been a hellish ride since. Trauma responses that culminate into Avoidant Personality Disorder have made it exceedingly difficult to get any sort of help. While all this free time has given me the opportunity to embark on a journey of self education on mental health, the crushing weight of financial uncertainty makes it really hard to focus on and deal with the intergenerational trauma I had been ignoring before hand. In a rural area, in-network therapy is hard to find, affordable specialized trauma therapy is near impossible to find and the ones that are around are booked. I hope you're able to get all the help you need, the struggle is so very real!
I tried to roblox myself during the pandemically induced self-isolationist remote school experience. I'm prone to stress but I guess my cortisol or serotonin just stopped working or went haywire. I have no idea, but my headspace was more of a mess than my workspace. I don't want to go back to that dark pit of despair. I want to work, but I don't want to have to rest when I'm dead.
As a gig economy worker: I think the reason people are willing to do jobs like mine is that even if the work doesn’t pay as well you don’t have to deal with a boss watching over you the whole time you’re doing it.
Yep. Asinine micromanaging asshole bosses. I had one who kept harping that every minute that wasn't spent being productive was wasting tax payer money (it was a state job). I kept thinking to myself, "So, my own money, then, since I'm a tax payer?" When I was pregnant I had to text my boss (because of that micromanaging boss above him) every time I had to pee if it was outside of the two 15 minute breaks...because it would mean I was wasting tax payer money. I suppose peeing all over myself and getting it all over everything would have been much cheaper for the tax payers. /s
Yep. I’ve rarely had a manager that actually contributed anything positive to the work. My favorite is when you go to them about a work conflict or issue you’re having, and their response is “You need to deal with this yourself. I’m busy making up new stupid policies that are going to take up all of your free time just so I can write on my resume that I implemented new systems that made some fake measurable change. Thanks.”
Definitely. It's like when I was a cart pusher for walmart; it might be a shit job but at least the bosses are mostly unaware you exist. Fond memories of being drunk listening to music in -17 degree weather pushing carts through snow with only my anxiety for a supervisor.
But you still do, and the boss is an unfeeling computer algorithm. Rejection rate less than 10% or you get less work and less pay! Every time you go to sign out it begs you to work a little more!
I spent a lot of time as a person experiencing homelessness. One of the things that I strove to keep centered was the idea that the system that failed me intended to use my suffering as tool to oppress others. I used that ideation to maximize my happiness. I did everything I could, I ate well, I slept well, I took in important cultural items and places and events, and I shared that joy with as many people as I could. I tried as hard as I could to make the very bottom of the pit of failure look as much like a party of perfect freedom as I could.
Gotta love Kirk Hammett's Amazon review trashing the book, as if his wealth is not directly created by how hard the minions beneath him work to make his performances possible. And it's not even a verified purchase - he was probably given a copy for free.
Pretty much the first thing people tell me whenever I start a new factory job: "If you don't have anything pressing to do, just grab a broom and pretend you're sweeping the floor so you look busy."
In my case you can't even do that. If you have 10 minutes left in your shift after you've gotten your assigned jobs done, you have to ask for another job to clock into for the last 10 minutes. Obviously you would just take extra time to log what you did for turnover, but I still found it interesting how anal they are about every minute. But that's corporate/assembly for you.
At one factory I was at, people often hiked for an hour or two at the end of the day and about every two months I would hose down the floors and get them cleaner than the night cleaning crew did. And then the other factory I was at had so much work, so constantly, that I wouldn’t have enough time to accomplish a lot of things.
@@davidcauley9400 I mean both of those would be great but I'm afraid valve will treat alyx and desk job as "good enough" extensions of the franchises, justifying not touching them for the foreseeable future. (I hope I'm wrong)
i was fortunate enough to take 6 months off one time and told my boss one time i'd love to do that again and she scoffed "what would you even DO with all that free time" and i answered "write another novel like i did the last time I had that much free time"
Speaking as someone with adhd, dyslexia, and who’s wife had a miscarriage this week, it’s nice to hear the time I’m taking for myself and my family isn’t an evil sin.
Well, you had the miscarriage too, in a sense. My condolences to you both. I hope you both heal quickly and don't feel afraid to try again. Miscarriages are incredibly common so there's nothing either of you did wrong. From a stranger, sending love and hugs over the internet.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- thank you for reaching out and saying that. I always feel selfish for grieving but I do agree WE had a miscarriage, but my partner bore the brunt of it. But, again, thank you.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- that is so kind of you to say. And you’re absolutely right. It’s been 5 months, and it’s still hard to think about, but we are in a good place. Go figure fans of thought slime would be compassionate, respectful, and kind people.
As a disabled person since childhood who was gaslit about it for almost 30 years and has never been able to hold on to typical jobs or finish uni even after 3 tries, this topic is the #1 thing that takes up space in my brain. But at the moment I'm only 8 minutes in and I'm just so goddamn happy that my life includes an anti-capitalist, affirming video with a full tangent about fuckable punctuation marks. Ily slime Mildred
Being disabled is a full-time job, never fear. Hiring care attendants (or worse, dealing with needing them and not having them), going to medical appointments, picking yourself up again after those appointments, coordinating just getting yourself food or transportation, and bureaucracy, if you're lucky enough to have benefits. Endless paperwork. Endless phone calls. I work as much just making sure my janky body doesn't explode and ensuring I'll still be housed somewhere accessible next year as I ever did in school or at work. The only difference is that this situation is somewhat sustainable.
A paraplegic can frontflip his wheelchair over a megaramp. Steven hawking got his glasses broke by tons of stripper boobs. Some are living, some are slowly dying. Live fast die fast.
You could you know, learn to code. It's remote and doesn't involve as much physical work. But then again, I'm talking to commies so common sense should probably not come into picture.
@@DeepakPal-tg7hy I see. So I would just code and network as a 31 year old with no work history in the last ten years and obvious severe health problems which worsen at random and take me out of working for months at a time. I'd do job training and job interviews in addition to doing all these other things I was doing before to stay fed, clean, and housed, and make sure there's no lapse of health insurance during, so I don't die. And then make sure I hold onto that job, because if my health gets worse after too long there and I lose it I might end up with no income for several years as someone who takes 20 medications a day to survive. I've never thought of that but it sounds like a good bet; thank you! I already know how to code. Also, I keep trying to do job training and placement for disabled people and they end up telling me I am too sick to work anywhere and to go home and rest. Some people are just too sick to work, Deepak.
@@DeepakPal-tg7hy I actually did watch my partner go through the whole becoming a data scientist thing as a disabled person. Their shit's mostly treated though, and they don't get the shakes and space out in the middle of casual conversation, and they don't need to take long time off work at random and with no warning. And they like coding. So that was a very good option for them. I hope more people use it
big "finally someone fucking said it" energy in this one. no matter my skillset i've always been shamed in jobs i've worked in where i wasn't mechanically as fast as my coworkers. one experience that sticks with me in particular was when i worked at a dessert restaurant making $10 working 10-12 hour days where i would come in at 6 am to torte all the cakes for the day, build them and then put them all away at the end of my shift, which somehow always ended after 5 or 6 pm. i was not allowed to leave, i had no real set time to go unlike my other coworkers and yet i still would get scolded by the higher ups for not doing enough work, not working quickly enough. how "unfair" it was to my coworkers that i wasn't building as much if not more cakes to par that the others were doing. it did not matter that i was there over two hours before my other coworkers came in the morning, torting every single last cake into layers to build, but i was also responsible for building all of them, then putting all the finished cakes away at the end of my shift!! i was expected to not only work fast but double and stay longer, and it was still not enough. my bosses did not want to pay me overtime so i would end up being sent home on wednesdays mid day once i hit 40 hours, which also ended up being thrown in my face because they still needed me on wednesdays to do even more fucking work! & them keeping me 10-12 hours a day was my fault bc if i just worked faster they wouldn't have to! it wasn't fast enough, it wasn't good enough. i was lazy, i was being "unfair" to my other coworkers. it didn't matter that i was broke and starving, that i was barely making enough to keep my shitty body alive and healthy just to be treated like some cake building machine by a bunch of Trump supporting assholes getting wealthy off my surplus labor and the surplus labor of every last one of us under their employ. american work culture and our relationship to work is so toxic, it really fucks with your self perception and feelings of inadequacy bc you're somehow not meeting this "hustle and grind" mentality in service of...who? the people making 100x the profit while you get their crumbs? because it sure as hell isn't for our benefit.
It really does. I was working at a farm where i had the same experience and wasn't "working fast enough" and the funny thing it was like, the owner was always talking about how to be body conscious and then proceeded to do things to contradict that. Like, go break yourself if you want but don't tell me to do the same thing. But it was such bullshit because it was so careless and they just keep making more work for themselves. And I get the whole problem around small, non commercial agribusiness farms and the perception of agriculture in general and just the problems of how things are done, but also maybe don't run a big farm and a full serve farm stand, AND do the farmer's market in town twice a week if you can't hire enough people to tend to the acreage and being continually stressed out about it at the same time. And the ironic thing is that they want to expand! It's just so apparent how ableist businesses are (in all senses of that), how they don't actually respect people's bodies and emotions, and how much they want people to be constantly busy, rather than actually productive, even though that is a problem too. It's easy to feel guilty for even simple things like needing to sit, but that is such bullshit. Basic biological needs and functions are blatantly disregarded.
Lol I wrote an essay in my freshman year of college about how despite technological advances people were working more hours than ever. I can't remember if I mentioned my prediction for autonomous cars but basically my idea is that as soon as we don't have to drive cars anymore we will be expected to work in them
I took a class that *in 1986 * where we were told that technology was advancing to the point where we'd be working 3 or 4 days a week. We were all so excited... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 (I CAN'T STOP SOBBING)
It was already my plan to do some kind of work in my car that I find personally fulfilling, but if I thought of how it could benefit me, no surprise a capitalist would think of how I could work in my off time for them. XD
I’m already less than 5 minutes in and I’m driving and I’ve literally got tears on my cheeks. It’s so... validating. To hear how much I could improve everyday but hearing nothing that’s saying “it’s okay, you’re trying as much as you can. I understand you”- it’s such a maddening suggestion. Maybe I’m putting in 40 hours of work a week, getting “compensated” for my time, and have back pain, but I’m only 19. I shouldn’t be feeling back pains like this and be drowning in depression and also poorer than most/almost all of my friends but
Hugs from a stranger. Your financial situation at 19 is definitely not your fault. I can't imagine what it's like just starting out in this economy. When I was 19 (22 years ago), my first apartment was $305/month, right in the middle of downtown. My first job was $7/hour ($2 over minimum wage, yay!) and I was able to keep that apartment and lease a new car for something like $128/month. Also, ice cream used to come in gallon sizes _as the default size._ The house I grew up in was worth $85,600 at that time. Want to know how much that same house is "worth" now in 2022? $490,600 freakin' dollars!!! In just 22 years it was necessary to increase it's "value" by $400,000?! Why? How does just 'supply & demand' cause that kind of change? It doesn't, the system is broken. Minimum wage in my state is still $7.25/hour and the minimum price of a studio apartment is $1000/month. Every one just getting out of high school or college today has been absolutely cheated by the system. My state started seeing these kinds of wild price increases starting in 2018. Everything has been increasing at around 30% every year since. You're not broken because the "promises" of the system aren't holding true for you. The system is the one that's broken-black-hearted, cracked, and leaving broken glass everywhere in its wake. I'll tell you this: my partner has worked the same job for 20 years and is finally making $20/hour for it. For his 20-year Appreciation he received a $5 gift card. His loyalty hasn't been rewarded at all, something the system promised to us all. My advice: don't ever be loyal to the system. You do for you what you need to do. If a job isn't working or you feel you aren't being compensated fairly, ask for the fair compensation and if they say, "No," go find somewhere else that will. I keep trying to convince my partner to do the same but he's afraid to budge. Our health insurance is also at risk if he quits-we won't have any. Also, with every paycheck pay _yourself_ 10% of it before you take care of anything else. Start doing that today if you aren't already. 10% of $1000 every month (as an example) is $1200 a year. I really, really wish I had started doing this when I was 19. That can be your emergency rainy day fund or a "fuck it" fund at the end of the year to spend or invest however you want.
I'm coming here after being fired from my first ever job. It was humiliating and I feel horribly ashamed. However, I wasn't even given a warning before I was fired, I was fired over text. Even as I type this out I feel horribly guilty, like I somehow failed, or I didn't try hard enough. But that's not the truth. I made sure to show up early every day. I didn't complain to my boss whenever my back hurt from standing all day, I always tried to put in as much effort as I could. But, I was still fired without warning. Hard work is a grift, and we need to dismantle the illusion of "laziness." We need to keep fighting for workers' rights.
Ive been diagnosed with adhd for most of my childhood and i still got called lazy and told i could do better if i put in "the effort" while i was doing everything i could without overexerting myself. I gave up trying to please people in high school and voluntarily took an extra year to graduate. My parents and teachers felt so ashamed/embarrassed i got held back while i was perfectly content. Ive taken this mindset into my jobs and with my friends/roomates help ive been able to keep a healthy relationship to my work... my ART on the other hand, i still tend to shame myself for not doing more often..
I had a similar experience when I didn't do so great in secondary school because of several ongoing mental health crises and chose to go to (community) college over university to try and take a step up while doing things at my own pace. I had gotten offers for university, so when I told some of my extended family that I'd opted for a "slower" path, the conversation would quickly get dropped and they would move on to asking my siblings about their university courses instead - I eventually realised they were automatically assuming I was ashamed of my path, because they would be if they were in my position, but I was actually incredibly proud of myself for just progressing and it really stung when people would just not talk about it. Never underestimate the power of doing things at your own pace, I'm only now getting around to university while a lot of my friends are nearly finished, and I've never felt better about my progress! (Especially when I see how burnt out a lot of them are after going straight to university just because they felt they should, not because they really wanted to/were able to).
As a disabled person who is out of the workforce and stays home taking care of special needs animals, I want to thank you for this video. Truly. Saying what you did about how hard it can be not to be able to work as hard as you might like made me feel *seen* in a way that is very rare. I appreciate it so much because it's a truth that is so easily overlooked.
Also its hard work to make the world better. Seriously, where is the effort from so callwd world leader qnd rich qnd companies bossrs to fight climate change. That is hard work and isnt done enough,and actually very needed. I just mean thanks, tell noone you arent worth it.
never forget that one time a cashier of mine kept calling out sick because they have a disability and cant work in particularly hot weather, and my bosses wrote him up for it. what. a. joke.
A few months ago we had a bad storm in my area that led us to not having power for 3 days. In that time I mostly sat around, journaled, read, and just generally relaxed and did nothing since the majority of my job requires a computer. It was honestly the best time I've had in years.
It feels so refreshing to hear someone else say this. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always felt weird for liking it when the power goes out, but I really do. I feel like a whole new world of chill, offline activities opens up, because the screen time temptation is gone.
I had a math learning disability in the 70s. I used to bite my tongue until I bled to "force myself" to get the answer to math problems because of shit like this. Thank you for discussing this.
I never had a interest in math. It had more to do with no being interesting. ADHD doesn't help. I was often accused of being lazy for doing things I was forced and didn't want to do. I could do math when it came to science. I just liked Arts Cooking, Painting and History more.
Actually being diagnosed with a LD which isn't profound back then was pretty rare wern't it? My dad is in his 70's now and has never had any interest in reading whereas my mum and I are avid readers. Then one day he just says "I dunno, when I read the letters get jumbled" and it was like a lightbulb moment I was like "ohhhhh, yup, you're dyslexic." Great thing is he's now well into audiobooks, trying them out opened up a whole new world to him, hes got the attention span for it, just finds the act of reading to hard to be enjoyable.
Teaching makes a big difference too. I hated maths when I was at school. HATED IT. I still did alright I've always been a good student but it was easily my weakest subject. Physics and Chemistry equations? Fine but pure Maths? Do this thing that means nothing with no context. Years later I enjoy programming and taking CompSci courses in my free time and it's hard, but it explains stuff I should have been told in school about what was the point of pure maths. It would have made world of difference if someone said "this is what we can do with differential calculus".
What on earth did they think that would accomplish??? A logical reason wouldn’t make it better, of course, but you still deserve to hear that the treatment you experienced was nonsensically cruel.
@@fromthedumpstertothegrave3689 I wasn't diagnosed until about 10 years ago when I had to have a bunch of neurological/cognitive testing and finally got an official diagnosis. My teachers and parents would constantly tell me I just didn't "apply myself". I didn't go to college until my 40s because every degree requires math. I finally went to an interdisciplinary college that doesn't have a core math requirement (instead you take quantitative science, so math without math.) It literally ruined my life.
