Sometimes, in writing, there’s this horrible sense that one is birthing demon children.
The most bitter of ironies – less than 24 hours after reposting my paean to Falling Down, my entire department (a horrifically jargonistic name, which I won’t provide here lest I get noticed), too, got the axe. At 9:00 a.m., we had jobs. At 11:00 a.m., we did not. Not unpredictable (half of my team getting fired two years ago, and the panicked colleague who told me “trust no one” a few weeks prior) and entirely unsurprising, given economic and technological trends, as well as my bosses’ and all bosses’ general disregard for knowledge workers, but still… this year, this job market.
’26 really is a motherfucker, isn’t it?
To a certain degree, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally dropped. No more trying to curry favor or suck dick. The truth is revealed. My fellow editor – after having had two gin and tonics, most of the bottle of Vinho Verde we ordered with lunch, and a couple Port Charlottes courtesy of my home decanter – stretched on my couch and loudly exhaled how glad he was our Graeberian bullshit job was finally fucking over. That he finally didn’t need to give a fuck about his KPIs anymore.
He would go home and tells his wife and two daughters that their family would be on one income for a time. For me? It’s easier. I have a strong savings base, and no mouths to feed, other than the occasional cat.
But still, am I bitter? How could I not be? In a complete lack of ceremony, 10 years’ efforts are up in smoke. I threw the last bit of their coffee from my travel mug out into the bougainvilleas.
The reason given for our termination was not AI explicitly, although it would be foolish to say that that didn’t play a role, even if only implicitly. My bosses have, over the past couple years, demonstrated their radical misunderstanding of the technology and its capabilities, and while I would like to think they will face their comeuppance, I am confident that that will not be the case. They will, in all likelihood, continue to fail upward, and my only hope is that their failsons will do their best to humiliate their fathers and squander any familial wealth.
It’s a strange sort of life I’ve cultivated. I’ve somehow managed through a mix of increasingly irrelevant writing skillset and bohemian finagling to wind up standing in front of the money hose to write and edit things that I don’t care about very much so as to fund the writing and editing of those things I actually care about – something of a necessity in which the world of art and letters is increasingly the province of those with inherited money. Sure, it was bullshit, but I know precious few office workers in 2026 whose jobs aren’t bullshit in some meaningful way. If you’re an EMT, cool, your work contributes to the wellbeing of those around you and society writ large, es verdad. However, if you’re, say, an insurance underwriter, you’ve just found the sort of not-quite-parasitism that biologists call commensalism – remoras, enjoy your ride down the Gulf Stream.
But all remoras – self included – must fall off eventually, and try to find new cetaceans to guide us to happier waters.
And I woke up in the morning, a bit worse for wear after the sheer amount of wine and negronis in the awful afterglow. I look down at every little bit I’ve acquired over those 10 years. Burmese lacquerware cigarette box. Gin bottles filled with dried flowers. Coffee table books published by the government of the Georgian SSR to celebrate 50 years of Sovetskaya Gruzhiya. These are things I care about. There are also the things I don’t care about. Tonight, I’m finally using up the last of the paper towels I stole from the office.
And it’s not all bad – I’ve been given four full months’ paid leave, to be followed by a severance package that would make most of my fellow Yanks blush. So fuck ‘em, let’s move on.
There are things to do. Job hunting and networking, sure, but also the many freelance assignments I have to complete – enough to cover my rent, I’m happy to report – as well as the infinite little tasks and vaguely autistic fixations that constitute living. Is dinner made? Is the floor swept? And while we’re at it, when was the last time you really took a long hard look at your reading list?
But then, for every step forward, a step back, I look at my daily Business Insider email. In happier times, I enjoyed their catty, gossipy approach to the world of business and finance, but reading the reports in this context – spiraling costs, spiraling unemployment, professionals taking on jobs for a fraction of their former sinecure, it feels a bit like looking at WebMD, and then back at the mole that has emerged on your calf.
Yesterday there was what looked rather like a run on a gold shop in my neighborhood, with record one-week losses on gold in decades prompting panic among the Chinese aunties fanning themselves outside in the summer heat.
Meanwhile, one blocked strait is sending the entire world’s energy economy into a tailspin, because a bunch of fat chomos in Washington and Jerusalem had a very involved temper tantrum.
Investors are expected to put approximately USD 700 million in AI this year, despite the actual economic returns being thus far negligible. The job market is wrecked, the air and water are fouled, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
It’s not a t-shirt – it’s a way of life. It’s not a t-shirt – it’s a cry for help. It’s not a t-shirt – it’s a manifesto. Too meta?
I look out on the spot by my house, where Charles Sobhraj lured backpackers into his tropical death cult. A song plays from my living room speakers. Just like Topanga, it’s hot today, and it might as well be Manson in the air. All my friends are gone. I want to leave, but I’ll probably stay another year. It really is hard to leave when absolutely nothing’s clear.
And then I wake up in the sweltering hot season morning, and see the spot on my desk where my work laptop used to be, and I realize that the empty day stretches out before me. And the sun is only getting higher.
I’ve left the cards on the table. They make as much sense as anything else at this juncture.
The nine of pentacles, reversed.
The eight of pentacles, obverse.
Judgment. Three people in the lifeboat, beseeching the archangel.
And thusly I stare heavenward. Are we all gonna make it?
No comments:
Post a Comment