I wrote a book about being the kind of working class where you work shit jobs with no hope for years at unlivable wages. It won awards. Now I’m a writer. And a photographer. I got shot and lost an eye at work.

So I have a few thoughts on this particular argument. https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1385416352320483329

we’re living through a hundred-year pandemic and also unprecedented global crises and a revolution in technology and only poor people get to be exhausted?

Nope. Nah. Negative. Negatory, good buddy.

Most humans are exhausted. Poverty adds a bone-weariness money helps avoid.

Poverty, or working class, whatever kind of poor you are, is specifically exhausting. Look up my first essay; I’m one of the references you cite when you say poverty is exhausting. It’s called “why I make terrible decisions.”

I note that to head off “but how would YOU know”

I’ll be the first to say that scrubbing fryers is not the emotional nor physical equivalent of writing essays.

In this line of work, I am afforded an astounding amount of autonomy and while it’s not exactly stable, I’m usually paid fairly as much as people can afford.

Occasionally I am paid well above fairly, and sometimes I work for free because I owe a friend a favor from that time they worked for me for free.

Most freelancers live in a bargain economy like that, which is remarkably like when I was a cook and we traded babysitting for rides

But as far as exhaustion?

Look, my work is more autonomous and better compensated but I’m still out here busting my ass hundred hour weeks.

Difference is now it’s mental instead of physical. Mostly. It’s complex.

I used to get paid for my ability to move quickly, bear loads, and behave like a robot to the extent any human could. Which sucks! I wrote a whole book about it!

I’ve often said how I expected to lose an eye doing some dumb shit like fixing a hood, not as a journalist

Like it amazes me and makes me giggle that I did fifteen years in service jobs and kept all my fingers and toes and then I go to report on some news and lose an eye

Tickles me in the irony bone

Anyway some days for work I spend eight hours watching snuff films and that is exhausting in a way that a thousand fryers never could be

At least fryers are inanimate objects and you can listen to your music while you clean them

Some days are fun

Some days it’s snuff films

Like you may have noticed I don’t often tweet links to videos of people being beaten or dying

It’s because either people don’t need to see it to understand the horror or they shouldn’t see it because some people are sick and think it’s movies when it’s real life.

But I watch them all. Because that’s due diligence in my job. And it is exhausting.

The difference is I find this exhaustion worth it and valuable. It’s not someone else’s profit margin for me to do the job I have now; it’s what might be useful

But it’s fucking tiring.

the fryers, the parts of my soul I leave with my subjects who tell me about their worst memories, the interminable lunch rushes where you’re stuck with two trainees instead of one good person, the weeks away from my kids, the burns, the blindness

Each is its own exhaustion.

I might work in an upper class intellectual profession but from what I can see, if you can’t figure out how many things are exhausting and also not exactly the same perhaps you should rethink which profession you practice because words in this profession are quite important

The rest of it is bad faith bullshit but there are a lot of people who do wonder how someone in a cushy job could be so tired and that’s a fair question

The thing is, there’s the trust fund kids and the indies, and all of us have the same job but it ain’t all rich-people easy.

An easy way to tell who’s speaking is are they complaining about people online or are they talking industry realities and standards

People do generally know how to tell the difference, I think.

My hypothesis on all this is that if you’re not personally engaged in your work - if you’re doing things for clicks or covering whatever you think will gain you audience - none of this sucks. It’s all perks and networking with interesting people and negotiating contracts.

It’s actually pretty fucking great to live my life most days, compared to when I was working two different shitty jobs and juggling kids and marriage and school in the mix

That sucked, it nearly killed me, my body was going to give out or my soul was.

But what I’ve chosen to cover is why people ever have to live like that or how in holy hell people might have it even worse

Also I did lose an eye and I’m never sure when I’ll be employed again for $300 hopefully because the bills keep being due

So, that’s not a silken perch

it’s astounding to be in a line of work where I can really believe in what I’m doing

Still haven’t read most of Marx

Still not a millionaire

Still don’t give a fuck as long as we’re having to crowdfund rides to vaccines