Figuring Out What I’m Selling, Part II

I believe I’m selling an idea. It’s not a new one, and the COVID-19 crisis seems to be validating it: there are a lot of redundancies in life that technology could eliminate or reduce, but instead, we continue to operate inefficiently and add more stress to our lives.

During the early stages of my recovery, I felt stranded on an island. I was fine enough to work, but my treatment plan made my schedule too choppy to really pursue full-time employment. The healthier I got, the more frustrating it felt.

I had grown accustomed to taking care of myself. Before I got sick, I abused drugs for that. My priority had been trying to please others so much that I left little time for me. As life grew more stressful, drugs increasingly became the most convenient way to fit self-care into my schedule. I didn’t want to go back to that.

I was afraid a “normal” job would inhibit my recovery and treatment plan, making therapy appointments more inconvenient and less frequent. I was afraid of failure and what kind of an episode that could trigger. I desired a career I didn’t seem cut out for, even though I knew I was capable.

I wanted to work full-time and continue therapy, which, on a busy week, only accounts for about 2 hours of cumulative appointment time. Realistically, it could take up to as much as 4 hours with travel time and parking, spread across different days at different times. I could have asked prospective employers for accommodations that I qualified for, but I didn’t feel “disabled” enough to comfortably ask for them. I was also concerned that asking in the first place would limit my chances as a candidate. Unfortunately, I don’t trust others to have an open mind about mental health, especially when it comes to the bottom line. I feel there’s a certain stereotype that equates disability with not being able to produce, and I wanted to defy that.

I wanted to show anybody watching (and myself) that my mental health didn’t limit my ability to work. I was privileged enough to have the tools around me to do the work I wanted to do, which in my mind made disability or unemployment benefits out of the question. If I was healthy enough to work, the government should invest the money elsewhere, with people who need it more than me.

I had a motive, opportunity, and time to launch this project. I wanted to show what life in limbo looks like while raising awareness about barriers to the workforce (I.e. a living wage) for people choosing to prioritize mental health. I’ve been able to produce more content than I ever have, using mostly a cellphone, while operating out of my apartment. During the process, I realized how much glut there is in the system. With the exception of essential workers in certain fields, much of the work people have to do to earn a decent wage can be done remotely, saving time and money, while alleviating stress on infrastructure our population may have already outgrown, while also making room for, among other things, additional housing.

As far as I’m concerned, if I worked in an office, I would just be taking up space, doing something for someone else I could be doing for myself on my own schedule, while producing at a similar rate and not sacrificing my mental health. In many ways, my treatment plan has worked. It’s made me healthy enough to create and write again. But it’s also made it difficult to earn a living wage.

I had to upend my life to improve my mental health and I didn’t want to feel guilty about that. I didn’t want to abandon goals I had set for myself because working in an office would make it harder for me to remain healthy. I’ve worked in an office with a salary and nothing about the job required me to be onsite Monday through Friday for 10 hours a day. And it wasn’t like when I left I stopped working. I always brought stuff home and was required to work remotely on the weekends. The further I distance myself from that situation, the more it feels like the office was used for babysitting. And if somebody needs a babysitter present to get their work done, that’s a different issue.

The world doesn’t have to be as stressful as we sometimes make it. I believe we romanticize the notion of hard work, equating it to feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. But when I think about work, the work itself isn’t stressful; it’s being forced to do it under certain restrictions that oftentimes don’t need to exist, and end up overcomplicating things.

If I want to create and write, I don’t need an office for that, or an employer. What I need to do to get paid is demonstrate the value of my content. The message is simple: a lot can be accomplished while social distancing and the systems in place that “allow” people to work can actually create economic gridlock. Rather than burn time and energy raging against that, I’m trying to pave my own path to reach a common goal: making enough money, doing what I’m trained for, and living a normal life--without sacrificing my mental health.