J1

One of my favourite post-grad courses focused on journal-keeping. How does one track the passage of time on the page, the historical events happening around them? How do we, years later, preserve and modernize these documents without obliterating their physicality?

Amongst the journals and diaries and various methods of self-recording were commonplace books—notebooks that people carried with them to record anything and everything. Favourite poems; small doodles; writing perpendicular to the lines; they're all fair game.

Recently, I lost my job. I think it's made me feel aimless, regardless of the fact that multiple others were "let go" at the same time. "This isn't a reflection of your work," "We appreciate the contributions you made to the company," etc., etc. All empty platitudes to make the person being cast into the waters feel a little better about the situation—to make sure there's as little blowback against the company as possible.

Where do those platitudes leave me, though? Myself and my peers are floating in a job market that's plagued by generative AI, by executives seeking to cut costs wherever they can, by "ghost" job postings and application forms that have you enter all your information five different times.

Honestly, dealing with the government for changes to official documents is easier.

My tool of trade is words. Unfortunately, this is also one of the first avenues for generative AI to speed down. In the tech sector, that compounds the inherent difficulty of a job search in the Digital Age. Why pay for a human when a prompt will achieve what you want? Sure, the result might not be accurate; yeah, the machine uses an entire country's worth of resources to maintain its operation; and true, the subscription costs for these LLMs will keep going up and up and up... But at least a company doesn't have to hire a writer. Isn't that the goal?

I wouldn't even be complaining if money wasn't necessary to live. My rent is $2,500 per month. Food costs keep going up. I'll be losing my insurance soon, so I'll have to pay out-of-pocket for the medications that keep my brain from wanting to implode.

All this is to say that I thought, in one of my insomnia-fuelled 3a.m. fugue states, that a place to write down anything and everything might be just what I need now.

I don't know yet what shape this will take. I don't know how often I'll update this, or if anyone will ever even read it. But right now, having a place to scream into the void seems...nice. It seems like what I need.

So I'll try this out. I'll write for myself, in between the holiday preparations and the job applications. I'll try to convince myself that things in my little world will be Back to Normal soon—though, what is "normal" anyway?