Coming Back to Life

February came and went, as did March through May, which is convincing evidence that time is very much subject to the law of diminishing returns; rather than any tangible achievements, the past four months have mostly yielded dividends of ennui and self-loathing.

On the face of it, things took a turn for the better in March when I got hired as a translator and project manager. Alas, with that paycheck every month comes the expectation that I show up every day and put in a solid 7.4 hours of work. I know, the Danish work week of 37 hours isn’t going to impress anyone stateside or most other places, but it’s a hell of lot more than I used to put in as a free lance, and simply knowing that I am no longer my own master weighs on my soul like a ton of unfiled tax returns. Moreover, I have the distinct feeling that my excitation at the prospect of getting a real job, added to my well-documented gelatinous spine, left me shortchanged when my salary was negotiated. Most importantly, however, the job itself turned out to offer me all the satisfaction of knitting a turd sweater.

As if it’s not bad enough to have an unfulfilling, modestly paying job, I have recently discovered that the upper echelons of the organization are more than happy with my performance and, yes, even my attitude. Why is this bad, you ask? Well, it fills me with self-reproach and jars my already shaky understanding of the world and my place in it. You see, most days I feel I’m fumbling around in the dark, and I hand in my work thinking that, surely, someone will soon discover that a) I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and b) I get very little done. Inexplicably, this has not happened yet.

In fact, there I am a few weeks ago; I’m a couple of months into my five-month contract, convinced that I’m not pulling my weight around there and that my devastating Monday-through-mid-Friday blues is showing like balls on a bushman, and my boss comes up to me and says matter-of-factly that we need to renegotiate my contract, i.e., he wants to keep me permanently. Imagine my horror! Kafkaesque is a word that gets thrown around too much, so let me just say that the situation discombobulated me and threatened to undermine my very sanity. This would not do.

And so, like Bob Seger, I must turn the page. Contrary to conventional financial wisdom, I have announced that I will not be extending my contract. Management received this news with mild disappointment, while my colleagues seemed genuinely sad to hear of my impending departure. There was also a general atmosphere of curiosity and disbelief in the lunch room that day, as if I had dug a tunnel out of the prison that we are all inhabiting. They prompted me with questions about what I was going to do next, which I answered vaguely, since I’m not really sure myself. When I told them that I would certainly be taking a long time off from work altogether, I noticed a flicker of something in their eyes; it wasn’t envy but rather the echo of a repressed yearning, as if their long departed souls briefly remembered what it was like to be alive. It made me feel sad, but it also made me realize that my bid for freedom is about more than my immediate comfort – it is about giving hope to the working stiff and proving that liberty is indeed a basic human right. Okay, maybe not, but my immediate comfort is pretty damn important too.

So, what does the future hold for a kooky old fucker with misanthropy and defeatism as his main stock in trade? I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.