Oh, it can be done all right, but it is hard work.
It was the same people doing the sculpting who also would do the wedging. The place worked like a mini factory - one person would wedge clay for a few hours, another would roll out slabs and make extrusions, and leave them aside in dampened canvass to harden a bit; another would be making sculptures out of the slabs and extrusions; yet another loading the kiln …
The actual making of stuff was only part of the process. It would not be efficient to have one person wedge a little bit of clay, make one thing out of it, etc. By working as a team, that same person could be part of a process for making ten times as much stuff in the same time.
Maybe that’s the difference between a high-volume studeo making stuff for a profit, and making stuff as a hobby.
Only once you take out the word “concrete.” And the indulgent nature of it is only implied. It’s only between the lines.
What I think people call indulgent (I may be wrong) is making yourself feel better in the moment - enough to get thru the head crash, or the day, or the panic attack, or the next 15 minutes. This is exactly what the Suck It Up crowd doesn’t want you to do - doesn’t think anyone has the right to do.
You’re allowed to Take It One Day At A Time - but if you can’t make it thru the day? What then?
You test people, yet you resent being tested by the same systems. You don’t trust them because they fail your tests - which seem rather arbitrary. And they don’t trust you because you don’t pass their tests - getting your work in on time.
When my husband and I first moved in together, there was the great toilet paper fiasco. Not the over under thing - neither of us cares. But the “I’m the only one who knows how to put this on the holder!” battle. You see, in a rush I’ll put the new roll of toilet paper on the back of the tank - and then replace it while I’m sitting there next time - or lets say “some future time” - because honestly, it isn’t always prompt. My husband will do the same. Both of us came to the realization at about the same time that we were the only one who ever put the roll on the holder. So we decided to test the other one and see if the roll got on the holder.
Three months went by, roll never on the holder. I finally accused him of never doing it. He accused me of never doing it. I told him I’d been waiting to see if it got done. He said he’d been waiting to see if it got done. Stupid silly fight, followed by amusement over the stupidness of the fight.
Now, we are back to “if the roll is sitting on the back when you are in there, just replace it - and if you don’t, no big…but it isn’t worth keeping count.”
Oh, I see, I guess I’m not that familiar with how pottery studios work. Beware of Doug, have you thought about getting counseling? Seriously? Are you near graduation?
It’s pretty obvious what you do. You try to get away with as little as possible. I’m sure you bombard your professor with questions about the minutae of the assignment until he finally loses patience and cuts you off. At that point, you can then declare victory and say “See! He doesn’t ‘get’ me or won’t give me what I need and that’s why I fail!” And if someone gives you a hard deadline or a results oriented goal, you can just be like “you’re so rigid with your black and white hardass goals! How can anyone survive in your dog-eat-dog world?”
How about you try testing your own limits for once?
Once again, back to my fantastic job as a server (I do really like it though). Remember what I was saying about suffering from anxiety and being really proud of myself for keeping this job? Yeah, when I first started I was having panic attacks left and right. Luckily my boss was understanding, so gradually I learned to deal with them. If I said, “I’m starting to freak out. Can you go get a drink order for this table so I can stand in the walk-in cooler and calm down?” they were more than happy to do that for me. And so I started to learn that shit may get really hectic, and I may start to panic, but at that moment I have a choice- give in to the panic and run out crying, or say to myself, “One step at a time,” and get things done, even if I feel like I can’t do it.
So my boss was more than willing to give me a chance to make myself feel better to get through that panic attack, up to a point. If I still asked my boss for that, it would be indulgent. I’m not saying that everyone can hack it as a server, but there are two options: learn to deal with it, or get another job.
Sucking it up can be giving yourself 30 seconds to get your head together when things get bad. Taking a few deep breaths and reassuring yourself that you can do it is sucking it up. No one is going to think it’s indulgent to walk into a huge mess at work and say, “Let me grab a cup of coffee before we tackle this monster,” nor will they think that if you have to unwind after a bad day with a glass of wine.
Sucking it up involves a number of things that functional people do every day to stay sane. Putting on a smile when you’re down. Going for a walk on your lunch break to clear your head. Doing yoga before bed to get out some of your stress. Appreciating the beauty of your neighbor’s rosebushes. Hugging a loved one. Crying when it gets to be too much. Meeting your buddies to have a beer or 3. Punching pillows when you’re so mad you could scream. Counting to ten. Repeating “This too shall pass.”
That is all part of sucking it up. Acknowledging that things aren’t going to go your way, but you’re going to do your best anyway, even if that means you have to spend an hour in a bubble bath tonight for your blood pressure to get back to normal.
