Confirm with X
Thinking about power during a time of powerlessness.
On Saturday, I set an alarm for a boring midday administrative task on Sunday. I selected one of my many alarms - I need a handful of beeping songbird assaults to remind me that if I don’t get up I will get in trouble. I went to add a description, in case the very boring task escaped my mind. God forbid I treat my Sunday as normal: a leisurely day spent looking at my phone, an evening of encroaching anxiety spent looking at my phone.
The alarm I selected had a note already. Confirm with X. X is a person’s name. Coming up 18 months ago we had a meeting about an opportunity which amounted to nothing. If I was being flexible with the truth and feeling sorry for myself, I would say X professionally ghosted me. If was being a bucket of lime honest? X decided not to work with me based on my work and having met me. I didn’t chase too much. X didn’t respond to the halfhearted overtures. Pride stopped me begging, privilege stopped me becoming desperate.
I suppose this is a time of forced reflection. A transatlantic flight of sitting next to a nightmare. I’m glad X and I remain nothing more than LinkedIn connections. It would have been a precarious income stream. Which means it would have gone to shit in recent weeks. The rest of our lives, I’ll be thirsting to ask job interviewers “HOW GLOBAL PANDEMIC PROOF IS THIS GIG?” Only I’ll ask questions like “How collaborative is the process of updating the BCP?”, “Union?”, “And your work from home policy is what exactly?”
I don’t know if anything will change utterly in the coming years. Science is the queen of the plot twist. People on television can predict but not guarantee. Long tweet threads aren’t peer-reviewed journal articles. Employers are going to always be on their own side. People who hate the idea of the state contributing to social mobility and less financial anxiety seem to always get elected. Lumbar supports might become interesting ‘there once was a farm in Africa’ artefacts lying in the messy press at home, like an old dodgy box gathering dust. The drawer of cables. But I do hope that our standards will jump - that doesn’t necessarily mean we get to live the life we want, but we’ll be more honest about admitting when we’re being fucked over. I want to feel safe at whatever work I do. I want to know I can afford bread, eggs and oranges - eh, scurvy - every week. I want the Xs of the world to acknowledge the tightrope they mask as a life raft.
One thing I do know? Survival, the minimum we strive for, has become the big ask. That’s what you call an indictment.
P.S. This made me cry. Looking for a great book? Beach Read by Emily Henry has romance, humanity, honesty, excellent insights on the whole inheriting baggage from parents thing. Listen to Róisín Kiberd read about night gyms in the tech and corporate lawyer hub of Ireland.