It's an established fact about myself that I despise work, and believe it to be the root of all evil. However, I still find myself holding a job, ostensibly to support my continued existence on this planet. This essentially means I'm participating in the very thing I believe to be a considerable source of my own misery. I really need to find a way to live without a job. Ideally, writing would be that method, but thus far, writing's not providing me with sufficient financial or social clout to escape wage slavery. Another option would be to let someone else pay to keep me alive, but I don't know any people who fit that description, and I have a (possibly antiquated) distaste of being a leech. Of course, if I could drift from one person's couch to another, I wouldn't feel like a leech, just a perpetual-motion mendicant, or, to look at it in a better light, an itinerant purveyor of good company. (That sounds like a pleasant version of the old camp-follower prostitute.) Nevertheless, if I could find someone of good humor who'd be willing to put me up and put beer and grub in my belly, I can't say I'd feel too bad about it.

My evolving thoughts on work have definitely changed my outlook on politics, and society in general. To give credit where it's due, I have to thank Len Bracken and Bob Black for this; both of them are dedicated zeroworkers, so to speak, and I've learned a lot from reading their work. I've been drifting (insert Situationist zinger) away from what little ties I ever had to politics, and building up a body of ideas about work has hastened that drift into a casual stroll. It's been a long time since I had anything to do with the right, and my association with the left is weakening as well: your standard leftist, "progressive" (a vile term, indeed- ask Matthew Smith, no relation, what he thinks of it), or even anarchist stances don't really interest me much anymore, because too many of them place too much emphasis on the inherent "dignity" and/or value of work. While I'd still prefer to work a union job, if I had to work, the refusal of unions to acknowledge that work itself is one of the greatest obstacles to human joy is distasteful, and I can't think of any lefty who's in favor of, to quote Bob Black, "the abolition of work." God forbid that the revolution comes, the state is overthrown, and people stop showing up at their jobs. Simply put, not enough people recognize work as the demonic idea that it is, and that includes the left.

Eventually I'll write more on this subject, because it's becoming increasingly important to me and I want people to reevaluate their views on work. For now, I'm going to stop remembering that I'm part of the alienated labor pool, because it makes me feel like a hypocrite. Nevertheless, you can bet that I'm going to do my damnedest to get my ass sustainably unemployed (permanently, I hope) as soon as possible, and when I find a way to do it, I'll share it with everyone.

Here's to idleness.