One time when I had covid I called my boss, barely even lucid enough to tell him that I couldn't come over to fill the shelves the next day, and he shamed me for it. He complained about the fact that all my collegues would have to work a bit harder. I was literally drooling on my pillow of exhaustion as he spoke to me but okay I guess.
I actually think 40% of jobs being useless is an underestimation, because every job that could in any way be called "marketing" is by definition useless. Just think how much of any corporate job, even if it isn't nominally in that field, is devoted to coming up with ways of not making something (better), but selling your stuff to more people and other businesses over your competitors, completely independent of whose product is better.
Not to mention all the jobs that ARE useful but are employed in the service of useless enterprises like marketing, PR, market speculation, etc etc. A janitor cleaning an office is useful work, but when its an office thats full of people doing a useless job it becomes meaningless
To be fair, there is a small amount of "marketing" that would still be necessary in a reasonable society. When making a new good of some sort, whether an invention or a work of art or the like, there is a need to make sure that the people who could benefit from it know that it exists, what it is, and how to get it. And that requires people to present that information in an effective way, and to make sure that it is posted in places where people will find it. Which is a form of marketing. This is far from _all_ of what marketing is, and a very large amount of marketing jobs are unnecessary, but that skill set does include _some_ amount of useful work.
YES YES YES!! Some FINALLY used the "crutch is a fucked up term to use for things we're dependent on" analogy that's been brewing in the back of my mind for months now!!
@@Hugsloth i mean, crutches aren't exactly high tech. in its most basic form, it's just a big sturdy stick that can support your weight. cavemen probably had walking sticks before they even figured out spears. walking sticks, canes, crutches - they're all more or less the same idea, just different forms. but yes, if the necessary accommodation for your disability didn't exist yet, then you just died.
not even kidding, as someone who feels REALLY shitty a lot of the time about being unemployed due to brain badness, the speech at the end about it being hard enough work just being alive actually made me cry. bad news or not, i think i needed to hear that.
44:08 Personal anecdote: I actually know for sure what I would do with more free time, and that realization has only made me more angry how much time I need to waste at a 40hr/wk job. I currently have a salaried position, which basically means I get guaranteed pay even if we're unable to work. We were always told that our job, which is done exclusively from a computer, couldn't be done from home because we deal with sensitive data like peoples' social security numbers and medical records. When the pandemic hit, then, there were about 2-3 months between the time our office shut down, and the time they realized that gosh golly gee, we actually COULD work from home, how silly of us to have said that other thing! For those 2-3 months, I had no work to do and no stress about paying bills. Here's what happened: For the first few weeks it was about what I'd expected. I slept in, played video games, watched movies and shows, the works. Just lazed about, really, enjoying my freedom. But this got old much faster than I expected. Don't get me wrong, I still did all of those things, but with all the free time I had there was room for more. So I picked up an old hobby: digital art. I watched art tutorials, did exercises, and even posted some finished pieces online. I improved dramatically, getting so proud of my work that I actually started doing art trades! I spent hours on drawings, and got a little better with each one I completed, impressing both myself and my friends and family. I even took a couple of commissions! Then, work started back up again, albeit from home this time. I still had more free time (working from home really shaves off a lot of time wasted on commuting and getting ready in the morning and such), but less and less of it was spent on drawing. I stopped doing trades, and the last commission I took still remains unfinished to this day (the commissioner has been very understanding, but I certainly consider this a personal failure). Slowly, the drudgery of work has returned me to my familiar state of never feeling like I have any time for anything. My place is messy, I'm anxious, stressed, and irritable, and there are so many things I wish I could devote my time to, but can't because I'm spread too thin already. I'd been working from home full time up to now, but this was because our previous office building was damaged in a storm. They have secured a new office building, and have officially scheduled our return to office work as the day after my birthday. We will still be allowed to work from home for 2 days out of our 5 day week, but must be in the office for the remaining 3. No explanation has been given as to why we can't telework full time as we have been for months. I actually asked a particularly reasonable admin why this was, and he said that he didn't know why the decision was made, but it was decided by someone so high up the management chain that they likely don't even know how the job is done, and no one other than them could change it. He offered these words of consolation: "sometimes we just have to do things we don't like on the job". Super. Remember, this was one of the most reasonable administrators we have. And so now I feel yet more of my free time slipping away. I haven't drawn anything more than a doodle in over a year. I wonder when I'll ever have the time to again. I'm leaving this job. I've started learning a skill I can use to get a hopefully better one with hopefully better hours (though these studies will take a huge chunk of my free time for the next 6 months, the last 4 of which require 9hr days Monday through Saturday plus homework). But I'm lucky to be able to do that. I have a safety net of loving family to support me if I need it, and received higher education which primed me for success in learning new skills. I used to buy in to the "if you didn't work you'd just laze about and do nothing at all!" rhetoric to a degree. I believed that sure, I was kind of lazy, and I value life's pleasures enough to where I could see myself becoming that stereotypical boob, getting fat playing video games all day, scattering crumbs all over my carpet as I munched unhealthy snacks between rounds of Call of Duty or whatever. I DID get fat, don't get me wrong, the gyms all closing really threw a wrench into my workout routine, but the pandemic has shown me that that rhetoric is absolutely 100% a lie. They want you to think that, because they want you to feel like working for them is preferable to forging your own path, but for me? I already know I'd be spending that time putting another image in my head to a digital canvas, and that's infinitely more fulfilling than reading medical records. Fuck the 40hr work week and the wealthy leeches who grow bloated off the sweat from our brows. We all deserve more. End thread.
I absolutely hate the "if you didn't work you'd do nothing" lie - I think every creative person with a """day job""" understands it to be a lie, because it's obvious to us that if we didn't have to spend all our time and energy working, we'd be spending it creating. I was a prolific artist & writer all the way through school up until I finally got a "real" job. Suddenly my energy tanked and all my free time is spent recuperating from work so that I have the energy to keep working. Even if I have the time for art or writing, there's so many other things that I've also been not doing that have a much higher priority (running errands and cleaning house and so on) that I've basically given up on ever being able to resume being creative until I retire. The last time I got any significant amount of writing done was after a major surgery a few years ago that required me to take a month off of work to lay around doing nothing. I spent 2 weeks catching up on sleep and then the next two weeks writing up a storm, because I finally had energy that didn't need to be reserved for something else. All that did was show me that I'm right - I don't have the capacity for a full-time job and worthwhile creative output to co-exist in my life. Of course people will always tell you that if you don't want to work then you should try to make a living off your art instead. If I say I want to be a writer, it becomes about how I can sell my book, instead of the craft of writing. If I want to be an artist, it's about commission pricing and building a client base and hey maybe you could do graphic design that pays okay huh? No, I don't want to make my livelihood dependent on my ability to create. That's just trading one set of problems for another, and at the end of the day you're still spending the bulk of your time working for someone else instead of creating for yourself. Even novelists are beholden to the publisher's decisions on "what can we sell". At the end of the day, the problem isn't that we'd do nothing if we weren't working, it's that the things we'd rather be doing don't have value to capitalists. They have to convince us that working is the only worthwhile way to spend our time, because they can't have us thinking we might have options _other_ than generating profit for them.
> We were always told that our job, which is done exclusively from a computer, couldn't be done from home because we deal with sensitive data like peoples' social security numbers and medical records. Someone has been lying to you somewhat fierce. I also have the 40h work week regular job. I've been working from home ever since the pandemic hit, and even before that we were allowed to work from home if need be, but it was seen as inferior to working in the office. After spending three years at home, I can say it's actually way more convenient to be in the office. You have way fewer distractions and can actually concentrate on whatever it is you are doing. On the other hand, if there is nothing to do at the moment, your only option is basically youtube. > Slowly, the drudgery of work has returned me to my familiar state of never feeling like I have any time for anything. My place is messy, I'm anxious, stressed, and irritable, and there are so many things I wish I could devote my time to, but can't because I'm spread too thin already. I know that feeling. I believe this is partly due to the fact homes aren't really suited to be the place for work, not anymore at least. When I went into the office, I had a clear separation of work time and home time. Now that I work from home, this is no longer the case. There is no change in surroundings, no clear signal of 'this place is for relaxing, I can relax now'. The stress of work is not cleared. You get this feeling in the back of your head that you have stuff to do that you should be doing, and it stresses you out. Bringing work home resulted in the home becoming the workplace and the feeling of relaxation disappearing. Also fun fact about having lots of free time: sometimes time is just slipping no matter what you are doing. I'm having way more free time right now than I had, and yet I still feel like I could be doing something way more productive than what I actually end up doing. > At the end of the day, the problem isn't that we'd do nothing if we weren't working, it's that the things we'd rather be doing don't have value to capitalists. The basic truth of the matter is that you need to do something to get the funds to support yourself. After that, you can do whatever you want. The problem is that people will try to get you to do way more work than you should for the compensation. Been there.
I heartily agree with the vast majority of this, but I gently push back: Why justify, or even motion, "getting fat"? That's dangerously close to "you're lazy and don't work," which the whole video (and your post) is against.
This is a great story. Thank you. Not many stories can manage to be both depressing and inspiring at the same time. Just want to add, though, that the low-level admin you mentioned, was probably one of those pointless jobs that Matt mentioned, except that the point of their was probably to create the sort of information barrier that allowed a higher-level admin to make stupid, uninformed decisions without consequence. There are a lot of people whose jobs consist largely of insulating the people who make the decisions from the people who experience the consequences of those decisions.
@@nicole-ls4jb Well to clarify, it was the pandemic, specifically, that caused the fat gain, not the lack of work. I had previously had a well entrenched workout routine in which I went to the gym at least 3 days a week. The only thing that stopped that was the gym shutting down; I would have absolutely continued with it if there were a safe place to do it. I even eventually tried to get some home workout equipment, but most of the stuff I did at the gym required bulky, heavy equipment that there wasn't really a smaller apartment-compatible counterpart for. Also, cardio was never really my thing, I'm more focused on building muscle and am perfectly fine with having some gut. I have a little more than I'd like right now is all. Of note though, I actually have started going back to the gym near the beginning of 2022, which I'm happy about, though I've only really had the time to go about one or two times a week lately, and I assume with the course I started even that will dwindle. So case in point: if anything is making me fat, it's the lack of free time which is directly the result of my 40hr work week plus night school which I need to hopefully get a job with better hours.
i just spent five years fighting for disability in the US and finally won. I got my first check yesterday (a whopping $790), and was starting to feel like, "Maybe I'm not disabled and I'm just lazy, maybe I didn't try hard enough." The fight had me down and this video helped. Thanks!
My manager said the other day, when I expressed discomfort with the interns working ~14 hour days for $100 a week (plus housing) he said, quote, "They're here to burn 🤷♂️". Almost lost my lunch.
I should mention that this is the same employer who tried to put a clause in a contract barring us from talking about pay, which is illegal in, like, the entire united states.
Ownership plays into this in an interesting way. One of the wildest experiences I’ve had in my life is transitioning from renting to home ownership (yes this is a massive privilege and I recognize this). Suddenly I have this amazing space that is MINE. I spend so much of my time fixing it up and cleaning it and it is SO much more rewarding and less exhausting than cleaning or fixing up my old apartments ever was. Instead of overworking myself because of fear, I’m accidentally overworking myself because I DON’T WANT TO STOP. If we owned our workplaces, we would feel so much better about working. Seize the means of production y’all!!!
I feel your pain. I was a "stupid malicious asshole who intentionally ruined everything" by having hereditary alcoholism. Even after I put myself in rehab, I am only living it down now almost 20 years later.
@@nicklasveva You think you added anything important? If you get triggered by the mere mention of a word relating to your issues then you only have whoever messed you up to blame, not OP.
@Sabizos "LOL, the Radical Left are saying that people's brains can malfunction? That's ridiculous, I'm definitely the sole authority on this subject!"
It doesn't matter what you do for a living, or how much you adore it, if you work too hard at it you WILL kill it for yourself. That's the constant, horrifying line of doing something you love as a job. The nature of it being a job in the modern day has a very good chance of making you hate something that once brought you joy. Live for your joys, snatch them where you can, fight for a world where those joys can be the center of your life. Work is required (for now). It's not you.
this is why i never pursued a career in art or writing, despite how passionate i am about both. i knew having to do either as a job would ruin it for me.
As a Brazilian, I can affirm that the tilde is definitely the sexiest punctuation mark ever. It accentuates the word “tesão”, which is a word for lust in Portuguese. It’s used for augmentatives, very dominant and powerful.
As someone who can't work at all due to disability, I struggle a lot with socialising simply because I feel inferior to others who can and do work. I know that's not reasonable at all, but it's so ingrained at this point that I can't help the feeling. A part of me always says "You don't work so you should starve".
That is so real. Add to that the gaslighting that comes with having a disability at all, and boom, you get a vicious cycle that makes you feel guilty for existing.
I was called "lazy" by teachers at school. When copying off the blackboard (yes I'm old) I would do less than half of what my peers would do in the same time. At about age 12 I was diagnosed as short-sighted. I got glasses, and suddenly came up to speed with everybody else. An easy fix compared with the problems many have - but thinking about it today, not a single teacher suggested this! As a teacher myself now, if a student is doing less than I expect I *always* talk to them to find out if there's a difficulty we can try to solve.
Literally the way I was first diagnosed as short-sighted was when I came home from primary school upset that my teacher had told me off for "pretending not to be able to see the whiteboard" - which prompted my mum to take me to the optician, who immediately started figuring out my glasses prescription. More than ten years later, it still boggles my mind that this teacher decided that I, a kid who had no issues with my work or behaviour up until that week, had suddenly decided to lie about not being able to see the work from my seat at the back of the classroom - and didn't think for a moment that there might be something wrong that had changed things for me. I think it really does tie into the mindset that those who are struggling with school or work are just being lazy, and that everyone has the same potential in them if they just *choose* to live up to it - regardless of physical or mental barriers.
@@neverneverland5836 Even if you were a "troublemaker," that is such a common way to figure out a kid needs glasses. The fact she jumped straight to you fucking around is mindbogglingly weird.
@@neverneverland5836 I had a very similar situation happen to me with my 3rd grade teacher. One day in the classroom it suddenly felt like I had shards of glass in my stomach. I went to the nurse and the pains eventually faded. Nothing else seemed wrong with me so I was happy to go back to class, especially considering we had just started a group project I remember being excited about. My teacher then accused me of purposefully trying to get out of that activity by faking being sick, something I had never done before nor had even thought to do (I was a nerdy kid who enjoyed school). In 3rd grade I was 9-10 years old so looking back I wonder if those were very early menstrual pains before officially getting my period. Or, could have just been really painful indigestion, who knows? I'm pretty sure the lesson I learned there was that if I ever felt legitimately sick again, I was most definitely not going to be taken seriously so I'd better keep it to myself and suffer in silence. It's funny because later, in the 4th grade, I cracked my thumb at recess and started crying back in class after it wouldn't stop throbbing. I was, again, accused of trying to get out of class but I came back the next day with a cast on my arm. Wish I could say I remember the look on my teacher's face when she saw it, but I don't.
@@neverneverland5836 Even if the reason for that teacher not believing you had been that it was too much of a case of "sudden onset vision troubles": How about asking you whether you fell on your head or something?
The em dash was snubbed I say, SNUBBED! It's so long and-dare I say-assertive. It's not afraid to get into the middle of the action, if you're into that sort of thing.
I was an English/Journalism major, and had to regularly defend and advocate for my beloved em dash. Now I have to resort to the double dash in it's place right here on UA-cam--a grave keyboard oversight and hardship I cannot forgive.
Mildred, as someone who has watched most of ur videos at least 3 times (bc of the bad way my brain works), I want to tell you something that I wish I could hammer thru the heads of every content creator and artist: you've already done it. you've already done work. you already put SO MUCH out in the world, so many videos that we all can and will rewatch over and over again. it's out there and our appreciation of it doesn't expire after an hour, a day, a week, we're all still going to like it. it's still going to have made an impact on us. the demand to produce is a disease that keeps you and society sick!!!!! you already did the damn thing everything we get after this is just bonus :)
Not only was this a cathartic, informative, and encouraging video essay, but the BITS were immaculate. Absolutely the perfect ratio of education to levity.
