I Miss Working

When I was 17 years old, I burned three holes in my esophagus and gave myself a hernia. The secondary culprit was stress; the primary a caffeine addiction that inspired constant ingestion of coffee and soda, liquid acid down my acid-sensitive body. I slept only a couple hours a night because of the caffeine and because I had things to do. The culture at my public school was one of academic rigor and I believed if I didn’t get straight A’s and into the college I wanted with a scholarship I would be trapped in my suburb for the rest of my life. By the end of my junior year, having never consumed alcohol — no time for that — I became a different kind of sober. I quit caffeine likely placing me among the youngest people to ever give up coffee.

My high school years were among my worst but not because of this academic stress. In fact, my schoolwork was often a respite from social and identity challenges. The suburb I wanted to escape was more at fault than my limited idea of how that escape could be achieved. In theory, I take issue with the pressures placed on children at my school, on messaging that said mistakes in those nascent years would ruin our lives forever. But when I think of the classes themselves, the work, I feel some of my only adolescent nostalgia. The amount that I accomplished each day, the amount of books I read and papers I wrote and history I learned and math and science I tolerated, astounds me. It felt good to work so hard. It felt good to accomplish so much. It felt good not to sleep, not to think, not to feel. Until the holes got too big, I enjoyed the burn.

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Last week, HBO’s ad push and the urging of a few friends convinced me to finally start Industry. Pitched to me as Succession meets Euphoria¹, the show follows a group of first year employees at a high pressure investment bank in London. Whether or not you care about the stock market is secondary to watching a group of very hot people do drugs and flirt and fuck and have anxiety attacks and try to stand out and survive at a toxic job. It’s the kind of show where you’ll be screaming at the screen for a character to press a button without necessarily understanding what numbers that button controls.

Written by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, two former bankers who left that world due to its immorality and anxiety, Industry is not meant to be an appealing portrait. But like a 14 year old boy watching Goodfellas, the show’s seduction got me more than its warnings. It did not make me want to become a stock broker. (Can you imagine?) But it did make me miss working. It made me miss working to the point of exhaustion, to the point of self-medication, to the point of collapse.

Some of this is the show’s excitement and some is my Capricorn sun. It’s also because I’ve spent the last months doing the opposite. I lost my job this past summer and got major surgery this past fall. The job hunt is slow because of the economy and because I’m still healing from the surgery which limits my options. Waking up each morning to go to a bank only holds appeal because I’d like to wake up each morning and go anywhere. Other than a birthday dinner and some doctor appointments, I’ve been confined to my apartment and short walks around my neighborhood. I’ve started working again on my own terms — a few freelance gigs plus I finished a new draft of the novel I wrote this summer — but it’s not enough to ease my boredom.

The last time I worked as a freelancer, I supplemented that income with film and TV production jobs. I had periods of time — a month, three months — where I was working all the time, where I was beholden to a shooting schedule or a pitch date and a boss. By the end of those jobs, I couldn’t wait to return to the flexibility of freelancing. But I liked those breaks for more than just their proximity to what I actually wanted to be doing. I liked the work.

During a particularly fraught episode of Industry’s first season, main character Harper (Myha’la) has made an error in a trade. Rather than owning up to it, she frantically tries to earn the money back using her intelligence and tenacity all while dealing with the aftermath of a drug-filled birthday the night before. It’s a Job of an episode, each decision pushing her deeper and deeper into disaster. I felt energized.

The next episode another character will say that anytime she sees her emotionally abusive supervisor she’s confused to feel something akin to a crush. Harper points out it’s just adrenaline. Good feelings, bad feelings, our bodies don’t always know the difference.

After my last assistant job, I declared to everyone in my life that I’d never be an assistant again. (A little naive about the worsening economy and crumbling of both my industries.) Now I can’t wait until I’m healed enough to start applying to assistant jobs. Anything to get me back on set. Anything to give me responsibility. Anything to get me working.

I often talk with actors and fellow directors about the grief of not being able to do what we love. These vocations aren’t like writing where a piece of paper or computer provide opportunity if not audience. Even super low-budget indie film and theatre requires some money. There’s nothing I’m better at or enjoy more than directing film and theatre and in the past half a decade I can count the days on one hand I’ve gotten to do it. I’m starting to feel this same grief about work in general. I don’t want to spend time at a bank, I don’t want an abusive boss, I don’t even want to be an assistant again really. But I miss the expectations and the problem-solving and the challenges. I miss working hard. I miss the adrenaline.

I know my boredom has me romanticizing work for work’s sake. One day at a job I don’t want and do need and I’d be longing for the days where I could binge HBO shows. But studies show even people who aren’t Capricorns with a penchant for self-harm like to work. Experiments with universal basic income have shown increases in full-time employment among their recipients. The regular stipends allow people to turn down work they don’t want and spare them the burden of cobbling together part-time work for survival, but the desire for a job remains. There’s less desperation — not less work.

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This summer I started drinking coffee again. My new gastroenterologist confirmed there’s nothing inherently acidic about caffeine. If I’d reintroduced foods like chocolate and tomatoes over a decade ago, there was no reason I couldn’t have coffee. In moderation, he added.

Newly unemployed, I went to a coffee shop and fulfilled a cliché. I drank a cappuccino as I typed away at a novel draft on my laptop. The pleasure was immediate. The taste, the ritual, the caffeine high. I wrote 2,000 words instead of my usual thousand and felt the buzz of accomplishment long after the drug wore off.

Hesitant to fall back into old patterns, I’ve limited my coffee intake to about one per week. Each one feels like a treat rather than a necessity. Sometimes the caffeine assists my productivity, sometimes it just makes me hyper, sometimes it doesn’t do much at all. For the first time since I was a teenager, I’m drinking coffee. For the first time in my life, I’m drinking coffee without addiction.

Harper and her other new hires are working on a trial basis. After six months, RIF (Reduction in Force) Day will determine who gets to stay and who has to go. The idea is this kind of pressure — aided by the cruelty of supervisors — will encourage these young employees to work hard and prove themselves. Instead, it causes them to self-medicate and self-destruct. It makes them lose money, alienate clients, and create PR disasters. Even if we ignore the well-being of the employees and just focus on money — this is a bank after all — the culture damages the bottom line. They are not doing their best work.

The world of Industry made me long for employment, because its horrorshow seems better than my current nothing. But toxic jobs and overworking aren’t the only options. Coffee can be consumed once a week instead of four times a day. The high of hard work wasn’t exclusive to my terrible high school or my most demanding bosses. I felt it at my old job when a news story would break and I’d collaborate with the other editors on a piece. I felt it on my last short film when pre-planning and focus allowed us to get everything we needed in one shooting day. I’ve felt it every time I directed a play and keeping the actors calm and confident assisted in their craft.

There’s work that’s hell and there’s work that’s a crush and the world of Industry — our world — prioritizes the hell. The more desperate I get, financially and spiritually, the more I’ll do the same.

For the first time since I started drinking coffee again, the caffeine I had this afternoon is keeping me awake. It’s 3am. I’ve written this essay. I feel the high of having done something. Tomorrow, I’ll do nothing at all.

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1. Although people really in the know like my friend Becca will clarify it’s more Succession meets Skins.