The condition of work today is fraught with worry and stress. The workplace has become a site of anxiety.
In part this is due to the government of these islands of ours who seem to be turning the jobless poor and the working poor against each other. People in work are desperate to hang on to their jobs, no matter how bad the working conditions become.
A blog is not the place to whinge on about one's work. I am lucky enough to have a fairly pleasant, if rather stressful, language based job. For those of us who ply this sort of interactional trade there are some benefits.
It helps if you view the students as material and the spaces in which you are contractually obliged to encounter them as studios. I find Joseph Beuys quite helpful here. I view relationship building as crucial
to the type of work I find myself performing. My wife and children are not so lucky Our relationships are much more volatile .
The mood of the nation is depressed. The weather dull and grey. I know no happy people. Negotiating middle age is difficult as, essentially we are waiting for older people to die, as we become older ourselves.
So in work, the young worry about their jobs due to performance expectations, while for other colleagues their stresses are much closer to home, or even in it.
And yet people soldier on, day after day. I was surprised however to feel so stressed at work on the first day back after a holiday. I have always had feelings of ambiguity towards self imposed servitude but unless I win the lottery life will only improve incrementally, if at all.
As an artist I find that I need to do a lot of archiving of useful material. Essentially this means sorting out helpful press photos, or litter as I unhelpfully remind myself, culled from various magazines and tabloids.
These scraps of visual information are inserted into plastic leaves which are then added to folders. Not too interesting in itself I suppose when compared with the majesty and wonder of the universe. But at least I know where stuff is.
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