What you said at the end really hits close to home. I'm 18 and appear to be in decent shape, but for some reason any time I do something especially taxing on my body it makes me physically ill. It's so fucking annoying to be so young and incapable of doing things that I know I should be able to do. I can hardly push a lawn mower around without my stomach deciding it doesn't want any part of this and I become so incredibly nauseated. I try not to beat myself up about, it's just the hand that I was dealt, but when an entire society looks down upon people with my kind of struggles, it becomes really hard to even accept myself.
I was doing an instacart delivery that included 3 gallons of water. Carrying that up two flights of stairs had me winded, when I used to be capable of so much more. It's not easy to deal with.
The terrible part is even people who supposedly have the time, I am disabled, spend so much effort meeting our needs , we are often to exhausted to enjoy that 'free time' any time I'm not actively seeing to the needs of my household, rent, food, utilities, education etc.... I just shut down and stare at the computer!
I'm a disabled unemployed single parent. I work literally 24/7 and the effort I put into that is hardly ever recognised. not even by myself because often times I still feel lazy and unable to really relax ever.
Oh big same. I have ADHD and it feels like I have to spend twice as much energy to be half as productive as the rest of my coworkers. In theory I have plenty of free time outside of work, but in practice I've already borrowed energy against that time and it needs to be spent paying back that debt.
I was a straight A honor roll student until I was 10. Then I experienced 3 deaths in my immediate family, all people I was very close to. Not to mention it was also the time I started realizing I liked boys and girls about the same, plus the time I started feeling a conscious need to act more masculine to fit in and avoid bullying. I had a ton going on. No good way to express what I was dealing with. And instead, just chalked it up on personal failings and that I had no excuse to slack on my schoolwork.
I watched the school system and child protective services create a psychopath. A kid was being abusive to others, fighting, pinching, spitting being a general bad kid. They stuck him in a class for BD kids, it got worse. He started fighting became a bully, spat on teachers. They brought CPS in, suspecting something was not right. Parents influential in church, "mighty fine people". CPS found no problems. School put him in special classes with other bad kids that caused him to get worse. He is serving a 20 year prison sentence because, as it turns out he killed someone on purpose without remorse. Turns out his parents were beating him and locking him in a closet for days at a time...and molesting him. Was he a monster or did he become what he was taught? Children make part of themselves the things they are told they are...or they rebel and become something else. Nature vs nuture is about 90% confusing, and could be argued one way or the other. BUT in the end, if you don't acknowledge the problems and work to fix or work around them shit happens.
Thats horrifying and as bad it os to kill someone,i cant blame him he got there, he is a victim and killer. Also i know the right or better wrong situation can make anyone a murderer, and by god, the one here is in all the wrong.
If you really research genes, you’ll see that environment is integral to how genes develope. It can be argued both spiritually and scientifically that nature and nurture are inseparable.
I want to leave this here because this video made me think about my situation. I was a chef. In that job in order to get the good pay and the good gigs you have to work hard, and you need to be mercenary about it. I had undiagnosed mental health issues so in order to perform at that level I thought I needed to I used heroin and other drugs to mask those problems. I get to the point I have an executive chef gig. Its years of abusing my body, not being around family...and finally it just happened. My OCD basically completely disordered my life so much that I only leave the house to go to doctors appointments. Burn out is real, and if you have other mental illness it can really mess you up. I am still a workaholic, but I just rattle around my house and my garden. even though I am on disability now, I feel like I am not doing enough and I am somehow less than others.
My dad often comments about how "hard-working" I am because I have "achieved" more than your average person my age. It's always interesting watching him become befuddled as I discuss the fact that all that I'm doing is following the path of least resistance, I'm just lucky, fortunate, and privileged enough to have that path overlap with what people would often consider that of a "driven" or "motivated" individual. To be fair, I am considerate of myself and others and tend to not act rashly and think things through, but that's all because that's what I prefer to do. I do more things that I like to do or make me comfortable doing than otherwise. I'm not a driven or motivated individual beyond the drive to do the things I want to do. It'd be erroneous to compare my internal processes of "motivation" to those of another as much as it's folly to make compare the value of two people based on the color of their hair or the length of their left pinky.
Ah, dyscalculia! The cause of immense heartache in my schooling, as I was somehow getting As and Bs in every subject but math because I "wasn't trying."
The timing of this could not be better. I just got fired by an abusive boss who worked me to the bone. I now have two months to find a new job/career/life. EDIT: "Gorloch the Defiler!" HA!
Hey sorry to here about that I’m sure that sucks just want to say you’re not alone. I got fired about a month ago, for insubordination at my Job. My first infraction ever in my three years there. I worked there all through the pandemic, even worked overnights for them for a whole year because of the shut down. Overtime etc you name it. But one slip up and I was done. And now I’m wrestling between getting another Job in the field *which already is shit pay but also left a bad taste in my mouth* or maybe go back to school, who knows 🤷🏿♂️..But what I do know is I feel exhausted but also very lazy at the exact same time and it’s crazy Lool Just wrapping your head around it makes you more tired. Good Luck out there corny as it may sound videos like this make me feel like we’re headed to better times we gon be alright 👍🏿🥲.
I'm usually uneffected by direct addresses to the audience, but the one in this video about working too hard, got me tearing up. Even though (or maybe because) I've been unemployed since mid-pandemic. It's so easy to slip back into a capitalist mentality of worth in regards to yourself.
"Humanity discovers the power of dinosaur juice! This would later prove to be a pretty big mistake." God Thought Slime has some great writing chops. Reminds me of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.
I'm more of an ampersand lady, myself. Fun, flirty, & curvy as hell. In all seriousness, it's always great to hear from you. I'm only about a quarter of the way through the video so far, but I find your takes quite eye‐opening. Eternally grateful that your videos helped radicalize me over a year ago!
I participated in the Great Resignation. For twenty years, I worked as a software engineer doing absolutely nothing of value, and while I was hilariously underpaid compared to my co-workers, owing to the fact I am AFAB, I was still privileged and fortunate to save enough money to quit for an entire year (but only one!). After two years of budgeting, planning and grappling with the "moral quandary" of quitting my job, I finally left the industry that gutted my passion for technology and put me through two nervous breakdowns and a heart attack. It's been a month since I "retired," and I'm still experiencing dread that if I start reading all the books I've waited on, or playing music on a piano I haven't touched in a decade, I will suddenly never be able to do anything else--I'll never be able to find work again, my family will starve, and I will bring shame upon my house. I missed two small, simple pleasures so much that I am wracked with guilt and terror over indulging in them, even though there is nothing left to compete with. Still, it's easier to breathe day by day, and even though I don't know what I'll do a year from now, I know what I won't do ever again. Thank you for your hard work, Mildred.
Worst thing yet. When you are out of work and having to cope on very little money or security, you don't get to use all this free time you have on writing that series of novels, composing that masterpiece or coding the best game ever, because the job centre put enormous pressure on you to spend as much time as possible looking for work, so that even when you can't be bothered to do that you're coping with shame and depression about how lazy you are. And so you somehow never find time to do the things you want even when you're not working. Capitalism sucks. One of your best videos btw.
As much as I don’t like virtue signalling, there are problems that are too big for certain kinds of people who, at best, are left alone (sometimes for mental health reasons), functioning very differently in a comfortable zone of theirs. That’s why I pay attention to my limits.
I worked as an illegal CNA at a family friend's assisted living home when I was 14 thru 21. I did all the things a normal CNA does, but for about $6 an hour and without any of the certifications or credentials. It was in Idaho. They told us not to think of it as "work" but as a "celebration" of the end of life. We weren't "employees", we were "helpers", "carers" and "friends until the end" for our patients. I was poisoned by it. My manager would call me while I was in school and bring me to tears with her "discipline". I held the hands of the sick and dying after rehearsals for the school play. I was abused by dementia patients, called demeaning names, groped and even molested by old, senile men, before I was even legally allowed to drive. On the clock, I was subject to the most humiliating, disgusting, horrific work known to man. Our facility did not hire biohazard cleanup, so I also often cleaned the sheets, clothing, and carpets of residents who deceased upon them. I watched a woman with a brain aneurysm pass in a violent and bloody seizure. I dissociated in front of her adult daughter, who was screaming at me, a literal child, to "do something". I just stood there. What was I supposed to do? They used me until my body broke down due to many years of unassisted patient lifts. I was let go with a firm conversation that I would not be seeking workers compensation, because I had no contract to prove my employment. They insinuated that they would deny I had ever worked there. After everything. And this facility was owned by A FRIEND OF MY FAMILY. Other employees thought I was FAVORED. They were RIGHT!!! I watched an 8 month pregnant coworker lift a 300 lb patient alone! Our chef worked through chemo!!! My manager brought her two year old son every day, because she couldn't afford daycare! I am 30 now, and my PTSD is still debilitating. I still have nightmares often, and use cannabis to manage my anxiety. My therapist told me she couldn't help me any more when I panicked at her recommendation of vocational rehabilitation. She didn't know what else to do. I refuse to work. I am a conscientious objector to work. My experience was *privileged* compared to the agony of modern forced labor on the global south. All work under this system is evil. All work under this system is exploitation. I thought I was a "helper". I thought I was doing something important. I was being abused. No one can help me, so I just make art and chill with my cat. I get snap, and live. Sorry for the trauma dumping, but it is so impossible to express the true evil of "work" without concrete deets. I hate work. I hate capitalism. I will fight it until.the day I die.
i know it's just a bit where you say you can hear our negative self talk and that we're being too hard on ourselves i fully broke down crying on the way to work today. thank you for making this
I've been struggling with my self image of being lazy for years. In reality it's always been a way for me to grasp some sort of control over my internal narrative. I now know I have severe executive dysfunction and probably always had. Before learning this it was easier for me to view myself as lazy because the alternative was facing a frightening void of inability. Laziness was the only explanation I had.
My ADHD brain relates. I thought I was lazy, or maybe didn't care enough. I also interpreted my shifting interests as being a quitter. If I didn't stick with something long term then I felt bad, I was doing something everyone else wasn't by stopping and moving onto another interest. Now I embrace it, it's one of my favorite aspects of myself. I know so much weird stuff that I think is cool and no one else cares. That used to bother me to, now I talk about my interests with a carefree attitude. if someone looks bored I shift topic without guilt. if only I could give that skill to a 15 year old version of me, lmao.
@@Pensnmusic Oh, so much same. I've started viewing myself as a collector of hobbies. And now that I can see the pattern I don't let myself go absolutely wild at the drop of a hat. For instance I placate my urge to start painting warhammer minis again, for the third time, with watching other people doing it on youtube.
Woah this is resonates really hard with me - this idea that if I don't try, and think of myself as being lazy, it's better than actually putting effort into something and finding out I'm incompetent or simply unable to be successful
Mildred, I can't tell you how much I needed the laugh that "apostrophes are a little possessive" gave me. It's been a rough morning and that genuinely helped, so thank you. I have to go to work now (the irony) but I'll finish watching the video as soon as I get home, I'm sure it's a banger.
When these conversations come up I always remember how one of the groups the nazis targeted as genetically and morally inferior was the "asocial" or "workshy" against those who dont conform to the social order. It often targeted those already targeted such as the homeless, Romani, sex workers and people with substance issues like alcoholism, communists etc, but would also of course target many people on the mental health and disability and neurodivergent spectrum who wouldn't have been able to be identified as disabled by normal medical diagnosis at the time, but of course, using their fake sciences they could look at productivity and rebellion and inability to adapt to social norms ans decide your value as a living human based on whether they can force it into you or not. So whether we talk about laziness as a personal moral failure or due to genetic and medical issues there has always been the same amount of stigma. It's worth getting rid of that moral condemnation and focus on productivity rather than just bring up our adhd or whatever, because you never know when someone will just decide that people with adhd or whatever disability are just lesser people
I completely burnt out working in our family business. We finally sold the business and it was like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. I was lucky enough to make enough from the sale to quit working for a while. Nothing worse than working in a family business. It gets bound up in familial responsibility and it seemed like it was all we talked about, no matter when or where we got together.
I needed to see this today. I'm lying in bed crying because I just spent the past month moving house, trying to get it all done before school started. I begged for help, and no one would help me. Now it is the day before the first day school, and I just told someone that I cannot, by myself, help them move my living room furniture. I physically can't. And I still have to get my kids ready, despite having no money because someone stole money from me. And I have a massive toothache. My house is a mess. I'm completely overwhelmed, and in pain. And I STILL feel guilty that I did not go make a futile attempt at moving furniture today. Edit: tildes are it.
I really wanted to be a social worker because in all my years of therapy the two social workers I met were the ONLY people to help. You definitely need passion to do that job. I have it but I also don't want to burn out in under a month.
Please agressive selfcare, i have no tip really, but agressive selfcare. To not burn out fast, and maybe not exhaust empathy too fast. To be clear empathy is goodbut household for bot burning put too.
The part about musicians making no money hits especially close to home. I have two music degrees. I know more about theory and orchestration and How To Make Music Happen than most people. I'm 90K in debt because of it. But have I actually been spending my time post-graduation making music? of course not! I've desperately been trying to prove to some company somewhere that I'm worthy of being paid $15 an hour to do literally anything other than corporate retail. And, surprise surprise, most companies do not think that I, a person with a master's degree, am qualified enough to sit behind a desk and make appointments for minimum wage. It feels like a direct punishment for daring to study something artistic instead of going into something like computer science or engineering like I was "supposed to"
the irony of being a creative in this capitalist society is that society tells us that what we do has no value, while also having a huge demand for the things we produce. people want music, movies, TV shows, books, games, etc to consume, but for some reason they don't think we deserve to be able to afford a living making those things for their consumption.
ummmm Jimi Hendrix couldn't even read music. You clearly don't know how to make music happen or you would have made it happen by now. College won't teach you how to create anything, just work a job.
@@TheGuindo Dude people who are involved in those fields (directors, musicians, actors, writers) make a ton of money. Why do you think there are millions of starving artists out there.
@@seanfoley974 Because it's difficult to make decent money in an artistic career without a "big break" of some kind. For every Stephen King out there, there's a hundred other writers who have to work on their novels in bits and pieces during their lunch break at their day jobs because they don't get paid enough to quit and write full time. For every _Abba_ there's a hundred garage bands who can't get a record label to give them the time of day. Under capitalism, the only measurement of value is monetary profit. So creative works are only valuable inasmuch as you can profit from selling them. The _process_ of creation is not seen as having value, even though it's a necessary step in getting a finished work that can be sold for profit. And even if you're the next Charles Dickens with a _fantastic_ completed manuscript to show a publisher, it means nothing if every publisher thinks it's "too niche" to be profitable.
@@TheGuindo I have to disagree. A fantastic completed manuscript, no matter how niche, would always be appreciated by an audience. It may take some time to find that audience. The Stephen King's also wrote during their lunch break or on their day jobs. Chuck Palahniuk is a great example of this.
Funny story, I got formally diagnosed with ADHD several months (a year?) after you posted your video about getting diagnosed. The 25+ years of being called lazy and internalizing it, because i definitely didn't have ADHD, severe anxiety, and trauma- yeah. Thanks for another great video, Mildred
I just got back from a 5-day vacation. It was probably the last one my grandparents will ever be able to go on with me, my siblings, and my cousins, our last hurrah of sorts. We saw amazing things, spent time together, heard stories about our grandparents' lives we had never heard before. I took 3 unpaid days off of work, plus the weekend, to go on it, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Yet despite my boss assuring me it was okay, despite the fact that we had so little work he was literally letting two people a day stay home for two weeks beforehand, I still felt mildly guilty for doing it, and caught myself promising to work extra hard when I got back to 'make up for it'.
That is power. No forcing people but people forcing them to work. That is the difference between US and China. China are too direct. China is younger and too zealous in helping their country men. Sure China handled the Pandemic better and provide their people the bare minimum. Let me clear there are no good or bad guys. Being a Government means having a monopoly on legitimate violence.
@@undeadblizzard China is much more ancient than the US. In fact, it has such an ingrained working culture (and not also China, but most countries strongly culturally tied, like Korea and Japan) that the standard of work for them is 10 to 12 hours AS A MINIMUM. To overwork yourself to death is much more common there than anywhere in Europe, America or Africa. Now, the problem with China is that now they have "other examples" and they have things to compare thanks to the internet. That's the main problem here. But that's it. Extenuating work culture has always been a strong point of asian cultures, much more than the west ones.