I’ve often wondered why work has that effect on people. I had one job where it would just piss me off. It wasn’t that hard, but something about it used to just rub me the wrong way. I would go into the bathroom in a fit of rage and spend 10 minutes hurling a paper towel roll against the wall as hard as I could. I would see other people freaking too from time to time. All we were doing was running simple SQL queries, movie some numbers around a spreadsheet and filling in some Powerpoint slides. It’s not like anyone was particulary mean or abusive or anything like that. And it wasn’t like we were trying to land a crippled rocket ship.
Really the secret to being successful at work is to not care about your job, but do it really really well. It’s like George Costanza saying “actually showing up to the office can only hurt my chances for promotion.”
If they’re willing to feed, house and provide for you, I usually feel that it’s no skin off my teeth, even though I am one of those awful “personal accountability and responsibility” people.
I am probably a wee bit of a workaholic (I have 2 jobs and average 60-80 hours a week depending upon what time of year it is), but I have never heard the sentiment which you describe above from any of my fellow worker bees. In fact most of us worker bees believe in bettering ourselves and our employment to make it more rewarding and enjoyable (not to mention better paying), not less.
What we DO believe, and what I HAVE heard, is to provide for one’s self and one’s family. I’ve never heard anything (in fact I’ve heard and firmly believe the opposite) about work having to be stressful, disillusioning, dehumanizing and so on. If that is how a job makes a person feel, then they’re in the wrong industry. I LOVE my jobs. They make me feel good, and yeah, they are a little bit center in my life, but they serve so many other purposes than just putting a roof over my head, or food on the table. My primary job is in the environmental industry (No, not the bunny hugging idiots of Green Peace and their ilk). In that job I get to have a teensy wee piece of “saving the planet”. Right now, one of my main jobs is caring for and operating a closed landfill where a huge forest of baby trees is being cultivated (blah de blah de blah, scientific stuff like Evapotransiration blah blah), and studying and working toward re-use of landfill methane to power other systems.
My other job is as an adjunct faculty member in the PE dept. of a University. Where again, it’s not about the paycheck, it’s about the young minds I help mold (mwaaaah haha)
For me, the “work ethic” is pretty simple.
*Pay for your own life where you;
-Don’t expect society to support you
-Don’t expect the government to support you
-Don’t expect others to support you
***Don’t whine if others (who’ve worked their asses and youth off for it) have material things you can’t/won’t afford on your own merits.
**. If this is the case, it’s not “unfair” or “discrimination” or any other such bullshit. Material things, a certain type of lifestyle, luxuries and so on aren’t " rights" merely because you happen to be drawing air.
If you are working., the work ethic includes but is not limited to…
*Show up on time.
*Work all of the hours for which you’re being paid;
-If you leave early, be honest and clock out, note it on your timecard, etc
-If you have sick leave, use it when you’re actually sick, don’t expect others to always take up the slack because you are sick ALL of the time (I’m not talking about occasional “mental health days”).
*Behave in a reasonably “nice” way to other employees/customers etc.
*Do your work to the best of your ability and,
*Don’t shirk off your work onto your fellow employees
Hmmm, I’m not sure if it’s “contempt” I feel or not. By turns I am aggravated, perplexed, or just plain ignore them. I think if it’s a case such as yours, I don’t really care all that much, if there are people stupid enough to support someone who refuses to support themselves I guess I usually don’t care all that much.
I have a cousin like this. She’s 46 and has only been “working” for about 5 years, since her kids got too old for her to still qualify for welfare. When we were all getting out of HS and deciding what to be, or where to go to school and all that rot, she decided to pop out a few brats and go on welfare. So, her fellow Americans supported part of her chosen lifestyle (her and many others like her) with no contribution on her part, and what the gov’t dole didn’t provide (horses, cars and houses), mommy and daddy did.
That said, I feel pity for her and her kids. When her mom (the kids’ grandma) dies, they are going to be so lost and unable to care for themselves. The only thing they learned by being taken care of, was how to continue the vicious cycle of welfare and being “taken care of”.
Oh and by the by, I do feel that there is a valid time and reason for welfare. However, there is NOTHING more dehumanizing, stressful and disillusioning than what the welfare system requires of its participants. I have used it before myself, at the time I was working three part time jobs and going to college full time and was still poor enough to qualify for a partial AFDC check and food stamps. UGGGGH, why anyone would willingly do that when work is so much easier is beyond me.
And one last thought, one which kind of speaks to what aggravates me about “grasshoppers” (those who want to play all of the time on someone else’s dime, and then when crunch time comes they want someone else to mommy them). I’ve said in many other threads here on the dope. I’m bottom of the barrel as far as intelligence and ability goes, I’m old, fat, ugly, single, and not very bright, and have several serious health issues. If I can do it, ANYONE can, so I have to admit, I generally don’t buy the whole “I ‘can’t’ work/work fulltime” thing.
