I've worked 13 hours straight and had to organize a push to get us fed dinner.
There's a good chance I'm stuck here for 2 more hours, meaning I get 0 time to do anything except sleep and do this again.
I want to quit so badly, but I'm basically forced to be here because this job market is such shit that it took a year to get this job. And I consider myself lucky to have this.
There's a thread on lemmygrad from someone that's also exhausted around the discourse about the American "left". Yes we suck, yes we are privileged compared to a lot of people, yes our organizing is tame and not effective, yes my material conditions mean I'm not doing adventurism and neither are my comrades.
BUT don't claim we're not trying. I know people working two jobs. I technically have 2 jobs and am maybe able to get back on my feet financially in a few months. We still do what we can and it's not enough but we're not at that point. Yeah that's privileged if you call being scared shitless of being homeless and being abused by literally every other human here...
I'm tired
Yes, it is crushing to the soul. It is crushing in ways that are distinct from other’s experiences. Right now people are agitated and shit is wild out there, and that reflects back in our spaces here too. Hang in there. Is your life materially better than others? Yeah probably, but you aren’t empowered by that difference. We cannot act ethically within capitalism to change this imbalance. If you don’t take what you can get to keep yourself going it doesn’t get kicked downstream. It goes right back to the bosses! By design.
There is a line I always come back to: “we are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.” It is taxing on the soul to be here and witness this. This is the nature of capitalism. None of this does good things. Not even for the victors. Look at how wealth has twisted Musk into a caricature and filled his body with hormones and stimulants and all kinds of horseshit. Look at that weirdo infusing himself with his son’s blood. You can’t look at that and say “yeah, this is sustainable, this is working out for them.”