busybee fluffy rambles

So many people are out of work, and companies aren’t hiring, either. And the unemployment department is going out of their way to not pay anyone’s benefits, because in order to get benefits you have to prove that you’ve applied to three separate jobs every week. But there aren’t even that many jobs to apply to.

Every online platform has been turned into a race to the bottom, with people needing to crank out as much Content™ as possible, to keep the almighty algorithm happy. Everyone’s doing things in isolation, and brands are using this as free marketing and exploiting creators just so that they can sell more shit to more people who don’t actually need it but are hoping that maybe this is the thing they can do a video on to get more attention.

Everyone’s been put in competition with one another. Everyone has to do everything themselves. You gotta be your own writer, actor, producer, editor, marketing. Whatever happened to cooperation? And when cooperation does occur it’s always this really awful dystopian thing done in service of the big names in Content™, and everyone’s in a giant crab bucket. People working themselves and each other to death, all for what?

Nearly everyone I know is either unemployed or worried about becoming unemployed soon.

I’m just so tired and worn out and every time I get the spark to work on something I just have so much difficulty even getting over the initial hump of executive dysfunction. Or if I do get enough of a spark to get going, I overdo it for a few days and then am worse off in the end, usually with nothing to show for it.

My music studio is reasonably organized and functional again, and I’ve tried making music, and I just Can’t.

I want to. I need to. But I Can’t.

I can only find the motivation to work on things when it’s for others. Performing to an empty void brings me no satisfaction. And whenever I talk about this I get flooded with people saying things like, “Fuck the audience, do it for yourself.” Completely ignoring the point to the thing I just said.

I still remain fiscally solvent for now but I’m barely treading water, emotionally-speaking.

I need to fucking collaborate with someone, for fuck’s sake.

I still occasionally get recruiters trying to get me interested in doing contract work for Meta. It all involves cranking out a lot of code on a weekly basis. I just cannot do that anymore. I need something new, but nobody wants to hire me for the things I’m good at. I also don’t really want to work for a company as a full-time or even part-time thing. What I want is to be freelancing on a per-project basis, with someone else doing the hard part of finding the clients to do the work for.

Once again, I’d love to be in a creative agency cooperative. And that is definitely not something I can start up on my own.

Just, y'know. This fucking everything.

Years ago, QFC got bought out by Kroger. Now Kroger and Safeway are merging, and it’s pretty likely that the local QFC is going to close down in deference to the (much larger) Safeway. Everything is consolidating and getting more efficient, and leaving everyone else out to dry.

We needed UBI yesterday. Right now I have a hard time imagining tomorrow.