Fruits of (physical) labor
August 12th, 2023
I rarely get to see the tangible results and effects of my work. I am an office drone who moves and crunches and juggles numbers. I write emails and make phone calls, but numbers are the gist of my work. And not even real numbers, just the pixels on the screen, or ink marks on a piece of paper, or abstract calculations in my head. Those numbers, of course, have relevance to the actual labor that someone else will do in a physical manner. They will see the effects of their work — things will be made, loaded, and delivered based on my numbers. For me, I will not experience that reality, only more numbers will be my lot. And even more numbers (numbers flashing red or green on the screen of my managers) will determine if I am doing a good job or not. I even got a nice personal number I keep on a tag on a lanyard on me at all times. Non-realistic numbers are my work and are me at work as well.
Every couple of years, I rent a skip bin to throw away all the garbage that accumulated over the previous years. You know — empty cardboard boxes, empty containers, pieces of this or that, old household items and utensils and gadgets, leftover materials from house repairs and garden work, the stuff that fills my outbuilding and slowly suffocates me and my need for cleanliness and order. Garbage means chaos and I will never stand for it. So today was the day for the cathartic cleaning. I didn't think that I was doing something cathartic as I was doing the work — I didn't think much about anything at all. Work was hard — the summer sun was beating down as I walked for a hundredth time carrying more junk to the skip. The stuff I was throwing out was either dusty or moldy but always unwieldy and cumbersome, but in three hours I managed it. I was (and still am) tired and grimy and sweaty but quite happy with all that — as I was doing the cleaning, I could see right in front of my eyes the container filling up, and the pile of garbage getting smaller. I saw the real and tangible effects of my work. I was doing something real with my hands and the rest of my body and the outcome was visible. That made all the difference…