Man, hearing about that kid who was ashamed to not be able to turn in assignments reminds me of two of my own teachers. My 5th grade teacher told us a story the first week of school about a former student of his who was hospitalized and asked the nurses to move her IVs from her right arm to her left so she could do her assignments and that's why he wouldn't accept any excuse for missed work unless you were in a coma or dead. This to a bunch of 5th graders. I also had a college professor who had in his syllabus that missing even a single class without an excuse directly from the dean's office for one of the reasons the school mandated would result in immediately failing the class. On the first day he *bragged* that he failed a student for missing class to attend his grandmother's funeral. While I was in his class my father had a heart attack. I sent an email to the professor saying what happened and to please excuse me if I did not volunteer much during the class discussion as I wouldn't be there mentally and would be coming from then returning to the hospital, but as per his policy I would be there. His response was a single sentence. "I do not think it is unreasonable to expect people to show up and follow instructions." Capitalism and the Protestant work ethic are death cults.
i wonder how many mental ailments would just be minor quirks if society wasnt organised so that everyone MUST WORK ALL YEAR
fr
Like adhd. It’s not natural to concentrate on the same 3 tasks for 40 hours per week.
Yeah omg. I have disastrously high clinical significance of ADHD, and I am TERRIBLE at never-ending jobs. I just want regular, unobstructed access to jobs that only last a few days, weeks or months at a time. I would be a VASTLY more successful person under capitalism if I didn’t have to sacrifice my spontaneity, lose access to novelty in my life, and subject myself to the conditions that foster burnout.
…although I’m also autistic, so that level of routine disruption would probably mess me up too. Being an autistic with ADHD is a real “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type situation 😅
@@BirthquakeRecords As an adhd person myself I can only agree. I literally cannot work in a "normal" 8h+ job with shedules and crap. I had to make my own business where I can work the way it suits me and that worked out so well that I even can work for 12h now somtimes, as long as I can do it *my* way. (still not healthy tho)
Also have "autistic personality traits" whatever the heck that means. lol
Apparently, looking at recent research in the field, that´s not uncommon among adhd people.
@Birthquake Records honestly I find it hard to focus of the same task for an extended period of time
Hi! Archaeologist here. I study precontact North American archaeology (so hunter gatherers). I just wanted to point out that hunter gatherer societies often stored food. There is a spectrum often used by archaeologists to understand subsistence practices, or how a group of people survives, procures food, etc. On one end we have hunter-gatherers that routinely store food and will stay in one place for longer periods of time especially during the winter months. We call these groups "collectors." There are also much more mobile groups that don't practice food storage that we call "foragers." Although it should be noted forager is also used as a synonym for hunter-gatherer in general. There is a wide range of subsistence practices that exist on this spectrum and it is very difficult to box a society into one or another category. I just thought I would point this out in case anyone was interested!
Dang old Anthropology. Good stuff!
nice
Interesting❤ i like it!
Name one song by the Collectors. I'll wait . . . .
23:16 - "Workers organized, they had strikes... they did some terrorism."
It's important to point out that owners of companies did plenty of terrorism back, like murdering workers who went on strike and fought for better conditions and wages.
what did you expect them to do in response to terrorism lol
@@seanfoley974 In response? often it was first! Nevermind that they considered striking "terrorism". NEVERMIND that the workers getting murdered often had nothing to do with the terrorism, and the companies knew it.
@@SolarFlareAmerica Yep, the first time Americans were bombed from the sky it was our own military doing it to striking workers. State terror always comes before labor terror. How else do you think labor terror is motivated?
nah, in most cases the companies didn't do terrorism. It's not terrorism if it's legal.
Exactly my point. Most average people will hear that comment and quit watching it if not earlier. I honestly wish more people on the left took this into consideration, but it seems most people prefer passivity.
I was once on the phone with my pregnant friend who said she felt guilty that, due to a cramp, she was lying down instead of working. A few hours later she gave birth.
She was literally in labor and she felt guilty for being "unproductive".
True story.
How dare you assume only women can get pregnant!
@crowmob-yo6ry they didn't say that. Good luck with whatevers going on with you
@@crowmob-yo6ry "Oh no, a genuine example of capitalism beeing a horrible nightmare messing with peoples heads, making them miserable? I have no rebuttal to that but lack the self-awareness to question my own values and believes, so how do I deflect from that? Umm...uh yeah, transphobia"
@@crowmob-yo6ry 🤖
@@groerhahn225 I know it’s a bad joke but pretending you think they were serious is even worse. You realize that they are saying that because they are transphobic, and they genuinely believe that trans men having a possibility of being pregnant is proof that being transgender is not real. This is not a question. I know that you know this. So, why even pretend that it is serious? You are only reinforcing their transphobia. This isn’t even a dog whistle, this is blatant transphobia. This is the equivalent of making an attack helicopter joke.
I'm disabled and in my experience, people do *not* like hearing anti-work sentiment expressed by the sick and disabled. I've been scolded and accused of welfare fraud and some other heinous shit by people I thought deserved my love+respect. Mild-mannered little nerds turning into cops and debasing themselves by wildly pointing fingers
Even if you work on VA disability, there will be people who go "Fuck you, I pay your salary!"
"Go fuck yourself, can I have a raise, boss?"
I'm combat wounded. People applaud me. When I'm against capitalism, I'm a filthy liberal.
Oh I’ve been there. When I quit my job when it was literally making me sick and sue-e-side-all, and couldn’t work for a few years, my husbands brothers wife’s parents (you do the math) HEADS EXPLODED. And I had a couple of very uncomfortable holiday dinners when I got stuck sitting next to the sister in laws Mom, who grilled me about what I do with myself all day. And I knew “Laying in bed staring out the window and waiting for sleep to bring another day until the misery of my existence passes” wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer.
i'm so sorry you both have had to and likely continue to have to deal with this shit. there is such a big lack of engagement with disability among radicals and it's been made inescapably clear during the pandemic when so many radicals acted with flagrant disregard for the lives of others. more power to you both!
My 20something managers gape at me when I tell them "I have finite time existing as a human being, my time is the only thing (other than my flesh) that I inherently possess. Therefore I will not give you more of my time than I can emotionally or physically afford to give up. I have firm boundaries"
I just wish I could kill the stupid voice in my head that is offended that I have been sick and disabled for years. Tuning other people out is way easier.
I graduated from a VFX program that explicitly told us "if you're not working, you're falling behind." They caught a ton of shit right after I graduated for running an ad campaign that said "You can sleep when you graduate." And they justified it because "that's how it will be in a studio". The cycle of abuse is a feature, not a bug.
"You can sleep when you graduate and get a job in a studio where sleep is outlawed" fucking amazing
Reminds me of F.D. Signifier talking about the cycle of fathers (specifically black fathers) pushing their sons to work hard and to not show weakness because they're preparing them for the "real world". In a way, the father really is trying to prepare them for the brutality of the Working world, thinking it's better if their child can survive out their even it ruins their relationship. In the process though, this just normalizes the brutality to the point where you can't even consider a different way for the world to operate.
Well, THAT’S a new way to use “a feature, not a bug”!
Are you like one of the AI in Matrix Resurrections?
Same.
the only good boss i've ever had once said to me (when I said I didn't want to take a vacation) "how can you support workers and socialist causes if you don't apply those same values to yourself?"
but you don't understand, if I stop working I'll die. everyone else can take time off without it reflecting on their inherent self, but i'm actually the lazy one so i can't stop working. (and that's capital's trick baby!)
Good person.
i never liked holidays. its just one of those perks that essentially admits the point that you are being paid too little by your work. cant i just work everyday and get a fair wage? nah you gotta accept min wage and take a week of holiday every year cuz we say so. i dont bother with work anymore.
@leftism is a disease i rent my house
That crown got gorilla glue on it
What I love about "Murdered by Big Joel," is that it's still a funny-ass sentence even if you don't know who he is.
I am glad I'm not the only one laughing. Because that was gold
Of course, it's even better if you do know.
That traitor :(
I saw it through the echoes of time. It was/is/will be hilarious.
@@democrrrracymanifest it’s because Bread-tubers have a terrible sense of humor. Be glad you don’t get it.
I cannot overstate how incredibly, stupidly good for my mental health my day job is.
I'm a crossing guard! Every day of the school year, I go out to job (twice per day, three on a Friday) and I get both physical exercise AND do measurable, obviously, clear good things for my community.
...it has also made me hate cars. I just hate cars so much. They suck so bad, holy shit.
I have some city infrastructure channels that you would love
they also hate cars, turns out cars actually really suck, who knew?
Car bad. Train good. Abolish highways.
Can we talk about how terrible and not-the-solution electric cars and AI driven cars are? Like I get that they’re immeasurably better than fossil fuel dependent vehicles, but simply moving to another single person (and where I live, in San Francisco, often ZERO people) in a vehicle solution isn’t going to solve the MYRIAD of problems that cars have caused in our cities and lives in general. What we need is free and better public transportation. And yes, trains are amazing and should never have fallen out of favor and been replaced by highways.
@@goodgrief888 The worst part is how even if every car was electric, in many places in the US your energy is going to be coal-based, so the actual reduction is piss all.
@@DaFieFie I agree with the main point that electric cars are a slightly less bad version of gas cars, but as far as emissions go:
1) EVs are far more efficient than cars that run on internal combustion engines. We've taken for granted how cartoonish it is to power a car by making tiny explosions that move pistons to turn wheels is just a cartoonish way to power a car. ICEs are practically an oil furnace that also happen to put some of its energy toward moving a car.
2) Moving to EVs is part of a two part plan that involves moving as many energy sources as we can to electricity AND cleaning up the energy grid. You're correct to point out that doing one without the other is ineffective, but using that as an argument against electrified transportation is a bit like asking what's the point of installing solar panels and wind farms if we're just gonna have highways clogged with cars that are just directly burning fossil fuels anyway. We need both.
Preferably the "electrified transportation" would be buses, trains, etc, but whatever it is needs to run on electric.
not me literally breaking down in tears at "You have not failed, you have been failed."
As a disabled person on government income thats barely enough to keep food in my belly, who can barely walk to the bathroom most days let alone wash a dish, thank you for this video. I didn't know how much I needed it.
💜💜
My mother literally sent me to an outdoor program that doubled as an arm of the troubled teen industry one summer because in her words "she didn't want me sitting around the house doing nothing all summer." As if I didn't have friends to hang out with, as if i didn't have hobbies that I enjoyed, as if we don't live where the summers are 100+ degrees with humidity.
And guess what? I was miserable the entire time leading up to it and the entirety of said trip. The other teens in my group were nice and I enjoyed their company, but I have not and will not ever forgive that mentality.
Sounds like the kind of crap my mother would pull. It can be pretty traumatic to grow up with a parent who is constantly deciding your priorities, particularly when your friends get to hang out and enjoy their free time. I had this sort of thing happen to me so often that it was well into adulthood before I realised that I could decide my own priorities and what was/is a meaningful way to spend my time.
Some of those programs kill kids. I'm happy you got away with 'normal' scars from her actions.
The whole point of summer vacation now is for kids to hang out and play. I mean, back in the day it was so you could work the fields, but for most of us those days are gone.
Yeah!! My mother refused to let me enjoy my time off from school too. Which is such bullshit, because now I miss my summers dearly like any other adult, and my last few truly free summers I didn’t get to enjoy because of her inability to let me have actual time off.
@@electronraygun6346 this so much. I hate talking about trauma because I come from a “rich” family (we were not rich and I’m, in fact, desperately poor now) so people always shut me out of the conversation without realizing that I spent 17 years of my life as a mindless drone. Growing up at 21 isn’t easy and shame on the people who believe trauma is only about “abuse”
I "hard work"ed myself into disability.
lazy
@@VVVVV99611 alright bud
Thumbs up of support. Hope you’re keeping well.
I feel you but idk if I'm just messed in the head I feel the need to work hard and try my best, I'm diabetic and broke my pelvis a few years back but I've never let it hold me back, it dosnt get noticed much but never give up
My dad worked himself to death at the ripe old age of 61. He crippled himself as a diesel mechanic and died a few short years after the injury due to complications from treatment. He never regretted how hard he worked and maintained that everyone should work just as hard as he did.
I figured out the scam when I was in 3rd grade. I was a really smart kid who was bored in school so they had me take a test which I passed and they put me in the academically gifted program for English and math. So after a couple months I realized that all it was is just more work. You’re in a different classroom for those subjects, but it’s really just more work. I wasn’t any less bored. I was now just bored and busier. I was bored doing this extra work I didn’t want to do. So eventually I told my parents it was too hard (it wasn’t) and got myself removed from the program. And I just spent the free time in the regular class drawing or reading.
I carried that lesson into higher levels of education. I avoided honors classes in high school because it was a bunch of extra work outside of class and I instead used my free time hanging out with friends, getting heavily into music, learning guitar and drums, learning how to build websites, getting involved in my school’s theater department. I used my free time and energy to learn things I wanted to learn instead of doing a bunch of assignments on stuff I couldn’t care less about.
That's how it's done. Bravo.
This, and so much this. I'm personally unsure how I could change the left's attitudes but I hope they'll understand the importance of youth involvement. Imagine how much more effective their message would be. Then again, it's quite difficult with a little certain thing.
I wish I had known back then - I’m unemployed currently and feel like I’ve fallen so far behind on all the things that matter to me because my parents told me I’d get everything I want if I just wasted my time with honors classes and sucking up. So much of my strength just _poof_ gone.
@@iseetheendisnear2416 yeah same. I wasted my youth doing all the advanced classes instead of having a social life and I'm still suffering in my mid 20s from the social deficiency, and am no more successful education-wise than if I had just taken regular classes and probably got a 4.0 gpa.
This is kinda what I did too. Although I took it a different direction than you. At my school, just by taking an AP class, you auto got 1.0 added to your GPA for that class. So I took the AP classes and slacked the fuck off, I did almost none of the homework and aced all the tests, earning myself a nice C average, which got effectively bumped to a B (3.0) when averaged in for GPA. So I sure wasn't valedictorian, but I still graduated with a good sounding GPA despite having done pretty much no work outside of school hours. Just remember there's more than one way to scam the scam.
"Don't ever argue with an economist by the way, it's like arguing with someone who's really into astrology except that economists cause actual problems in the world, and don't have good drugs."
I laughed out loud so hard, god damn :'D
💯
As someone who has ADHD and has difficulty to keep a job, this video gives me so much hope. thank you thought slime
After 5 years of fast-paced factory work I can honestly say the "hard work" meme not only fails to pay off, it's actually crippling the company.
-The brutal non-stop pace scares away new employees
-I'm genuinely not allowed to share my expertise with others because it means we spend less time being 'productive'
-Pushing us to be more and more productive is causing us to make mistakes, increasing complaints and quality issues
But of course, I can't express any of this in a graph or in a neat little metric, so it cannot be acknowledged.
It's not even just that. You CAN express these things numerically and econometrically - for example, there is wide academic agreement that unions lower inequality, increase wages on the aggregate, and hell in some cases can even boost productivity.
So why doesn't your average neoliberal economist who has never had a real job hate unions so much, given these measurable advantages? It's simple: these people pretend that economics, and especially econometrics, are a hard science where all the 'correct' metrics that society 'must' maximize are exactly fixed and out of the quesiton. And guess what, these fixed an unquestionable metrics... are all the ones that unions don't pump up! What an amazing coincidence! And of course, they are also the ones that measure the well-being of workers the least.
Basically the problem isn't that these problems cannot be expressed measurably. It's that when you do express them measurably, it just so happens that the entire neoliberal establishment will tell you that worker happiness, take-home wages and inequality are all completely useless evil socialist metrics, and that the only things that matter are corporate revenue and the total aggregate nominal GDP. How terribly convenient!
Reminds me of when a think tank tried to disprove the productivity-wage gap, and did so by aggregating the wages of ultra-compensated managers with production workers and recalculating inflation to base it on industrial machinery pricing because normal people eat forklifts apparently.
Yeah, the capitalist craze for hard work is ruining your productivity. But even if it did not... it would still be shit. You deserve rest. We all do.
"People in poverty could be scooped up and forced to work" Literally happened to my grandmother. She was 1 of 10 kids in a incredibly poor family in ct. state government took a bunch of the older kids and put them on a farm and they became slaves until they were old enough to run away. they were physically abused constantly. really fucked her up.
she was so strong tho. I am legally changing my name in a little over 2 hours, her name will be my middle name.
welcome to socialism
@@seanfoley974 Socialism is firetrucks and ambulances and the very roads they drive on and of course those cops I'm sure you're in love with. It's not forced labor. Fucking get real.
@@robeyclark So stop whining about capitalism because I guess we do have it in the United States to some degree. And I have no love for the police.
@@seanfoley974 oh yes the socialist state of Connecticut.
forcing people to work for corporate profits is the peak of socialism.
next they're going to pay for the kid to go to college.
