Anyone Can

Anyone could do it. It’s easy. You show up every day, sit at your cubicle, and vegetate. You have an advanced degree, in what, you can’t remember exactly, but it’s advanced! It sure is advanced, and you don’t remember studying the art of vegetation over the course of the years out of your life to get that degree you don’t remember. Unless it was an advanced horticulture degree, which, for all that you know, it may have been.

Yes, anyone could do it, but you’re especially good at it. Despite your (possible… probable) lack of formal training, you can vegetate with the best of them. In fact, most of them barely vegetate at all, and yet they still collect the same amount of living credits as you (?!?). And while you have to acknowledge that if all of them were as good at vegetating as you, perhaps you would not be afforded the opportunity to vegetate for a living, it sure seems funny that they haven’t seemed to catch on to the fact that vegetating is, quite obviously, a valid vocation, and that you’re really, super good at it.

Hello! Take a second to look around, you busy bees! Forty hours of plop and click, click, and goodnight, see you tomorrow, and then forty hours of the same, and then hey there’s more credits in my credit account for living. Ha ha! Those silly, busy bees. Buzz, buzz.

The only problem with this arrangement is that you’re possibly a little too good at vegetating. Yes, too good. In fact, you’re prone to taking your work home with you. Hi, hello, how are you, and what did you do this weekend? Did you have a good weekend they ask, what did you do during your weekend? Uh… hmm. Wow, does that question annoy you, on account of the fact that it’s a bit nosy, don’t you think! What did you do this weekend? Jerk?

Now. Where were you. Oh right, sometimes you take your work home with you. Once upon a time you heard about something called a work-life balance. But what happens when you take the life out of the equation? All work and no play makes Jack a fat sack of shit.

Oh, but that’s not fair! You play. You play with… alright, we’ll change topics now. Sometimes you get to wondering what it’s all about. Life, the universe, everything. You waffle back and forth on the answer being “to collect living credits with as little effort as possible,” and currently you’re more of a “yes” than a “no.” Next week, you’ll be more of a “no” and that will sting a bit, but then you’ll come back around toward “yes,” and the discomfort will fall away. The market on vegetation = meaning is a fickle one, you think. All the better to avoid a bubble.

It’s the weekend now, and you think about getting out of bed. Brave the day! Be an active participant in the wide, wide, world, and all that. Or… you could be an active participant in the world of ideas (!) by letting the people know how you felt about the last episode of Twinning with the Stars. The people have a right to know.

That task having been dutifully completed, you do the damn thing. Up and at ‘em. This is going to be a great weekend, you think. Or, you did think. It’s Monday now, and you’re back in your cubicle, dreading the question. What use dread, though? What use questions, though? Anyway, next weekend will be the one that you come away from with something to tell. People don’t do things every weekend. It’s a carelessly constructed front that you see through with ease. Ask me what I did this weekend and I will tell you the truth! Or, so you think.

Anyone could do it, this job. But they don’t. Why don’t they? Sure, they do the job, but they do it differently, and you’re not sure why. Pesky questions have a habit of percolating to the surface when you are deeply committed to your vegetation work-life ritual, when you’re really in the groove, in the zone, dodging work-work like an uber-untermensch. Time slows. You see in all directions at once. Wow. But the questions still come, and you must reckon with them. Tomorrow, that is. Important work to be done today.

It’s the weekend, but it’s not this weekend. It’s many, many weekends from now. Is this the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? No, it’s just you. Then was then, and now is now. You’re older, and now you’ve got everything figured out. You have carefully allotted your weekend time to include activities crucial to the maintenance of your health as an older than before person. Two hours of informing the public of your opinions on the latest episode of Honey Jangles, and then a brisk walk around the block to dust off the cobwebs. Then, back to performing the valuable service of registering your thoughts on the latest episode of The Wolcotts. Yes, that’s right. Value. You produce it.

What did you do this weekend? You remember when that question had power over you. Now you have your own office, and by carefully planning your route in and out of the workplace, you spit on that question. What did you do this weekend? Ha. The question echoes around the empty minds of your fellow living-credit-earners and bounces helplessly against the fortress that is your shut office door. Talk amongst yourselves, friends. You’ve got things to do today. But it does feel that the days are coming a bit faster now, don’t you think? A sure sign that confident vegetation is the path for you.

And oh, wow, it’s many, many weekends later. Anyone could and would think that they’re older, much older now, and that they’ve not only passed through the years but shaped them, molded them, made them into something recognizably theirs. Anyone, everyone looks back and sees something, and that’s what you do. You look back and wonder why what you see isn’t the same. But that’s ok because you’ve earned this, and it’s over now.

The degree was in number theory.