Not quite. You are still in the “me” mode. Realize that there are others beside you. Some of them in a position of authority over you. You have a job. Expect to be told what to do. If you don’t do it, expect to be corrected. No one is trying to hurt you, no one is persecuting you. You talk about this stuff like an alien trying to understand human emotion–totally detached, dealing with it in the theoretical sense versus life.
Maybe I’m slow and this is all a joke because I cannot believe anyone is this detached from reality. Obviously at some point in your life someone must have given you a task and you had to accomplish it to someone’s satisfaction. I’m throwing the BS flag. I say this cannot be real. This has to be pure goading
Wow. This, along with so much else you’ve said here, says so much about how you arrived at some of your ideas. Where did you get these ideas? You have such a negative view of “work” but yet, you don’t seem to have actually done much of it. Did you work at McDonald’s for a summer and form all of your notions of work from that? Mickey D’s, from my teenage experiences WAS all that you complain of regarding work, demeaning work, mean customers, mean horrible bosses demanding 20 bucks an hour work for $2.60 an hour pay and so on. But you have such negative ideas! What makes you think that things such as “deal with it” means what you think (as described above). If you’ve not worked much, where DID you get this viewpoint.
What makes you think that to have a work ethic means to never improve one’s work situation, that even if one is stuck in an unpleasant work situation that one can’t change things?
Wow…I’m flabbergasted at your intense feelings on this. How did you arrive at these conclusions?
What? In my world, “special” is a synonym for “unique”. And I mention it because you keep bringing up your pain, as if you are the only one in the world suffering from debilitating mental illness. As if we’re just being big uncompassionate meanos picking on the poor troubled delicate misunderstood soul. Maybe some of us don’t get it, but some of us–many of us–do.
You seem to want an outpouring of sympathy–someone to say, “You poor fragile thing. Of course you shouldn’t work because you’re obviously suffering.” I dunno. Maybe you are really a poor fragile thing unable to work. But whatever you’re going through, I’m not going to feel any more pity for you than I do for myself. Which isn’t a whole lot.
If you’re capable of taking graduate classes, you’re capable of working. If you can’t get your act together to work, you should volunteer. If you don’t think you should even have to do that, then yes, I will judge you harshly. Why wouldn’t I?
“Why” is a luxury. You can waste a whole day asking “why”. Why do I work? Because I don’t have any choice. Why do I say that, when I know it’s not really true? Because if I believe I don’t have any choice, then that forces me to be strong. Why be strong, when it’s so much easier being weak? Because if I’m strong, I have some power, some control. Why are those things important? Because it’s only with those things that I can be me. And if I can’t be me, I don’t want to live. Does that answer your question?
Sorry, but it sounds like you needed it. It seems like you want someone to hold your hand and act as your all-understanding, ever-compassionate, protective ego-stroking life coach. It would be wonderful if such a person existed, but no one is ever going to love, understand, or believe in you more than you. And no one is ever going to have the “why” answers you want. Why? Because we’re all dealing with our own shit and we’re too busy to ask “why”. That doesn’t make us stupid or uncompassionate. It means we’re living life rather than pondering it.
I must say, this thread has made ME feel a lot better – if only because lately, I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, having been laid off, not having a job, etc. But reading this kind of gives me more motivation, you know? Some encouragement, knowing that I CAN go out there and I WILL find something, you know?
(I know that sounds corny as hell. Go ahead and make fun of me now. :D)
Moment by moment. Seriously. Take a breath then another. Focus on your next footstep.
Distraction. If you are focusing on something else you generally don’t have time or the head space to focus on how crap your life is. Do something constructive, make something, do something physical. The pottery class is a great idea - no it’s a fantastic idea. Whatever you make whet=her good, bad or indifferent is something YOU created and if you actually tried you should be proud of that. One crappy pot is worth 10000 times more than sitting on you ass whinging.
Doing something may possibly have positive results. Doing nothing guarantees failure.
Personally I pick a possibility of good over a guarantee of bad.
I am not talking out my arse here. I learned this stuff in the hardest possible ways. I am sharing this stuff because I care enough about other people (hey another way not to focus on myself) - even random Internet people who I don’t know and am never going to meet like you - to want things to be better and easier than I had it.
I am a voice of experience end I give a shit!
You cannot always choose how you life is. You can choose how you react to life.
Please be aware that whinging to others and blaming others for your choices generally does not have positive results (yep another hard earned lesson for me)