Hey, congratulations on the name change; it’s pretty difficult :)
I got called lazy today at work by the person I was training. It absolutely blew my mind. Then the whole office went into this EXACT conversation. I think people are really starting to take note. This is a perfect video, thanks for all the grim laughs. 11/10
So..? Why did you get called lazy?
@@nicklasveva I would assume that the trainee had an imperfect and incorrect view of the concept of laziness, because of course, laziness is made up.
Okay that’s the second time this week that you’ve made actual human tears well up in my eyeballs when rewatching a video. Thank you for your humanity and compassion
Wait no… not humanity…
Uhhhhh godliness
“Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.” - Richard Linklater (GREAT vid Mildred, your best yet, imo)
Interesting opinion though.
I'm of two mind's about both inaction and action. I do think that going to either extreme is absurd, but because of capitalism pushes ALLL of of us to extreme action, there's bound to be rebound. more than anything though, i really dislike doing counterproductive things, and that's at least half of what most people seem to be doing nowadays, working job's that just seem to be making them poorer, driving car's that don't actually get them anywhere they want to be, and in relationships that just seem to be making them angrier and sadder. while i wouldn't label myself as a slacker, as someone who is a male disabled NEET, i'm probably called that many time's behind my back. i just tend to view it as spending my time and energy on thing's that i think will improve my health and well being, spending time on things i actually care about, and actually ENJOYING life.
there's so many both in my family and wider community that set out to do so, but get so enmeshed in how capitalism and society defines these thing's, that they fully forget that as children, it was US who defined it for ourselves.
aye me when asked "what will you do" like for a carer, by family, when I can't get it out of my head that hard work's all a scam, and after already being likely disabled from rotating shift work (perpetually tired ova here yet still somehow relating to mildred's comment about needing to move/work always or die of paralysis like a shark) :: dumpster dive, squat, drift, and evade violence doers.
If I didn't have to "work" to survive, I would create. Constantly. I'd take breaks from creating and use those breaks to experience the creations of others. Then I'd use the inspiration I get from the creations of others to create *more*. Creating is what makes me happy and makes me feel fulfilled. I dream of a day when I could just do that and not have to worry about making enough money to avoid homelessness, illness, and starvation.
It's all about that hierarchy of needs. If one person can do the work of 100 when it comes to all our basic needs, and we have as many people as we do, there _will_ be those who get fulfillment from any job. There's no _need_ to force people into work that they don't enjoy.
@@Cellidor I agree! The unfortunate thing is that when I learned how things *could* be different, it didn't really make me feel better about my situation. In some ways, I suppose it's better, but in many ways it's worse.
Because the reality is that I'm stuck in this situation. There's no way out of it unless the system itself changes, and that's not happening any time soon. So for myself and many others, there are no real solutions that aren't entirely dependent on being lucky or magically having less physical and/or mental health issues.
@@ThePurbleKing It's a hell of a time we live in, isn't it?
Did I write this comment in my sleep? Seriously, I feel exactly the same, I couldn't have said this better myself.
Well said. Beats sludging thru work
This is very cathartic to watch. I’ve been grappling with the internalized labeling of “being lazy” and “apathetic” all my life due to my inability to do school related work at home due to trauma. Helps a lot.
Yeah I know. ADHD makes it hard to because I get bored easily. I am productive if I care. I am more interested in Cooking and Art. However I have to be productive like being an accountant. Accountant make bank and stable. Yes. The idea of doing one thing forever and little time for anything else is depressing.
four days ago??
@@candlemuncher2358 Patreon early access
I had trauma/bad mental health at school and home and 20 years later am starting to unpick how I feel about myself. I spent so much time in bed unable to do anything and still think I’m lazy for it :( thinking back I managed to build a pretty ok life for myself and that was hard work!
Just adding my story because I’m sure there’s a lot like us out there…
👋🏾
I work with children who have different learning issues @@Detaur. Trauma can be crippling to the brain's ability to learn. In layman's terns the brain will focus on the trauma as a method of dealing with it (even when sometimes you're not consciously aware of it) over anything else. It will try to force through that memory, feeling, thought, etc. because it "thinks" it is helping. Don't get me started on how related feelings of fear, anxiety, anger can destroy a person's ability to learn.
I too deal with some issues (how I got "into" my profession in the first place). They can be dealt with, even conquered, over time.
It upsets me to no end that you didn't receive the help and empathy you required as a child.
It could have made a huge difference.
You're not "lazy" or "apathetic", don't give up!
Keep fighting the good fight. 😊
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Perfection!
Perfectly put.
perfect
The thing you said about musicians is literally the thing that I've been saying for ages to OTHER MUSICIANS I LITERALLY WORK WITH. Like as a musician myself, other players I work with genuinely believe that their labour has no value which is why they're willing to take $60 gigs and a few beer tickets for hours of music. But clearly people love what we do, we pack a room full of people and get them dancing and singing along. If we need to get super literal about justifying the value we bring, we're literally helping people restore their labour power but that feels like a sterile way to frame it.
I'm musician as well. Part of the problem at least with the local venues is they see themselves as a bar with music instead of a music venue that also sells alcohol. They don't make enough of a deal about the music and are afraid to charge appropriate prices for tickets or the cover charge at the door. I think they think most artists and bands that play there aren't worth the hype instead of working making the artists or bands a big deal. It would be a win win for artists and venues. I play around Minneapolis and a few venues lately seem to taking this approach. The venue my band is playing this Saturday doesn't open until an hour before the music. They are now a music venue that serves drinks and food.
"I have many things so God must love me"
Something about rich folks and camels and needles
There is no god
A good portion of the new testament is just an attack on the just world hypothesis.
Unironically, Jesus was a socialist icon. I'm not even Christian, but he kind of slayed. He literally flipped tables, and destroyed the property of exploiters. He hung out with sex workers, and stood up for disabled people.
@@VVVVV99611 ooh we got an edgy one! Congrats!
The OP is just saying the people re: 25:30 straight up reversed a famous Bible quote 180 degrees to have the opposite message because it benefited them.
"It's hard enough just to be a person" This hit hard, I'm unemployed and yet this video felt extremely relatable, my mental state feels like a full-time job of anguish, living is hard enough work for me and the time I spend not doing something productive makes me feel lazy and not deserving of happiness. This mentality that Capitalism pushes infects so many parts of our lives, not just work and labour, the ways in which in intersects with people's rights and the opinion of minorities as lazy and asking for special treatment are a strain of the same infection.
@Chandler Burse I don't think it's quite like that. Back in those ancient societies it wasn't like they had to produce goods and services in order to pay the bills on their home every month. They worked together as a community (staying productive) to build homes and provide food for each other without asking everyone to give a monthly payment for it. Everything they did was in productive benefit of each other by providing a service for a service. Once that service was rendered it was considered "paid", they weren't then continually taxed on it and certainly didn't have the mindset that every service they provided needed to be more profitable for one of the parties involved over the other.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- well back then you were usually dead by 30 so Idk how many taxes you had to pay lol
Don't let anyone try and convince you working on your mental state isn't worth it. I've been slowly working social anxiety out of my system and it's the reason I'm happy again
I know this will sound horrific but work has really made me free in a way. I am working my dream job tho so maybe I'm just an exception.
@@Luka_3D Doesn't sound horrific, glad you have found a workplace/position that works for you and doesn't drain your life away lol.
Even as a child I remember coming to the agonizing realization that it was mandatory to be institutionalized. You had to be on the ledger of SOME dysfunctional, self-perpetuating, flesh-eating institution that didn't care about individual people in the slightest, whether it was school, work, prison, or a madhouse, and it was heavily encouraged to remain in the first two. You HADto be assigned to some kind of torture machine or you'd be knocked down to a worse tier of torture machine.
To me all these institutions amount to the same type of thing, and these structures both serve to make abuse ambiguous and put money in the pockets of people who already had plenty.
Very well put. It can be... difficult to see the cracks in the machine as a child.
@Arby K channelling Focault right here.
I would say, there is even a higher wheel, a small special wheel called 'consumer',
where a select minority of humans who are just lucky enough to either not have to work that much, or even at all, get to reside, thinking that life is an endless accumulation of junk, and thus never to be sated, as there is never enough.
Of course, it would seem that all of us are encouraged to join the 'consumer' wheel, as it the goal to be pampered by the working class, but it is extremely expensive, and moreso, it is even owned by yet another higher class that can quite voluntarily decide it is all pointless except it makes them more money
Isn't that just saying it's hard for humans to work well together when there are too many of them to account for? That's not a terrible fact it's just a logical consequence. At the same time, it's hard to achieve large feats without a lot of humans, so there is a benefit to working together depending on the situation.
me too, right as my undiagnosed adhd started catching up to me. i began to self-destruct so completely that my will to live and regard for myself honestly haven't really recovered to this day. at like 12 i became a "medical mystery", and have gotten to experience 3 of the above, sometimes all at once - very fun! it's very cool for a kid to spend an entire adolescence feeling like life is a hydraulic press you can't escape, and to actually be technically correct in those feelings! i would never trade in the empathy and experience i gained from it, but i wish neurotypicals would stop refusing to learn from those of us who had to learn too much WAY too young.
I’ve had depression, anxiety, cPTSD, and thoughts of self-harm since I was a kid. These last two years have been some of the worst I’ve experienced, and I’ve had no choice but to work full time to support myself throughout all of it. I’m now on short term disability because I was having frequent panic attacks at work and developed an ED trying to keep up with the work ethic of my neurotypical coworkers. It’s really hard to get help, but it has to be done. I’ve worked so hard to try to pull myself out of poverty, worked multiple jobs while a full time college student, and now I’m so sick I’m unable to work. Hope my story helps someone else reconsider bending over backwards for a system that will treat them as disposable regardless.
The problem is the system !
same here pretty much. been working full time since i was 15 with only a couple gaps in employment, once for 7 weeks off on disability to have a kid. i have cptsd as well and snapped a couple weeks ago, currently am partially hospitalized for ptsd. i have been terrified and unable to really take advantage of the help because not working is making it impossible to feel ok. ty for saying all this. i really hope you’re in a better spot soon
@@mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmm..m Same to you. I hope Thought Slime’s words have found you well. It’s ok to rest. Our value as human beings has nothing to do with the profits we can produce for megalomaniacs.
Similar boat, though I reached the point of critical burnout just before 2016 and it's been a hellish ride since. Trauma responses that culminate into Avoidant Personality Disorder have made it exceedingly difficult to get any sort of help. While all this free time has given me the opportunity to embark on a journey of self education on mental health, the crushing weight of financial uncertainty makes it really hard to focus on and deal with the intergenerational trauma I had been ignoring before hand. In a rural area, in-network therapy is hard to find, affordable specialized trauma therapy is near impossible to find and the ones that are around are booked.
I hope you're able to get all the help you need, the struggle is so very real!
I tried to roblox myself during the pandemically induced self-isolationist remote school experience. I'm prone to stress but I guess my cortisol or serotonin just stopped working or went haywire. I have no idea, but my headspace was more of a mess than my workspace. I don't want to go back to that dark pit of despair. I want to work, but I don't want to have to rest when I'm dead.
As a gig economy worker: I think the reason people are willing to do jobs like mine is that even if the work doesn’t pay as well you don’t have to deal with a boss watching over you the whole time you’re doing it.
Exactly. The other reason I do it is because I get to pick how much I work.
Yep. Asinine micromanaging asshole bosses. I had one who kept harping that every minute that wasn't spent being productive was wasting tax payer money (it was a state job). I kept thinking to myself, "So, my own money, then, since I'm a tax payer?" When I was pregnant I had to text my boss (because of that micromanaging boss above him) every time I had to pee if it was outside of the two 15 minute breaks...because it would mean I was wasting tax payer money. I suppose peeing all over myself and getting it all over everything would have been much cheaper for the tax payers. /s
Yep. I’ve rarely had a manager that actually contributed anything positive to the work. My favorite is when you go to them about a work conflict or issue you’re having, and their response is “You need to deal with this yourself. I’m busy making up new stupid policies that are going to take up all of your free time just so I can write on my resume that I implemented new systems that made some fake measurable change. Thanks.”
Definitely. It's like when I was a cart pusher for walmart; it might be a shit job but at least the bosses are mostly unaware you exist. Fond memories of being drunk listening to music in -17 degree weather pushing carts through snow with only my anxiety for a supervisor.
But you still do, and the boss is an unfeeling computer algorithm. Rejection rate less than 10% or you get less work and less pay! Every time you go to sign out it begs you to work a little more!
I spent a lot of time as a person experiencing homelessness.
One of the things that I strove to keep centered was the idea that the system that failed me intended to use my suffering as tool to oppress others. I used that ideation to maximize my happiness.
I did everything I could, I ate well, I slept well, I took in important cultural items and places and events, and I shared that joy with as many people as I could.
I tried as hard as I could to make the very bottom of the pit of failure look as much like a party of perfect freedom as I could.
Incidentally, I’ve had _Laziness Does Not Exist_ in a stack of books I’ve meant to read for well over a year! 😅
I've had to place a moratorium on book purchases because my stack had become a fort of literature.
Gotta love Kirk Hammett's Amazon review trashing the book, as if his wealth is not directly created by how hard the minions beneath him work to make his performances possible.
And it's not even a verified purchase - he was probably given a copy for free.
LAZY !!
Same!!
Surely you mean “Ironically “ rather than incidentally. 👌
Pretty much the first thing people tell me whenever I start a new factory job: "If you don't have anything pressing to do, just grab a broom and pretend you're sweeping the floor so you look busy."
In my case you can't even do that. If you have 10 minutes left in your shift after you've gotten your assigned jobs done, you have to ask for another job to clock into for the last 10 minutes. Obviously you would just take extra time to log what you did for turnover, but I still found it interesting how anal they are about every minute. But that's corporate/assembly for you.
At one factory I was at, people often hiked for an hour or two at the end of the day and about every two months I would hose down the floors and get them cleaner than the night cleaning crew did. And then the other factory I was at had so much work, so constantly, that I wouldn’t have enough time to accomplish a lot of things.
What Mildred left out is that her murder will be part of a complicated scheme to force Valve to release Half Life 3.
you person deserve a huge cookie
Is mildred a her? I thought it was they
@@deanr6327 they use any pronouns
As long as it means Portal 3 happens, I'm in.
@@davidcauley9400 I mean both of those would be great but I'm afraid valve will treat alyx and desk job as "good enough" extensions of the franchises, justifying not touching them for the foreseeable future. (I hope I'm wrong)
i was fortunate enough to take 6 months off one time and told my boss one time i'd love to do that again and she scoffed "what would you even DO with all that free time" and i answered "write another novel like i did the last time I had that much free time"
Speaking as someone with adhd, dyslexia, and who’s wife had a miscarriage this week, it’s nice to hear the time I’m taking for myself and my family isn’t an evil sin.
Well, you had the miscarriage too, in a sense. My condolences to you both. I hope you both heal quickly and don't feel afraid to try again. Miscarriages are incredibly common so there's nothing either of you did wrong. From a stranger, sending love and hugs over the internet.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- thank you for reaching out and saying that. I always feel selfish for grieving but I do agree WE had a miscarriage, but my partner bore the brunt of it. But, again, thank you.
I'm so sorry, I hope you are doing better now and my best wishes for you and your wife to get pregnant in the future.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- that is so kind of you to say. And you’re absolutely right. It’s been 5 months, and it’s still hard to think about, but we are in a good place. Go figure fans of thought slime would be compassionate, respectful, and kind people.
As a disabled person since childhood who was gaslit about it for almost 30 years and has never been able to hold on to typical jobs or finish uni even after 3 tries, this topic is the #1 thing that takes up space in my brain. But at the moment I'm only 8 minutes in and I'm just so goddamn happy that my life includes an anti-capitalist, affirming video with a full tangent about fuckable punctuation marks. Ily slime Mildred
Being disabled is a full-time job, never fear. Hiring care attendants (or worse, dealing with needing them and not having them), going to medical appointments, picking yourself up again after those appointments, coordinating just getting yourself food or transportation, and bureaucracy, if you're lucky enough to have benefits. Endless paperwork. Endless phone calls. I work as much just making sure my janky body doesn't explode and ensuring I'll still be housed somewhere accessible next year as I ever did in school or at work. The only difference is that this situation is somewhat sustainable.
A paraplegic can frontflip his wheelchair over a megaramp. Steven hawking got his glasses broke by tons of stripper boobs. Some are living, some are slowly dying. Live fast die fast.
You could you know, learn to code. It's remote and doesn't involve as much physical work. But then again, I'm talking to commies so common sense should probably not come into picture.
