Resumés

Resumés

When you’re a child they tell you
when you grow up to do what you love,
but the world won’t pay for that –
so instead we fall into ranks of what someone else decided
we are qualified for,
based on the greed rumbling in the world’s belly
and the lust leering out its eyes this week,
just like someone before them decided that this was all
they were qualified for,
a long line of other people who know only your merest casing
deciding what you’re good for in life.
It doesn’t matter what you love.
The world loves extraordinary,
but banishes different.
It’s a hard place to get along.
And it’s not technology that’s distanced us
but the leeriness of what might happen if we really set to it.
There was always something there,
to mask that fear under the stank of unproductivity.
Fear is too subtle a scent to be detected under a louder assault.
And so instead of facing the constant possibility
that we might not be good enough,
we click on a new browser, open another tab,
and while away the hours with the distraction of others
doing exactly the same thing,
because we’re all afraid of the demons inside us.
Technology didn’t make them –
it’s just one more curtain we use to pretend they aren’t there.
Maybe we’re the ones that made them,
telling each other that in the end, it doesn’t matter what you love.
That this is all you’ll ever be good for.
Because we’ve been taught to size each other by the merest casings.
It’s hard, for a ghost to ever prove substance.

Tags: demons, fear, hire, job, procrastination, productivity, resume, technology, work