Death and Job Posts

Blog Post Five 03/02/24

Tonight I couldn’t sleep. As I lay in bed next to my snoring boyfriend I tried to meditate on his inhales imagining his throat was lined with pebbles and with every breath he took they vibrated against one another creating the creature-like noises that followed in every exhale. After about five minutes of mentally harmonising with his breathing, I slid out of bed, grabbed my laptop, and headed to the living room. I sat down with full intent to immediately write what I thought could be one of my best blog posts yet (there have only been four) when my attention sidestepped and I was instantly zoned into the Linked-In screen that was already open on my desktop. A type of self-punishment I participate in often is looking at jobs I have zero interest and skills for yet I’ll still scroll until I feel unqualified in a shameful way. I fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole hitting off each new potential profession as if hitting a ledge I could’ve grabbed ahold of and with each one I passed, a deeper fear of missing out sunk in. Finally, I woke up out of the trance that is searching for jobs with descriptions so coded in dressed-up-business-language that you don’t know if you’re applying to be a digital assistant or an organ donor. Around 2:30 am I was about 15 minutes into what was going to be a 45-minute to an hour application process applying to be a data annotator for an AI chat box. A job that felt both fake and wrong at the same time. Then suddenly, almost without thinking like a reflux or an instinct I just took my cursor to the top of the window and closed the whole webpage. Maybe it was a real job and maybe after answering all their questions I might have gotten the position and then would have spent the rest of this year making money sitting at my computer talking to artificial intelligence. Yeah maybe, but I also knew I’d much rather open a blank document and talk to this instead, the populated void of my subconscious, my imaginary room of Tess’ past, present, and future, or you, the mysterious blog reader, perhaps a family member of mine checking in on me or a curious long distant friend I haven’t had the chance to speak to in far too long or maybe you’re a stranger meeting me for the first time through this webpage, through my posts. 

I haven’t posted for a while, almost two months. When I started this blog I wanted to create a space for myself to come back to making, to return to thinking critically and consciously about the thoughts that run rampant through my head but this last month I’ve had to retreat from work, from social media, from life as I knew it. I returned home to Canada at the beginning of December to grieve an unimaginable loss with my family. I have never felt as though I am a stranger to death however with each new passing comes a different pain, a different wave, and a different depth of grief. My sister lost her partner and my nephew lost his father. I can easily say being there and walking through it, as best as I could, by the side of my oldest sister was the hardest thing I have had to do. Seeing someone you love, admire, and have grown up with go through something that you can’t fix, that you can’t change, knowing no joke will lighten the amount of suffering she’s feeling was the hardest act of surrendering I have ever known. So I sat there, crying with her, listening to her, holding her, trying to keep my insecurities of helplessness at bay, meditating on the faith that only time would change the state we were both in. Proud is too weak of a word for how I feel towards my sister. Our entire lives she has walked out into the world with a fierce kindness and an infinite well of empathy for anyone and everyone that crosses her path. She is one of the strongest people I have ever met and whatever definition you might hold about strength I want you to expand that to the length of the horizon and then triple it, maybe then you will have a measuring stick close to the length of her strength.  

A million and one thoughts come to mind when you’re faced with the sudden reality that is death. I find it funny, odd, and relatable how quickly we decide to forget, we choose to ‘live in the moment’ ignoring the monster underneath the bed, that most definitely is there and most definitely will grab your feet if you leave them hanging off the edge. So instead of addressing the thing hidden in the shadow of our mind, we let it grow bigger in its darkness. We may choose to not understand, to not want to because, in its very nature, it jeopardises everything that we have been told to lend priority to. All of our things, the physical stuff that we can’t take with us, that we can’t kill to bring it past that blinding light at the end. And then I think, what’s new with this extensional perspective after the short hit of death and maybe in three months' time I will be back to the intentional amnesia that death isn’t what will certainly happen to everyone I’ve ever known and loved. So maybe I am regurgitating thoughts that have been echoed throughout time, each voice trying to understand death and life a little more, maybe taking them closer to religion or further from it but for me I’ve fallen into this odd place where everything feels magical and deeply sad. But then there’s magnificence in the sadness and I’m speechless watching this loop swing around and around left with only one question in my mind, what came first the sadness or the magic?

I wrote that first bit just over a week ago. I am now back to work, back in the room I call home for now living this life that feels convenient but not fully mine. Currently, I’m working as a housekeeper. A job I never really envisioned myself in but one that allows me a nine-to-five schedule and to continue living on this beautifully familiar island. When I set out backpacking I had a similar feeling as I do when I put on my work uniform. This relentless question of Who are you? Who is this person I’m inhabiting? I don’t think these questions come with a judgmental tone more so in a curious-reflective way. I spend my days cleaning hotel rooms, rarely coming into contact with the guests but seeing their lives in such an intimate scene that it feels almost invasive. Moving in and out of rooms, like a very clean ghost. It’s a job of repetition, a monotonous flow of spray and wipe, fold and tuck, dust and polish, leaving nothing but time for your mind to wonder. Recently I’ve been fixated on my reflection. In almost every shiny surface I clean I see this woman, this girl, this stranger looking back at me. I spend my whole day thinking of this other me behind the stainless steel fixtures. Why is she here, what is she doing, what does she want and sometimes god she’s pretty. I try to keep my thoughts from stretching too far and bring them back to the glass shower door I’m wiping or the tap that won’t stop dripping on my head as I pull the hairs of a faceless stranger out of the drain. I try to remind myself that everything moves on and changes, that I am a housekeeper now but I won’t be forever. I try to teach reflection-me how to honour the ebb and not fear the flow. 

I’ve thought about death less you could say. Well maybe not less but it’s shifted from thinking about it in a world-ending-dooms-day-way to a more factual way, everyone dies. I will die. Some days it’s upsetting. Some days it’s freeing. Some days I stare longingly into that reflection. Some days I dance along with her.