@@DeepakPal-tg7hy I see. So I would just code and network as a 31 year old with no work history in the last ten years and obvious severe health problems which worsen at random and take me out of working for months at a time. I'd do job training and job interviews in addition to doing all these other things I was doing before to stay fed, clean, and housed, and make sure there's no lapse of health insurance during, so I don't die. And then make sure I hold onto that job, because if my health gets worse after too long there and I lose it I might end up with no income for several years as someone who takes 20 medications a day to survive. I've never thought of that but it sounds like a good bet; thank you!
I already know how to code. Also, I keep trying to do job training and placement for disabled people and they end up telling me I am too sick to work anywhere and to go home and rest. Some people are just too sick to work, Deepak.
@@DeepakPal-tg7hy I actually did watch my partner go through the whole becoming a data scientist thing as a disabled person. Their shit's mostly treated though, and they don't get the shakes and space out in the middle of casual conversation, and they don't need to take long time off work at random and with no warning. And they like coding. So that was a very good option for them. I hope more people use it
big "finally someone fucking said it" energy in this one.
no matter my skillset i've always been shamed in jobs i've worked in where i wasn't mechanically as fast as my coworkers. one experience that sticks with me in particular was when i worked at a dessert restaurant making $10 working 10-12 hour days where i would come in at 6 am to torte all the cakes for the day, build them and then put them all away at the end of my shift, which somehow always ended after 5 or 6 pm.
i was not allowed to leave, i had no real set time to go unlike my other coworkers and yet i still would get scolded by the higher ups for not doing enough work, not working quickly enough. how "unfair" it was to my coworkers that i wasn't building as much if not more cakes to par that the others were doing. it did not matter that i was there over two hours before my other coworkers came in the morning, torting every single last cake into layers to build, but i was also responsible for building all of them, then putting all the finished cakes away at the end of my shift!!
i was expected to not only work fast but double and stay longer, and it was still not enough. my bosses did not want to pay me overtime so i would end up being sent home on wednesdays mid day once i hit 40 hours, which also ended up being thrown in my face because they still needed me on wednesdays to do even more fucking work! & them keeping me 10-12 hours a day was my fault bc if i just worked faster they wouldn't have to! it wasn't fast enough, it wasn't good enough. i was lazy, i was being "unfair" to my other coworkers. it didn't matter that i was broke and starving, that i was barely making enough to keep my shitty body alive and healthy just to be treated like some cake building machine by a bunch of Trump supporting assholes getting wealthy off my surplus labor and the surplus labor of every last one of us under their employ.
american work culture and our relationship to work is so toxic, it really fucks with your self perception and feelings of inadequacy bc you're somehow not meeting this "hustle and grind" mentality in service of...who? the people making 100x the profit while you get their crumbs? because it sure as hell isn't for our benefit.
It really does. I was working at a farm where i had the same experience and wasn't "working fast enough" and the funny thing it was like, the owner was always talking about how to be body conscious and then proceeded to do things to contradict that. Like, go break yourself if you want but don't tell me to do the same thing. But it was such bullshit because it was so careless and they just keep making more work for themselves. And I get the whole problem around small, non commercial agribusiness farms and the perception of agriculture in general and just the problems of how things are done, but also maybe don't run a big farm and a full serve farm stand, AND do the farmer's market in town twice a week if you can't hire enough people to tend to the acreage and being continually stressed out about it at the same time. And the ironic thing is that they want to expand!
It's just so apparent how ableist businesses are (in all senses of that), how they don't actually respect people's bodies and emotions, and how much they want people to be constantly busy, rather than actually productive, even though that is a problem too. It's easy to feel guilty for even simple things like needing to sit, but that is such bullshit. Basic biological needs and functions are blatantly disregarded.
Did you bring this up to them at the time?
Lol I wrote an essay in my freshman year of college about how despite technological advances people were working more hours than ever.
I can't remember if I mentioned my prediction for autonomous cars but basically my idea is that as soon as we don't have to drive cars anymore we will be expected to work in them
I took a class that *in 1986 * where we were told that technology was advancing to the point where we'd be working 3 or 4 days a week. We were all so excited... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 (I CAN'T STOP SOBBING)
Somehow this is Reagan's fault
It was already my plan to do some kind of work in my car that I find personally fulfilling, but if I thought of how it could benefit me, no surprise a capitalist would think of how I could work in my off time for them. XD
Oh my God you're absolutely right
Oh, shit... yeah, that's probably true. People already work when they're using public transportation for their commute...
I’m already less than 5 minutes in and I’m driving and I’ve literally got tears on my cheeks. It’s so... validating. To hear how much I could improve everyday but hearing nothing that’s saying “it’s okay, you’re trying as much as you can. I understand you”- it’s such a maddening suggestion. Maybe I’m putting in 40 hours of work a week, getting “compensated” for my time, and have back pain, but I’m only 19. I shouldn’t be feeling back pains like this and be drowning in depression and also poorer than most/almost all of my friends but
Hugs from a stranger. Your financial situation at 19 is definitely not your fault. I can't imagine what it's like just starting out in this economy. When I was 19 (22 years ago), my first apartment was $305/month, right in the middle of downtown. My first job was $7/hour ($2 over minimum wage, yay!) and I was able to keep that apartment and lease a new car for something like $128/month. Also, ice cream used to come in gallon sizes _as the default size._
The house I grew up in was worth $85,600 at that time. Want to know how much that same house is "worth" now in 2022? $490,600 freakin' dollars!!! In just 22 years it was necessary to increase it's "value" by $400,000?! Why? How does just 'supply & demand' cause that kind of change? It doesn't, the system is broken. Minimum wage in my state is still $7.25/hour and the minimum price of a studio apartment is $1000/month. Every one just getting out of high school or college today has been absolutely cheated by the system. My state started seeing these kinds of wild price increases starting in 2018. Everything has been increasing at around 30% every year since.
You're not broken because the "promises" of the system aren't holding true for you. The system is the one that's broken-black-hearted, cracked, and leaving broken glass everywhere in its wake.
I'll tell you this: my partner has worked the same job for 20 years and is finally making $20/hour for it. For his 20-year Appreciation he received a $5 gift card. His loyalty hasn't been rewarded at all, something the system promised to us all. My advice: don't ever be loyal to the system. You do for you what you need to do. If a job isn't working or you feel you aren't being compensated fairly, ask for the fair compensation and if they say, "No," go find somewhere else that will. I keep trying to convince my partner to do the same but he's afraid to budge. Our health insurance is also at risk if he quits-we won't have any.
Also, with every paycheck pay _yourself_ 10% of it before you take care of anything else. Start doing that today if you aren't already. 10% of $1000 every month (as an example) is $1200 a year. I really, really wish I had started doing this when I was 19. That can be your emergency rainy day fund or a "fuck it" fund at the end of the year to spend or invest however you want.
Don't youtube comment and drive everyone.
I'm coming here after being fired from my first ever job. It was humiliating and I feel horribly ashamed. However, I wasn't even given a warning before I was fired, I was fired over text. Even as I type this out I feel horribly guilty, like I somehow failed, or I didn't try hard enough. But that's not the truth. I made sure to show up early every day. I didn't complain to my boss whenever my back hurt from standing all day, I always tried to put in as much effort as I could. But, I was still fired without warning. Hard work is a grift, and we need to dismantle the illusion of "laziness." We need to keep fighting for workers' rights.
Ive been diagnosed with adhd for most of my childhood and i still got called lazy and told i could do better if i put in "the effort" while i was doing everything i could without overexerting myself. I gave up trying to please people in high school and voluntarily took an extra year to graduate. My parents and teachers felt so ashamed/embarrassed i got held back while i was perfectly content. Ive taken this mindset into my jobs and with my friends/roomates help ive been able to keep a healthy relationship to my work... my ART on the other hand, i still tend to shame myself for not doing more often..
I had a similar experience when I didn't do so great in secondary school because of several ongoing mental health crises and chose to go to (community) college over university to try and take a step up while doing things at my own pace. I had gotten offers for university, so when I told some of my extended family that I'd opted for a "slower" path, the conversation would quickly get dropped and they would move on to asking my siblings about their university courses instead - I eventually realised they were automatically assuming I was ashamed of my path, because they would be if they were in my position, but I was actually incredibly proud of myself for just progressing and it really stung when people would just not talk about it. Never underestimate the power of doing things at your own pace, I'm only now getting around to university while a lot of my friends are nearly finished, and I've never felt better about my progress! (Especially when I see how burnt out a lot of them are after going straight to university just because they felt they should, not because they really wanted to/were able to).
As a disabled person who is out of the workforce and stays home taking care of special needs animals, I want to thank you for this video. Truly. Saying what you did about how hard it can be not to be able to work as hard as you might like made me feel *seen* in a way that is very rare. I appreciate it so much because it's a truth that is so easily overlooked.
Hey that's great! You're a hero! Thank you for taking care of animals, that's an awesome job! Yes that's a job. 😁
That meant a lot to me, as a very late diagnosed autistic person.
Also its hard work to make the world better. Seriously, where is the effort from so callwd world leader qnd rich qnd companies bossrs to fight climate change.
That is hard work and isnt done enough,and actually very needed.
I just mean thanks, tell noone you arent worth it.
never forget that one time a cashier of mine kept calling out sick because they have a disability and cant work in particularly hot weather, and my bosses wrote him up for it. what. a. joke.
"If you have time to lean, you have time to clean."
"If you have time to kvetch, you have time to stretch. Clean it yourself."
If you have time to whine, you have time to shine
A few months ago we had a bad storm in my area that led us to not having power for 3 days. In that time I mostly sat around, journaled, read, and just generally relaxed and did nothing since the majority of my job requires a computer. It was honestly the best time I've had in years.
I mean you can do that on the weekends lol
It feels so refreshing to hear someone else say this. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always felt weird for liking it when the power goes out, but I really do. I feel like a whole new world of chill, offline activities opens up, because the screen time temptation is gone.
@@scout8145 I go camping atleast once a month for this reason
@@seanfoley974 Weekends aren't 3 days long.
At first glance I thought the title said "hard work is a gift" and I must say I was taken aback
Oh. Oh gods, thank you. I also read it as 'gift', and assumed that Mildread was just being sarcastic 🤷🏻
@@nobody8328 yup, same here :'D
Did it come with a receipt so we can return it?
I had a math learning disability in the 70s. I used to bite my tongue until I bled to "force myself" to get the answer to math problems because of shit like this. Thank you for discussing this.
I never had a interest in math. It had more to do with no being interesting. ADHD doesn't help. I was often accused of being lazy for doing things I was forced and didn't want to do. I could do math when it came to science. I just liked Arts Cooking, Painting and History more.
Actually being diagnosed with a LD which isn't profound back then was pretty rare wern't it? My dad is in his 70's now and has never had any interest in reading whereas my mum and I are avid readers. Then one day he just says "I dunno, when I read the letters get jumbled" and it was like a lightbulb moment I was like "ohhhhh, yup, you're dyslexic." Great thing is he's now well into audiobooks, trying them out opened up a whole new world to him, hes got the attention span for it, just finds the act of reading to hard to be enjoyable.
Teaching makes a big difference too. I hated maths when I was at school. HATED IT. I still did alright I've always been a good student but it was easily my weakest subject. Physics and Chemistry equations? Fine but pure Maths? Do this thing that means nothing with no context. Years later I enjoy programming and taking CompSci courses in my free time and it's hard, but it explains stuff I should have been told in school about what was the point of pure maths. It would have made world of difference if someone said "this is what we can do with differential calculus".
What on earth did they think that would accomplish??? A logical reason wouldn’t make it better, of course, but you still deserve to hear that the treatment you experienced was nonsensically cruel.
@@fromthedumpstertothegrave3689 I wasn't diagnosed until about 10 years ago when I had to have a bunch of neurological/cognitive testing and finally got an official diagnosis. My teachers and parents would constantly tell me I just didn't "apply myself". I didn't go to college until my 40s because every degree requires math. I finally went to an interdisciplinary college that doesn't have a core math requirement (instead you take quantitative science, so math without math.) It literally ruined my life.
“My self-worth isn’t reliant on productivity.” Thank you for inspiring my current mantra.
One time when I had covid I called my boss, barely even lucid enough to tell him that I couldn't come over to fill the shelves the next day, and he shamed me for it. He complained about the fact that all my collegues would have to work a bit harder. I was literally drooling on my pillow of exhaustion as he spoke to me but okay I guess.
I actually think 40% of jobs being useless is an underestimation, because every job that could in any way be called "marketing" is by definition useless. Just think how much of any corporate job, even if it isn't nominally in that field, is devoted to coming up with ways of not making something (better), but selling your stuff to more people and other businesses over your competitors, completely independent of whose product is better.
^THIS
If we only produced the stuff that's actually necessary, nobody would have to market anything, because the demand would already be there.
Not to mention all the jobs that ARE useful but are employed in the service of useless enterprises like marketing, PR, market speculation, etc etc. A janitor cleaning an office is useful work, but when its an office thats full of people doing a useless job it becomes meaningless
check out david graeber's work! incredible anarchist who went a long way talkin about useless jobs and holes in de shytstem
To be fair, there is a small amount of "marketing" that would still be necessary in a reasonable society. When making a new good of some sort, whether an invention or a work of art or the like, there is a need to make sure that the people who could benefit from it know that it exists, what it is, and how to get it. And that requires people to present that information in an effective way, and to make sure that it is posted in places where people will find it. Which is a form of marketing.
This is far from _all_ of what marketing is, and a very large amount of marketing jobs are unnecessary, but that skill set does include _some_ amount of useful work.
“The asterisk is the sexiest punctuation mark” is a hill I didn’t know I’d be willing to die on.
Japanese use chrysanthemum flowers as the same kind of euphemism haha.
You died there. Cause you're wrong dog. ? is so much hotter. Observe the curves, the mystery. She's beautiful.
the asterisk has so many different appeals. are you a five-pointed star, six-pointed, or eight-pointed? who knows!
See, i think it’s the ampersand, that minx
Are we allowing musical notation ? (because the bass clef and treble clef are both pretty nice). I also like the pound sterling symbol.
YES YES YES!! Some FINALLY used the "crutch is a fucked up term to use for things we're dependent on" analogy that's been brewing in the back of my mind for months now!!
how did disabled people live before crutches were invented?
@@Hugsloth For a lot less time.
@@thebolas000 Fair enough...
@@Hugsloth i mean, crutches aren't exactly high tech. in its most basic form, it's just a big sturdy stick that can support your weight. cavemen probably had walking sticks before they even figured out spears. walking sticks, canes, crutches - they're all more or less the same idea, just different forms.
but yes, if the necessary accommodation for your disability didn't exist yet, then you just died.
I really appreciate how well this puts into words so many thoughts I haven't been able to explain for so many years.
not even kidding, as someone who feels REALLY shitty a lot of the time about being unemployed due to brain badness, the speech at the end about it being hard enough work just being alive actually made me cry. bad news or not, i think i needed to hear that.
44:08 Personal anecdote: I actually know for sure what I would do with more free time, and that realization has only made me more angry how much time I need to waste at a 40hr/wk job.
I currently have a salaried position, which basically means I get guaranteed pay even if we're unable to work. We were always told that our job, which is done exclusively from a computer, couldn't be done from home because we deal with sensitive data like peoples' social security numbers and medical records. When the pandemic hit, then, there were about 2-3 months between the time our office shut down, and the time they realized that gosh golly gee, we actually COULD work from home, how silly of us to have said that other thing! For those 2-3 months, I had no work to do and no stress about paying bills. Here's what happened:
For the first few weeks it was about what I'd expected. I slept in, played video games, watched movies and shows, the works. Just lazed about, really, enjoying my freedom. But this got old much faster than I expected. Don't get me wrong, I still did all of those things, but with all the free time I had there was room for more.
So I picked up an old hobby: digital art. I watched art tutorials, did exercises, and even posted some finished pieces online. I improved dramatically, getting so proud of my work that I actually started doing art trades! I spent hours on drawings, and got a little better with each one I completed, impressing both myself and my friends and family. I even took a couple of commissions!
Then, work started back up again, albeit from home this time. I still had more free time (working from home really shaves off a lot of time wasted on commuting and getting ready in the morning and such), but less and less of it was spent on drawing. I stopped doing trades, and the last commission I took still remains unfinished to this day (the commissioner has been very understanding, but I certainly consider this a personal failure).
Slowly, the drudgery of work has returned me to my familiar state of never feeling like I have any time for anything. My place is messy, I'm anxious, stressed, and irritable, and there are so many things I wish I could devote my time to, but can't because I'm spread too thin already.
