I'm in trouble, friends. I'm in a fair whack of a hard time at present.
No, a friend hasn't died, and no, assorted relatives and cousins haven't been bashing me mercilessly to the point of post traumatic stress disorder. I haven't been witness to a violent crime of such a staggering and heartrending capacity that I've been left in a state of depression and confusion. Of all the "difficult things" going on at present, none of those are even close to being one of them. So I guess that makes me pretty damn privileged.
I'm currently going through strife due to being one of the thousands of people in Melbourne that aren't currently employed. And I'm being a bit of an asshole about it.
We're going through the aftereffects of what has been dubbed "The Great Recession". The Great Recession is similar to The Great Depression, except back in the decade preceding World War 2 we didn't exactly have government cash-handouts for the drug-addled and unemployed. In this day and age we have a plethora of jobless folks getting by on two-to-four hundred dollars a fortnight doled out by Tha Guvament, with very few jobs to go around and more than a few Seeking Employment, so in that sense we're doin' okay, despite nobody being able to get a fucking job.
I, however, am not entitled to weighty Cash Dollar Benefits at the discretion of the Australian government, as I am not struggling. No, I'm not a wealthy Toorak gentleman mooching soullessly off my wealthy parents who occasionally forget I exist; nor am I the type to simply swipe Daddy's credit card - "borrowed" - in purchase of Ksubi's new collection. I am not 'one of those'. I am the post-adolescent, the middle-class, the ordinary citizen: the people who by rights should be getting the fuck out of the nest, but can't fathom fleeing the nest, let alone fathom paying for their own abortions.
I am a Clueless New Millennial. It's a thing.
We New Millennials are the ones in their twenties. We are The Connected, the social media bandits. We are progressive optimists who would legalise gay marriage in a heartbeat, if Parliament weren't so stacked with post-menopausal septuagenarians. We are the ones who slave away in lower-echelon retail jobs, while having never gotten our hands dirty outside of the house. We have never cut wood, but we've certainly worked cash registers. We busk for beer money and borrow twenties off our parents. We furiously press the importance of justice and nourishment for starving Ethiopians to our bored parents or housemates at the dinner table - before feasting ravenously at our home-cooked meals as though moments earlier we weren't stressing global awareness. We are vegans who sneak cheese, and get band tattoos at fifteen years of age because Marilyn Manson Saved My Life. We are pathetic, lazy and Just Don't Know How Good We've Got It.
We New Millennials are the ones who don't have a clue how to survive out on our own, and have about as many life experiences as we do qualifications by the age of twenty. This is who I am, and who I will forever be judged as, by the strength of my pop culture knowledge and overwhelming quantity of Facebook status updates alone.
My cousin moved out of home when she was thirty - shortly after getting married. My other cousin moved out of home when he was thirty - shortly after getting engaged. My third cousin from the same family is still living at home. He's twenty-seven.
The products of Generation Y, the Millennial Generation, are sure exhausting their time spent with the fam. The standard Gen Y doesn't have to worry about getting out of the house to aid their ailing family. They can't even imagine trekking five miles in the snow out to the old lumber mill to cut wood, stack 'em high for mere pennies an hour. They aren't forced into precarious jobs down in coal mines, and aren't left with no other option but begging in the streets. They can sit at home FOR MONTHS job-seeking, and not worry about going broke - because they don't need to worry about being thrown out in a rage. The standard Gen Y/New Millennial knows what suffering is, but only through the lens of A Current Affair and the break-ups on their Facebook feed. With the combination of that and the post-Great Recession lack of employment on offer, more and more Gen Y's are being left unemployed and a nuisance to their families.
Like me. Little old irritating me.
But then I stop to wonder: is it possible I'm just not trying hard enough? Is it possible that I'm deluding myself into believing I'm trying my hardest? Is this all I've got, or am I really just lounging around day after day, occasionally popping onto Seek.com in-between episodes of Elementary and Doctor Who? Do I award myself points for sending a resume every once in a while, like a high school kid who pats themselves on the back for titling an essay? What's the deal here, Brandon?
Then I realise that I'm holding myself back.
Of all the job fields out there one could peruse, my field of preference is in Administration. I desire to work in an office. I like computers, I like word documents, I like writing, and I can type like Roadrunner on a good day with a pretty damn good accuracy rating. My handwriting is flowery and elegant like what I imagine Taylor Swift's vagina must look like. So what's holding me back from shooting out more resumes than Perez Hilton can spit celeb-oriented venom?
It's the phones, I realise. It's the interacting with total strangers.
I don't want to interact with people. I don't want to look at people. I don't want to have to smile and tell them where the lavatory is. The idea of it makes me feel slightly nauseous - not because I'm an asshole, but because I have *wait for it* crippling social anxiety with strangers (when entirely sober). I sit on trains and imagine junkies boarding with the intention of knocking me out. I worry that making a minute mistake in front of a crowd will warrant pitchforks and torches being brandished, an angry mob shrieking my name. I fear dropping coffee on patrons and copping homophobic abuse from dudebro patrons in a standard retail job. You'd think after almost two years doing club photography, I'd have quashed the social anxiety. Nope, still there, just waiting for the day I get knocked out for looking at someone the wrong way, or 'giving someone tone'.
I don't want to have to talk to people. I just want to sit in a room or cubicle all day and collate. Sounds depressing? Not for me. I prefer being bathed in fluorescent lights to skipping daintily through green pastures. I love the sound a printer makes when it presses ink to a page row by row. I find the clicking of pens mentally stimulating. I find the saving of completed word documents a relief. I find putting paper through a shredder a god damn orgasm, kind of like how serial killers must feel when they dispose of their victims and can finally move on to the next one.
Worried by that analogy? Me too.
Either way, I don't want to interact with people. I've done the retail thing. I've done the customer service thing. I've recently finished doing the club photography thing. I'm done with interacting with strangers; with smiling at them and making them feel wanted. I'm done with pretending I give a shit about you people, god damn it! Just kidding, I totally do. But I'm seriously done with 'customer service' - I just want to please myself. I want the universe to chuck this Clueless New Millennial a line - a line in the form of binder books, Excel spreadsheets and mindless collation. I want a pleasant job in an office that I can go to in the daylight hours, so I can finally move out of Mum and Dad's place, get my own and surround myself with an ocean of cats to snuggle in the nighttime. I will then sit on my porch with a cigarette, and cackle maniacally at the thought of people older than twenty ever daring to bother their parents by staying at home.
But you just can't get there without having to talk on the god damn phone.
Maybe it's time to suck it up and get a job at Maccas.
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