somebody once told me that we should work to live. and not live to work.
sounds great, i thought, meanwhile i was looking for 2 identical socks getting ready to work.
but in which part of the world?
it’s pretty condescending. like when somebody tells you ‘money is not everything’. of course it’s not.
until you don’t have enough to make it to the end of the month.
i was already in the metro when i realised my socks were different length. at least they were both black.
i texted Z. she is starting as well a new life far away. ‘do you know where all socks go after a move? is there a heaven where they all rest when they decide to abandon us?’. ‘same here’, she answered. ‘and i blocked the code of my suitcase’.
it made me wonder how we made it to adult life without a matching pair of socks and forgetting the codes that matter the most.
the day after i called B. to have some news. she was doing interviews to change her job.
how was the interview? i asked her. ‘pretty bad, made me mad’, she said. ‘he didn’t ask me a single question and just started a dissertation about why i was not a fit for the role’.
that’s wild, i thought. why he would spend time if he was never interested in her profile?
‘you know this job it’s very technical’, he said. ‘you might be a better suit for PR’.
‘well, if it’s so technical, maybe you can try and ask me some technical question’, she said.
‘i don’t want to recruit somebody who has never done this job before’, he said.
didn’t know what to say. i can understand his fear but funny enough, he is managing a brand when he never did it before.
i guess is all about double standards. he can have a job he never did before but he won’t take the same chance with a woman to make her grow.
after that i called C. to have news of her last 3 weeks. and it was all about work.
‘well, it’s hard right now’, she said. i got feedback from my manager. he said i need to massage the message. apparently i am too emotional’.
i dont know if somehow this thing about ‘women being emotional in the workplace’ it’s not a way of controlling us.
in a more exaggerated way, Talibans think the same way. they tell women not to smile and to shut up.
i read this thing the other day ‘last summer, during one of the long workdays, she and one of her colleagues laughed out loud during a break. immediately a Taliban intelligence representative warned them that if such behaviour was repeated, they would face serious consequences’.
things are not ok when it’s acceptable to say to a woman you are too emotional but a men can tap on the table 10 times in a meeting because he can’t keep his shit together.
i don’t know if somehow they want us to behave like men to after tell us we won’t get the promotion because turns out that… after all, we are not a man.
it was a Saturday morning and i was pretty bored and tired. the last 4 weeks have been madness for me moving overseas.
i put the tv on and saw a couple of episodes of sailor moon.
a female hero that cries, doubts, and forgets important stuff. real life.
made me think about how much we need a world with more sailor moons. but instead we are getting incels everywhere.
misogyny is going so deep in our society that now it’s also the teens who can kill us.
incels are mad because apparently 80% of women are just attracted to 20% of men.
might be true. we might be attracted to the 20% that won’t kill us.
it was a random Tuesday night and W. called me ‘ok, i am in chat gtp typing this crazy situation i have at work with this mean colleague. and chat gtp is worried about my mental health. it has been an hour that we are talking and i realised this is all the psychological support i can afford’, he said.
was somehow refreshing to hear that not only women struggle at the workplace. ‘freeze the mean colleague’, i advice him. ‘it always works. sooner or later he will be gone’.
the next night i went to Deviant in the 10eme with D. ‘i had the guy i am seeing staying at mine the last 2 nights. and this morning i was a bunch of anger and the only thing i wanted was to yell at him’, she said.
‘oh, you are like a reactive dog’, i answered her. ‘you just bark and make drama as self defence to protect yourself’.
maybe we should develop an app or a training to stop being reactive. something like: ‘the perfect solution to train your partner at home and strengthen the bond’.
overall, i just feel that life is a lot. all we have been working for, the good job, the good clothes, the nice home and the gigs and the trips, might all have been a mirage.
‘do you think it’s the end of the world?’, i asked M. ‘ i think so’ she said. ‘the commercial war, Russia, the Palestinian genocide, rise of ultra right, the racism, the massive deportations, the fires, the floods, women put aside, trans being villainized…’
somehow i was expecting her to say no. but it’s true. it’s a never ending list. i don’t remember any time of my life feeling so anxious every time i open instagram.
sometimes i don’t know if i am being unreasonably optimistic or if we are all suffering the boiling frog syndrome.
they put us in this warm water that is getting hotter and hotter, very slowly, and we are not perceiving the danger until we are cooked to death.
my friend K. also told me that art and interior design can predict something is about to change. ‘like in Greece, the Hellenistic period. art is more real and gives more emphasis to emotions like pain, despair or joy’.
it was also the time when the Greek empire started to fail.
the guy who wrote Homo sapiens says kind of the same. art trends change when societies are facing major change.
last weekend i went for a walk with the dog and some friends.
‘have you heard that French government is about to send a manual on how to survive?, T. said.
why they would do something like that?, i thought. sounds like covid times. china is far away, it will be ok, we told ourselves.
i made it home and took a nap. this is how i confront life when i have no clue with what i should do.
i also lied to myself saying there’s no much i could do anyways.
well, or maybe yes. we could work to live as we don’t know how much more we could have left.
or maybe we should start fighting for what we believe if we still think we have a chance.