Current mood: depressed

I’m sitting here looking for work, going a little nuts (apparently I’m unemployable), and getting very sad about the quality of the American economy. It’s not the fact that I can’t get work that bothers me, but the sort of work I will most likely be doing if hired. I’ve looked at maybe 1000 job postings at this point, and only 10% of them are for a job in which something of actual value is produced. The remainder involve the manipulation of the Customer. Filing his name, habits, and the last 10 years of his personal life so they can be cross-referenced by the marketing department. Wheedling him into getting a second mortgage he doesn’t need. Convincing him he isn’t cool unless he wears a $100 pair of shoes. Defusing him when he calls to complain because he is being manipulated.

I think back on the smattering of commercial carpentry I have done with pride but also sadness. The creation of a physical item is uniquely satisfying, and the feel and manipulation of medium with the hands provides grounding in the goodness of physical creation. Unfotunately, the delicate amber glow that develops from within a piece of maple as layers of oil and varnish are padded on and the sharp, pungent smell of walnut are not found here either. Modern carpentry is cheap and perfunctory, pays nothing, and is almost entirely outsourced to third world countries or performed by illegal labour. I feel like the whole nature and goodness of work has been perverted.

Been thinking about boredom and exactly what it consists of. The root of ‘boredom’ is apparently French, and it comes from something akin to ’stuffed’. This made little sense to me at first, as everything seems sort of hollow when I am bored, not stuffed. The problem is that nothing has changed except my attidude. The perception of hollowness in other things must be masking what is really happening, which is something in me. The unpleasantness of boredom doesn’t come from the hollowness of everything else, but from the fact that I am left with nothing to do. I can’t seem to give my self over to anything else when bored, because of either a lack of passion or a lack of will, so I am stuck with my self, and my self has become abhorent to me. I have had enough of myself; I am stuffed, as it were. So the question then becomes: Why should my self be abhorent to me when I am stuck with it?