I'd been working from home full time up to now, but this was because our previous office building was damaged in a storm. They have secured a new office building, and have officially scheduled our return to office work as the day after my birthday. We will still be allowed to work from home for 2 days out of our 5 day week, but must be in the office for the remaining 3. No explanation has been given as to why we can't telework full time as we have been for months. I actually asked a particularly reasonable admin why this was, and he said that he didn't know why the decision was made, but it was decided by someone so high up the management chain that they likely don't even know how the job is done, and no one other than them could change it. He offered these words of consolation: "sometimes we just have to do things we don't like on the job". Super. Remember, this was one of the most reasonable administrators we have.
And so now I feel yet more of my free time slipping away. I haven't drawn anything more than a doodle in over a year. I wonder when I'll ever have the time to again.
I'm leaving this job. I've started learning a skill I can use to get a hopefully better one with hopefully better hours (though these studies will take a huge chunk of my free time for the next 6 months, the last 4 of which require 9hr days Monday through Saturday plus homework). But I'm lucky to be able to do that. I have a safety net of loving family to support me if I need it, and received higher education which primed me for success in learning new skills.
I used to buy in to the "if you didn't work you'd just laze about and do nothing at all!" rhetoric to a degree. I believed that sure, I was kind of lazy, and I value life's pleasures enough to where I could see myself becoming that stereotypical boob, getting fat playing video games all day, scattering crumbs all over my carpet as I munched unhealthy snacks between rounds of Call of Duty or whatever. I DID get fat, don't get me wrong, the gyms all closing really threw a wrench into my workout routine, but the pandemic has shown me that that rhetoric is absolutely 100% a lie. They want you to think that, because they want you to feel like working for them is preferable to forging your own path, but for me? I already know I'd be spending that time putting another image in my head to a digital canvas, and that's infinitely more fulfilling than reading medical records.
Fuck the 40hr work week and the wealthy leeches who grow bloated off the sweat from our brows. We all deserve more.
End thread.
I absolutely hate the "if you didn't work you'd do nothing" lie - I think every creative person with a """day job""" understands it to be a lie, because it's obvious to us that if we didn't have to spend all our time and energy working, we'd be spending it creating.
I was a prolific artist & writer all the way through school up until I finally got a "real" job. Suddenly my energy tanked and all my free time is spent recuperating from work so that I have the energy to keep working. Even if I have the time for art or writing, there's so many other things that I've also been not doing that have a much higher priority (running errands and cleaning house and so on) that I've basically given up on ever being able to resume being creative until I retire. The last time I got any significant amount of writing done was after a major surgery a few years ago that required me to take a month off of work to lay around doing nothing. I spent 2 weeks catching up on sleep and then the next two weeks writing up a storm, because I finally had energy that didn't need to be reserved for something else. All that did was show me that I'm right - I don't have the capacity for a full-time job and worthwhile creative output to co-exist in my life.
Of course people will always tell you that if you don't want to work then you should try to make a living off your art instead. If I say I want to be a writer, it becomes about how I can sell my book, instead of the craft of writing. If I want to be an artist, it's about commission pricing and building a client base and hey maybe you could do graphic design that pays okay huh? No, I don't want to make my livelihood dependent on my ability to create. That's just trading one set of problems for another, and at the end of the day you're still spending the bulk of your time working for someone else instead of creating for yourself. Even novelists are beholden to the publisher's decisions on "what can we sell".
At the end of the day, the problem isn't that we'd do nothing if we weren't working, it's that the things we'd rather be doing don't have value to capitalists. They have to convince us that working is the only worthwhile way to spend our time, because they can't have us thinking we might have options _other_ than generating profit for them.
> We were always told that our job, which is done exclusively from a computer, couldn't be done from home because we deal with sensitive data like peoples' social security numbers and medical records.
Someone has been lying to you somewhat fierce. I also have the 40h work week regular job. I've been working from home ever since the pandemic hit, and even before that we were allowed to work from home if need be, but it was seen as inferior to working in the office. After spending three years at home, I can say it's actually way more convenient to be in the office. You have way fewer distractions and can actually concentrate on whatever it is you are doing. On the other hand, if there is nothing to do at the moment, your only option is basically youtube.
> Slowly, the drudgery of work has returned me to my familiar state of never feeling like I have any time for anything. My place is messy, I'm anxious, stressed, and irritable, and there are so many things I wish I could devote my time to, but can't because I'm spread too thin already.
I know that feeling. I believe this is partly due to the fact homes aren't really suited to be the place for work, not anymore at least. When I went into the office, I had a clear separation of work time and home time. Now that I work from home, this is no longer the case. There is no change in surroundings, no clear signal of 'this place is for relaxing, I can relax now'. The stress of work is not cleared. You get this feeling in the back of your head that you have stuff to do that you should be doing, and it stresses you out. Bringing work home resulted in the home becoming the workplace and the feeling of relaxation disappearing.
Also fun fact about having lots of free time: sometimes time is just slipping no matter what you are doing. I'm having way more free time right now than I had, and yet I still feel like I could be doing something way more productive than what I actually end up doing.
> At the end of the day, the problem isn't that we'd do nothing if we weren't working, it's that the things we'd rather be doing don't have value to capitalists.
The basic truth of the matter is that you need to do something to get the funds to support yourself. After that, you can do whatever you want. The problem is that people will try to get you to do way more work than you should for the compensation. Been there.
I heartily agree with the vast majority of this, but I gently push back: Why justify, or even motion, "getting fat"? That's dangerously close to "you're lazy and don't work," which the whole video (and your post) is against.
This is a great story. Thank you. Not many stories can manage to be both depressing and inspiring at the same time.
Just want to add, though, that the low-level admin you mentioned, was probably one of those pointless jobs that Matt mentioned, except that the point of their was probably to create the sort of information barrier that allowed a higher-level admin to make stupid, uninformed decisions without consequence. There are a lot of people whose jobs consist largely of insulating the people who make the decisions from the people who experience the consequences of those decisions.
@@nicole-ls4jb Well to clarify, it was the pandemic, specifically, that caused the fat gain, not the lack of work. I had previously had a well entrenched workout routine in which I went to the gym at least 3 days a week. The only thing that stopped that was the gym shutting down; I would have absolutely continued with it if there were a safe place to do it. I even eventually tried to get some home workout equipment, but most of the stuff I did at the gym required bulky, heavy equipment that there wasn't really a smaller apartment-compatible counterpart for. Also, cardio was never really my thing, I'm more focused on building muscle and am perfectly fine with having some gut. I have a little more than I'd like right now is all.
Of note though, I actually have started going back to the gym near the beginning of 2022, which I'm happy about, though I've only really had the time to go about one or two times a week lately, and I assume with the course I started even that will dwindle. So case in point: if anything is making me fat, it's the lack of free time which is directly the result of my 40hr work week plus night school which I need to hopefully get a job with better hours.
i just spent five years fighting for disability in the US and finally won. I got my first check yesterday (a whopping $790), and was starting to feel like, "Maybe I'm not disabled and I'm just lazy, maybe I didn't try hard enough." The fight had me down and this video helped. Thanks!
That's something I've been struggling with to do for just about as long. Any tips?
No the world just isnt fair and takes a while often to , and thats to say good things dont happen, it can be just incredible unfair.
My manager said the other day, when I expressed discomfort with the interns working ~14 hour days for $100 a week (plus housing) he said, quote, "They're here to burn 🤷♂️". Almost lost my lunch.
I should mention that this is the same employer who tried to put a clause in a contract barring us from talking about pay, which is illegal in, like, the entire united states.
The manager meant to finish "They are here to burn.... Me alive". But they couldn't stomach reality
Update he aggressively misgendered my coworker via text so now I have an HR complaint
@@astabaker9421 I guess he is going to burn alive
Came for the thought provoking commentary
Stayed for the fuckable punctuation
Ownership plays into this in an interesting way. One of the wildest experiences I’ve had in my life is transitioning from renting to home ownership (yes this is a massive privilege and I recognize this). Suddenly I have this amazing space that is MINE. I spend so much of my time fixing it up and cleaning it and it is SO much more rewarding and less exhausting than cleaning or fixing up my old apartments ever was. Instead of overworking myself because of fear, I’m accidentally overworking myself because I DON’T WANT TO STOP. If we owned our workplaces, we would feel so much better about working. Seize the means of production y’all!!!
Was called lazy because of trauma then was traumatized by being called lazy, it's a vicious cycle. Brilliant video, thank you Mildred.
I was recently called lazy for sitting around all day with an injured knee.
I feel your pain. I was a "stupid malicious asshole who intentionally ruined everything" by having hereditary alcoholism. Even after I put myself in rehab, I am only living it down now almost 20 years later.
You triggered my PTSD when you mentioned the word "trauma" in your comment. Thanks for nothing.
@@nicklasveva You think you added anything important? If you get triggered by the mere mention of a word relating to your issues then you only have whoever messed you up to blame, not OP.
@Sabizos "LOL, the Radical Left are saying that people's brains can malfunction? That's ridiculous, I'm definitely the sole authority on this subject!"
It doesn't matter what you do for a living, or how much you adore it, if you work too hard at it you WILL kill it for yourself. That's the constant, horrifying line of doing something you love as a job. The nature of it being a job in the modern day has a very good chance of making you hate something that once brought you joy.
Live for your joys, snatch them where you can, fight for a world where those joys can be the center of your life.
Work is required (for now). It's not you.
this is why i never pursued a career in art or writing, despite how passionate i am about both. i knew having to do either as a job would ruin it for me.
As a Brazilian, I can affirm that the tilde is definitely the sexiest punctuation mark ever. It accentuates the word “tesão”, which is a word for lust in Portuguese. It’s used for augmentatives, very dominant and powerful.
You are banned from Latin America ~Proteus
dominant and powerful, you say? I'm listening~
That's a very conventional way of looking at it. It's the curviest punctuation mark.
As someone who can't work at all due to disability, I struggle a lot with socialising simply because I feel inferior to others who can and do work. I know that's not reasonable at all, but it's so ingrained at this point that I can't help the feeling. A part of me always says "You don't work so you should starve".
That is so real. Add to that the gaslighting that comes with having a disability at all, and boom, you get a vicious cycle that makes you feel guilty for existing.
I was called "lazy" by teachers at school. When copying off the blackboard (yes I'm old) I would do less than half of what my peers would do in the same time.
At about age 12 I was diagnosed as short-sighted. I got glasses, and suddenly came up to speed with everybody else.
An easy fix compared with the problems many have - but thinking about it today, not a single teacher suggested this! As a teacher myself now, if a student is doing less than I expect I *always* talk to them to find out if there's a difficulty we can try to solve.
Literally the way I was first diagnosed as short-sighted was when I came home from primary school upset that my teacher had told me off for "pretending not to be able to see the whiteboard" - which prompted my mum to take me to the optician, who immediately started figuring out my glasses prescription. More than ten years later, it still boggles my mind that this teacher decided that I, a kid who had no issues with my work or behaviour up until that week, had suddenly decided to lie about not being able to see the work from my seat at the back of the classroom - and didn't think for a moment that there might be something wrong that had changed things for me. I think it really does tie into the mindset that those who are struggling with school or work are just being lazy, and that everyone has the same potential in them if they just *choose* to live up to it - regardless of physical or mental barriers.
@@neverneverland5836 Even if you were a "troublemaker," that is such a common way to figure out a kid needs glasses. The fact she jumped straight to you fucking around is mindbogglingly weird.
@@neverneverland5836 I had a very similar situation happen to me with my 3rd grade teacher. One day in the classroom it suddenly felt like I had shards of glass in my stomach. I went to the nurse and the pains eventually faded. Nothing else seemed wrong with me so I was happy to go back to class, especially considering we had just started a group project I remember being excited about. My teacher then accused me of purposefully trying to get out of that activity by faking being sick, something I had never done before nor had even thought to do (I was a nerdy kid who enjoyed school).
In 3rd grade I was 9-10 years old so looking back I wonder if those were very early menstrual pains before officially getting my period. Or, could have just been really painful indigestion, who knows? I'm pretty sure the lesson I learned there was that if I ever felt legitimately sick again, I was most definitely not going to be taken seriously so I'd better keep it to myself and suffer in silence. It's funny because later, in the 4th grade, I cracked my thumb at recess and started crying back in class after it wouldn't stop throbbing. I was, again, accused of trying to get out of class but I came back the next day with a cast on my arm. Wish I could say I remember the look on my teacher's face when she saw it, but I don't.
@@neverneverland5836 Even if the reason for that teacher not believing you had been that it was too much of a case of "sudden onset vision troubles": How about asking you whether you fell on your head or something?
The em dash was snubbed I say, SNUBBED! It's so long and-dare I say-assertive. It's not afraid to get into the middle of the action, if you're into that sort of thing.
I was an English/Journalism major, and had to regularly defend and advocate for my beloved em dash. Now I have to resort to the double dash in it's place right here on UA-cam--a grave keyboard oversight and hardship I cannot forgive.
I'm glad I'm not the only fan of the em dash. I just like 'em big.
I was holding my breath for the em dash. But I agree with the tilde being #1.
Agreed. Em dash is my #1
Em dash is the Swiss army knife of punctuation-use it however you like and no one knows enough about it to contradict the use!
Mildred, as someone who has watched most of ur videos at least 3 times (bc of the bad way my brain works), I want to tell you something that I wish I could hammer thru the heads of every content creator and artist: you've already done it. you've already done work. you already put SO MUCH out in the world, so many videos that we all can and will rewatch over and over again. it's out there and our appreciation of it doesn't expire after an hour, a day, a week, we're all still going to like it. it's still going to have made an impact on us. the demand to produce is a disease that keeps you and society sick!!!!! you already did the damn thing everything we get after this is just bonus :)
but then that wouldn't be working. and we have to work, right? it's in the rules.
Not only was this a cathartic, informative, and encouraging video essay, but the BITS were immaculate. Absolutely the perfect ratio of education to levity.
What you said at the end really hits close to home. I'm 18 and appear to be in decent shape, but for some reason any time I do something especially taxing on my body it makes me physically ill. It's so fucking annoying to be so young and incapable of doing things that I know I should be able to do. I can hardly push a lawn mower around without my stomach deciding it doesn't want any part of this and I become so incredibly nauseated. I try not to beat myself up about, it's just the hand that I was dealt, but when an entire society looks down upon people with my kind of struggles, it becomes really hard to even accept myself.
I was doing an instacart delivery that included 3 gallons of water. Carrying that up two flights of stairs had me winded, when I used to be capable of so much more. It's not easy to deal with.
I did want, studied for, and tried to be a musician, but there are only so many times you can be told that you should be grateful for the exposure.
The terrible part is even people who supposedly have the time, I am disabled, spend so much effort meeting our needs , we are often to exhausted to enjoy that 'free time' any time I'm not actively seeing to the needs of my household, rent, food, utilities, education etc.... I just shut down and stare at the computer!
Same. After a 10 hour day I just sit and rot lol rinse/repeat
I'm a disabled unemployed single parent. I work literally 24/7 and the effort I put into that is hardly ever recognised. not even by myself because often times I still feel lazy and unable to really relax ever.
Oh big same. I have ADHD and it feels like I have to spend twice as much energy to be half as productive as the rest of my coworkers. In theory I have plenty of free time outside of work, but in practice I've already borrowed energy against that time and it needs to be spent paying back that debt.
I was a straight A honor roll student until I was 10. Then I experienced 3 deaths in my immediate family, all people I was very close to. Not to mention it was also the time I started realizing I liked boys and girls about the same, plus the time I started feeling a conscious need to act more masculine to fit in and avoid bullying. I had a ton going on. No good way to express what I was dealing with. And instead, just chalked it up on personal failings and that I had no excuse to slack on my schoolwork.
I watched the school system and child protective services create a psychopath. A kid was being abusive to others, fighting, pinching, spitting being a general bad kid. They stuck him in a class for BD kids, it got worse. He started fighting became a bully, spat on teachers. They brought CPS in, suspecting something was not right. Parents influential in church, "mighty fine people". CPS found no problems. School put him in special classes with other bad kids that caused him to get worse. He is serving a 20 year prison sentence because, as it turns out he killed someone on purpose without remorse. Turns out his parents were beating him and locking him in a closet for days at a time...and molesting him. Was he a monster or did he become what he was taught? Children make part of themselves the things they are told they are...or they rebel and become something else. Nature vs nuture is about 90% confusing, and could be argued one way or the other. BUT in the end, if you don't acknowledge the problems and work to fix or work around them shit happens.
