8. The bitter taste of mundanity
Going to work reminds me clipping toe nails. It can be fun in a strange, off putting sort of way, but it’s mostly just bothersome and time consuming.
My toenails are surprisingly sturdy and I have actually broken a nail clipper before trying to cut them. They are obnoxiously difficult. My feet hurt if I try to ignore them. And then, when you finally get around to clipping them, they fly uncontrollably through the air, covering every surface. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to stop this. Unless you’re clipping your toenails outside, they will get everywhere and you will slowly and disgustingly find each one throughout the next couple of months.
That last part didn’t dawn on me until I was older. I remember being a kid and thinking that if I just tossed my fingernail clippings into the air, they’d disappear and never come back.
Nope. They always come back.
And you can’t entirely avoid it because your toe nails keep growing, so you need to keep clipping, and on and on in an endless circle.
Which, my friends, brings me to mundanity, in particular, the going to work kind.
Being excited to go to work is a blessing. It’s actually a dream of mine; I have bigger ones, but I will readily start with a job that I am excited to go to and that all of my co-workers are excited to be at.
…this is not my current job, nor is it for most of the people I know. A job is a necessity because money is a necessity. So then we go to the job and then this job fades backwards into the other mundane practices that we suffer through. These practices include:
- Waiting in line
- Pumping gas
- Brushing your teeth
- Boiling water, etc.
Practices so ordinary and ritualistic that you barely notice it’s happening until it occurs to you that you are not actually happy. These things make your brain numb and sluggish.
Mundane practices are a testament to a human’s ability to adjust to varying circumstances when needed. Does your job require you to merge PDFs endlessly? That’s fine, because after 8 weeks of doing it, your brain will allow you to perform that task while simultaneously writing scripts in your head. Your twisted brain will begin to enjoy the merging of the PDFs because you’ll get faster at it and become proud of how quickly you can merge things.
What even is that? Pride? Over that?
Yes. Over that.
We acclimate. And when we acclimate, we become scared of finding ourselves in unfamiliar scenarios, which is why sometimes we stick with that mundane job. Because it’s also sort of comfy. You know how it works.
But every so often, this little feather of a thought floats down into your brain and says “maybe you’d be happier doing something you liked.”
The little feather is right. And it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