Thats horrifying and as bad it os to kill someone,i cant blame him he got there, he is a victim and killer. Also i know the right or better wrong situation can make anyone a murderer, and by god, the one here is in all the wrong.
It’s fairly true, but really hard to talk about.
The American school system surely needs a HUGE overhaul.
If you really research genes, you’ll see that environment is integral to how genes develope. It can be argued both spiritually and scientifically that nature and nurture are inseparable.
I want to leave this here because this video made me think about my situation.
I was a chef. In that job in order to get the good pay and the good gigs you have to work hard, and you need to be mercenary about it. I had undiagnosed mental health issues so in order to perform at that level I thought I needed to I used heroin and other drugs to mask those problems.
I get to the point I have an executive chef gig. Its years of abusing my body, not being around family...and finally it just happened. My OCD basically completely disordered my life so much that I only leave the house to go to doctors appointments.
Burn out is real, and if you have other mental illness it can really mess you up.
I am still a workaholic, but I just rattle around my house and my garden.
even though I am on disability now, I feel like I am not doing enough and I am somehow less than others.
My dad often comments about how "hard-working" I am because I have "achieved" more than your average person my age. It's always interesting watching him become befuddled as I discuss the fact that all that I'm doing is following the path of least resistance, I'm just lucky, fortunate, and privileged enough to have that path overlap with what people would often consider that of a "driven" or "motivated" individual. To be fair, I am considerate of myself and others and tend to not act rashly and think things through, but that's all because that's what I prefer to do. I do more things that I like to do or make me comfortable doing than otherwise.
I'm not a driven or motivated individual beyond the drive to do the things I want to do. It'd be erroneous to compare my internal processes of "motivation" to those of another as much as it's folly to make compare the value of two people based on the color of their hair or the length of their left pinky.
Ah, dyscalculia! The cause of immense heartache in my schooling, as I was somehow getting As and Bs in every subject but math because I "wasn't trying."
The timing of this could not be better. I just got fired by an abusive boss who worked me to the bone. I now have two months to find a new job/career/life.
EDIT: "Gorloch the Defiler!" HA!
I'm hoping you'll get a job that, like a busted vacuum cleaner, sucks less.
Hey sorry to here about that I’m sure that sucks just want to say you’re not alone. I got fired about a month ago, for insubordination at my Job. My first infraction ever in my three years there. I worked there all through the pandemic, even worked overnights for them for a whole year because of the shut down. Overtime etc you name it. But one slip up and I was done. And now I’m wrestling between getting another Job in the field *which already is shit pay but also left a bad taste in my mouth* or maybe go back to school, who knows 🤷🏿♂️..But what I do know is I feel exhausted but also very lazy at the exact same time and it’s crazy Lool Just wrapping your head around it makes you more tired. Good Luck out there corny as it may sound videos like this make me feel like we’re headed to better times we gon be alright 👍🏿🥲.
@@NouNou25 If you have unemployment benefits... and you can afford to milk them for all their worth... you absolutely should right now.
I'm usually uneffected by direct addresses to the audience, but the one in this video about working too hard, got me tearing up. Even though (or maybe because) I've been unemployed since mid-pandemic. It's so easy to slip back into a capitalist mentality of worth in regards to yourself.
This is an amazing piece of “work”.
"Humanity discovers the power of dinosaur juice! This would later prove to be a pretty big mistake." God Thought Slime has some great writing chops. Reminds me of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.
I'm more of an ampersand lady, myself. Fun, flirty, & curvy as hell.
In all seriousness, it's always great to hear from you. I'm only about a quarter of the way through the video so far, but I find your takes quite eye‐opening. Eternally grateful that your videos helped radicalize me over a year ago!
Ampersand was robbed!!
You think this was radical? How far right were you?
Yes, ampersand is thicc 😏
In my opinion, it's period any day. You don't get much more assertive than the period.
@@The_Gnome_Chomskee You misunderstand. Their videos helped introduce me to kropotkin and anarcho-communism in a palatable way. That's all I'm saying.
I participated in the Great Resignation. For twenty years, I worked as a software engineer doing absolutely nothing of value, and while I was hilariously underpaid compared to my co-workers, owing to the fact I am AFAB, I was still privileged and fortunate to save enough money to quit for an entire year (but only one!). After two years of budgeting, planning and grappling with the "moral quandary" of quitting my job, I finally left the industry that gutted my passion for technology and put me through two nervous breakdowns and a heart attack.
It's been a month since I "retired," and I'm still experiencing dread that if I start reading all the books I've waited on, or playing music on a piano I haven't touched in a decade, I will suddenly never be able to do anything else--I'll never be able to find work again, my family will starve, and I will bring shame upon my house. I missed two small, simple pleasures so much that I am wracked with guilt and terror over indulging in them, even though there is nothing left to compete with. Still, it's easier to breathe day by day, and even though I don't know what I'll do a year from now, I know what I won't do ever again.
Thank you for your hard work, Mildred.
Good recovery
Worst thing yet. When you are out of work and having to cope on very little money or security, you don't get to use all this free time you have on writing that series of novels, composing that masterpiece or coding the best game ever, because the job centre put enormous pressure on you to spend as much time as possible looking for work, so that even when you can't be bothered to do that you're coping with shame and depression about how lazy you are. And so you somehow never find time to do the things you want even when you're not working.
Capitalism sucks.
One of your best videos btw.
It really does feel like Feudalism 2.0. Obviously, I wouldn't know from experience but from the descriptions it appears to function eerily similar.
As much as I don’t like virtue signalling, there are problems that are too big for certain kinds of people who, at best, are left alone (sometimes for mental health reasons), functioning very differently in a comfortable zone of theirs.
That’s why I pay attention to my limits.
I worked as an illegal CNA at a family friend's assisted living home when I was 14 thru 21. I did all the things a normal CNA does, but for about $6 an hour and without any of the certifications or credentials. It was in Idaho.
They told us not to think of it as "work" but as a "celebration" of the end of life. We weren't "employees", we were "helpers", "carers" and "friends until the end" for our patients.
I was poisoned by it. My manager would call me while I was in school and bring me to tears with her "discipline". I held the hands of the sick and dying after rehearsals for the school play. I was abused by dementia patients, called demeaning names, groped and even molested by old, senile men, before I was even legally allowed to drive. On the clock, I was subject to the most humiliating, disgusting, horrific work known to man. Our facility did not hire biohazard cleanup, so I also often cleaned the sheets, clothing, and carpets of residents who deceased upon them. I watched a woman with a brain aneurysm pass in a violent and bloody seizure. I dissociated in front of her adult daughter, who was screaming at me, a literal child, to "do something". I just stood there.
What was I supposed to do?
They used me until my body broke down due to many years of unassisted patient lifts. I was let go with a firm conversation that I would not be seeking workers compensation, because I had no contract to prove my employment. They insinuated that they would deny I had ever worked there. After everything. And this facility was owned by A FRIEND OF MY FAMILY. Other employees thought I was FAVORED. They were RIGHT!!! I watched an 8 month pregnant coworker lift a 300 lb patient alone! Our chef worked through chemo!!! My manager brought her two year old son every day, because she couldn't afford daycare!
I am 30 now, and my PTSD is still debilitating. I still have nightmares often, and use cannabis to manage my anxiety. My therapist told me she couldn't help me any more when I panicked at her recommendation of vocational rehabilitation. She didn't know what else to do.
I refuse to work. I am a conscientious objector to work. My experience was *privileged* compared to the agony of modern forced labor on the global south. All work under this system is evil. All work under this system is exploitation. I thought I was a "helper". I thought I was doing something important. I was being abused. No one can help me, so I just make art and chill with my cat. I get snap, and live.
Sorry for the trauma dumping, but it is so impossible to express the true evil of "work" without concrete deets. I hate work. I hate capitalism. I will fight it until.the day I die.
i know it's just a bit where you say you can hear our negative self talk and that we're being too hard on ourselves i fully broke down crying on the way to work today. thank you for making this
I've been struggling with my self image of being lazy for years. In reality it's always been a way for me to grasp some sort of control over my internal narrative. I now know I have severe executive dysfunction and probably always had. Before learning this it was easier for me to view myself as lazy because the alternative was facing a frightening void of inability. Laziness was the only explanation I had.
I can very much relate
My ADHD brain relates. I thought I was lazy, or maybe didn't care enough. I also interpreted my shifting interests as being a quitter. If I didn't stick with something long term then I felt bad, I was doing something everyone else wasn't by stopping and moving onto another interest. Now I embrace it, it's one of my favorite aspects of myself. I know so much weird stuff that I think is cool and no one else cares. That used to bother me to, now I talk about my interests with a carefree attitude. if someone looks bored I shift topic without guilt. if only I could give that skill to a 15 year old version of me, lmao.
@@Pensnmusic Oh, so much same. I've started viewing myself as a collector of hobbies. And now that I can see the pattern I don't let myself go absolutely wild at the drop of a hat. For instance I placate my urge to start painting warhammer minis again, for the third time, with watching other people doing it on youtube.
Woah this is resonates really hard with me - this idea that if I don't try, and think of myself as being lazy, it's better than actually putting effort into something and finding out I'm incompetent or simply unable to be successful
ITT: relatively privileged children trying justify their parasitic existence.
Mildred, I can't tell you how much I needed the laugh that "apostrophes are a little possessive" gave me. It's been a rough morning and that genuinely helped, so thank you.
I have to go to work now (the irony) but I'll finish watching the video as soon as I get home, I'm sure it's a banger.
As a teacher I feel this so hard. And I make sure my lessons and assignments respect my students' time
When these conversations come up I always remember how one of the groups the nazis targeted as genetically and morally inferior was the "asocial" or "workshy" against those who dont conform to the social order. It often targeted those already targeted such as the homeless, Romani, sex workers and people with substance issues like alcoholism, communists etc, but would also of course target many people on the mental health and disability and neurodivergent spectrum who wouldn't have been able to be identified as disabled by normal medical diagnosis at the time, but of course, using their fake sciences they could look at productivity and rebellion and inability to adapt to social norms ans decide your value as a living human based on whether they can force it into you or not.
So whether we talk about laziness as a personal moral failure or due to genetic and medical issues there has always been the same amount of stigma. It's worth getting rid of that moral condemnation and focus on productivity rather than just bring up our adhd or whatever, because you never know when someone will just decide that people with adhd or whatever disability are just lesser people
I completely burnt out working in our family business. We finally sold the business and it was like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. I was lucky enough to make enough from the sale to quit working for a while. Nothing worse than working in a family business. It gets bound up in familial responsibility and it seemed like it was all we talked about, no matter when or where we got together.
I needed to see this today. I'm lying in bed crying because I just spent the past month moving house, trying to get it all done before school started. I begged for help, and no one would help me. Now it is the day before the first day school, and I just told someone that I cannot, by myself, help them move my living room furniture. I physically can't. And I still have to get my kids ready, despite having no money because someone stole money from me. And I have a massive toothache. My house is a mess. I'm completely overwhelmed, and in pain. And I STILL feel guilty that I did not go make a futile attempt at moving furniture today.
Edit: tildes are it.
I'm so sorry for your pain and frustration. I wish I could help
@@tenebrousoul9368 I appreciate that
Moving house burnt me out for like 6 months, I feel for you.
I really wanted to be a social worker because in all my years of therapy the two social workers I met were the ONLY people to help. You definitely need passion to do that job. I have it but I also don't want to burn out in under a month.
Please agressive selfcare, i have no tip really, but agressive selfcare. To not burn out fast, and maybe not exhaust empathy too fast.
To be clear empathy is goodbut household for bot burning put too.
Is youth worker or Youth offending an option in your country?
In the UK a social work degree is very useful
The part about musicians making no money hits especially close to home. I have two music degrees. I know more about theory and orchestration and How To Make Music Happen than most people. I'm 90K in debt because of it. But have I actually been spending my time post-graduation making music? of course not! I've desperately been trying to prove to some company somewhere that I'm worthy of being paid $15 an hour to do literally anything other than corporate retail. And, surprise surprise, most companies do not think that I, a person with a master's degree, am qualified enough to sit behind a desk and make appointments for minimum wage. It feels like a direct punishment for daring to study something artistic instead of going into something like computer science or engineering like I was "supposed to"
the irony of being a creative in this capitalist society is that society tells us that what we do has no value, while also having a huge demand for the things we produce. people want music, movies, TV shows, books, games, etc to consume, but for some reason they don't think we deserve to be able to afford a living making those things for their consumption.
ummmm Jimi Hendrix couldn't even read music. You clearly don't know how to make music happen or you would have made it happen by now. College won't teach you how to create anything, just work a job.
@@TheGuindo Dude people who are involved in those fields (directors, musicians, actors, writers) make a ton of money. Why do you think there are millions of starving artists out there.
@@seanfoley974 Because it's difficult to make decent money in an artistic career without a "big break" of some kind. For every Stephen King out there, there's a hundred other writers who have to work on their novels in bits and pieces during their lunch break at their day jobs because they don't get paid enough to quit and write full time. For every _Abba_ there's a hundred garage bands who can't get a record label to give them the time of day.
Under capitalism, the only measurement of value is monetary profit. So creative works are only valuable inasmuch as you can profit from selling them. The _process_ of creation is not seen as having value, even though it's a necessary step in getting a finished work that can be sold for profit. And even if you're the next Charles Dickens with a _fantastic_ completed manuscript to show a publisher, it means nothing if every publisher thinks it's "too niche" to be profitable.
@@TheGuindo I have to disagree. A fantastic completed manuscript, no matter how niche, would always be appreciated by an audience. It may take some time to find that audience. The Stephen King's also wrote during their lunch break or on their day jobs. Chuck Palahniuk is a great example of this.
I did a rewatch of this after a very emotional day at work and cried. Thank you, Mildred. I needed this.
Having been chewed out by my mother about 12 hours ago because I "don't work enough," I really benefited from the closing section of this video.
Funny story, I got formally diagnosed with ADHD several months (a year?) after you posted your video about getting diagnosed. The 25+ years of being called lazy and internalizing it, because i definitely didn't have ADHD, severe anxiety, and trauma- yeah. Thanks for another great video, Mildred
I just got back from a 5-day vacation. It was probably the last one my grandparents will ever be able to go on with me, my siblings, and my cousins, our last hurrah of sorts. We saw amazing things, spent time together, heard stories about our grandparents' lives we had never heard before. I took 3 unpaid days off of work, plus the weekend, to go on it, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Yet despite my boss assuring me it was okay, despite the fact that we had so little work he was literally letting two people a day stay home for two weeks beforehand, I still felt mildly guilty for doing it, and caught myself promising to work extra hard when I got back to 'make up for it'.
That is power. No forcing people but people forcing them to work. That is the difference between US and China. China are too direct. China is younger and too zealous in helping their country men. Sure China handled the Pandemic better and provide their people the bare minimum. Let me clear there are no good or bad guys. Being a Government means having a monopoly on legitimate violence.
@@undeadblizzard China is much more ancient than the US. In fact, it has such an ingrained working culture (and not also China, but most countries strongly culturally tied, like Korea and Japan) that the standard of work for them is 10 to 12 hours AS A MINIMUM. To overwork yourself to death is much more common there than anywhere in Europe, America or Africa.
Now, the problem with China is that now they have "other examples" and they have things to compare thanks to the internet. That's the main problem here. But that's it.
Extenuating work culture has always been a strong point of asian cultures, much more than the west ones.
Man, hearing about that kid who was ashamed to not be able to turn in assignments reminds me of two of my own teachers. My 5th grade teacher told us a story the first week of school about a former student of his who was hospitalized and asked the nurses to move her IVs from her right arm to her left so she could do her assignments and that's why he wouldn't accept any excuse for missed work unless you were in a coma or dead. This to a bunch of 5th graders.
I also had a college professor who had in his syllabus that missing even a single class without an excuse directly from the dean's office for one of the reasons the school mandated would result in immediately failing the class. On the first day he *bragged* that he failed a student for missing class to attend his grandmother's funeral. While I was in his class my father had a heart attack. I sent an email to the professor saying what happened and to please excuse me if I did not volunteer much during the class discussion as I wouldn't be there mentally and would be coming from then returning to the hospital, but as per his policy I would be there. His response was a single sentence. "I do not think it is unreasonable to expect people to show up and follow instructions."
Capitalism and the Protestant work ethic are death cults.
Oh boy, time for the chia seed pudding tuxedo.
This might actually be the best video essay I've ever seen.
"you can watch this person you love a few days early when you happen to be bored" is the best way to get me to patreon