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Coronavirus SIP, Day 22
Apr. 3rd, 2020 07:59 am
Yesterday wasn't a great day for me, habit-wise. I meditated in the morning, like usual, but by the time the middle of the afternoon rolled around I had run out of gas. I'm pretty sure I had just gone through my meager supply of fucks to give early this week, but still, it feels bad not having written. Today I'll definitely be trying to put my focus on "doing the rainbow".
In my Bullet Journal I have a monthly habit tracker -- meditation (red), writing (orange), reading (yellow), study (green), grooming - flossing, skincare, that kind of thing (blue), exercise (purple). If I hit all six habits in one day, I call it "doing the rainbow". There's got to be a better name for it, but this is the first time I've said it out loud...so to speak.
I like having a monthly habit tracker as opposed to a weekly one or even a yearly one. I tried a weekly one, and it's too easy to let things slip. There isn't the feedback you get with a good, long trend of data over time. I tried a yearly one in last year's BJ and not only was it a monstrous pain to set up but it was WAY too easy to abandon it after a time. Monthly hits that sweet spot where you can recommit to it every month, look at your progress on habit formation a month at a time, and try to figure out ways to do better.
March's habit tracker was a bit of a disaster. Meditation did the best, but there were still weird gaps there too. Mornings where I would look at Twitter instead of meditating, that kind of thing. EVERY time I open the app on my phone, I think "Oh, I'll only peek in for five minutes to see what's going on." Then thirty...forty...sixty minutes later I'm late for whatever it is I have to do. It'd be one thing if this only happened once in a while, but it's every time. It's not even like I get some kind of joy out of it! Maybe there really is something to the idea that you can get addicted to the adrenaline rush of negative emotions. What kind of fucked up mechanism is that, brain??
Even though we're all stuck indoors and time thus has no meaning, I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I've been working on tickets non-stop since last Monday, and I'm feeling a little weary at this point. All of us have been crushing our ticket numbers this week but the backlog keeps growing -- we're up to around 700 tickets now, and that number is sure to shoot up over the weekend. We've launched yet another promotion for COVID-19 yesterday where we ask for a few bits of information in exchange for a significant and permanent discount on the monthly subscription charge for our "bootcamp-style" course. Given that most of these last four months, that's nothing to sneeze at.
But it also opens up a ton of student questions that Support will have to field. Folks will try to game the system to get a bigger discount, or apply the discount to multiple courses, or try to get extensions on their subscriptions due to life being hard. On one hand, that makes responding fairly easy -- we have a small list of email templates that we can use and bam, ticket closed. On the other hand, it makes the bulk of the work rejecting people who're asking us to show a little sympathy for their circumstances. As someone who is just...done...with capitalism and companies taking money from people who don't have any to give, it feels bad.
This is my job, though, in a time where having one is increasingly precious. I get that I'm really lucky, but it feels gross that my job is basically telling people "Sorry, but you made this decision and we're keeping your money. If you don't like it, cancel your subscription and fuck off"...in so many words. I don't like that aspect of it, and I'm not sure I ever will. It's one of the reasons why I was so happy with being hired on for the Enterprise side of things. It's one thing to tell other corporations about why we're not going to cater to their every whim, but it's different when you have a young immigrant or middle-aged office worker trying to adapt to new technologies telling you that since the pandemic hit they've had less than zero time to use a service they're paying hundreds of dollars a month for.
It feels like a violation of Right Livelihood. But...what choice do I have? There is no way I could quit and find something else. I don't have a college degree. I don't have any technical certifications. I don't really have a strong, diverse network. If I lost this job, I would be kind of screwed. I'd basically have to be a Doordash delivery driver or something.
I think that's the most draining part of my job right now. I want to be in a position to help people, and right now it feels like I'm in a position where I have to screw other people over to keep this struggling business afloat. The folks at the top -- the executives, the founders, etc. -- are going to be just fine no matter what happens. But for the folks in the trenches, we basically have to be the mouthpieces for that malevolence. It's just...not a great feeling.
Unfortunately we live in a system where exploiting your fellow man is inevitable, especially for a paycheck. We're put into positions of enmity with so many people, trapped in a system that doesn't serve us, that encourages us to be at odds. And there's no way to opt out.
The only thing I can do, I think, is enact some kind of social judo. Figure out the ways I can help despite the system, and focus on that. It's a good thing I have a whole month at home to think about how that works.
In my Bullet Journal I have a monthly habit tracker -- meditation (red), writing (orange), reading (yellow), study (green), grooming - flossing, skincare, that kind of thing (blue), exercise (purple). If I hit all six habits in one day, I call it "doing the rainbow". There's got to be a better name for it, but this is the first time I've said it out loud...so to speak.
I like having a monthly habit tracker as opposed to a weekly one or even a yearly one. I tried a weekly one, and it's too easy to let things slip. There isn't the feedback you get with a good, long trend of data over time. I tried a yearly one in last year's BJ and not only was it a monstrous pain to set up but it was WAY too easy to abandon it after a time. Monthly hits that sweet spot where you can recommit to it every month, look at your progress on habit formation a month at a time, and try to figure out ways to do better.
March's habit tracker was a bit of a disaster. Meditation did the best, but there were still weird gaps there too. Mornings where I would look at Twitter instead of meditating, that kind of thing. EVERY time I open the app on my phone, I think "Oh, I'll only peek in for five minutes to see what's going on." Then thirty...forty...sixty minutes later I'm late for whatever it is I have to do. It'd be one thing if this only happened once in a while, but it's every time. It's not even like I get some kind of joy out of it! Maybe there really is something to the idea that you can get addicted to the adrenaline rush of negative emotions. What kind of fucked up mechanism is that, brain??
Even though we're all stuck indoors and time thus has no meaning, I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I've been working on tickets non-stop since last Monday, and I'm feeling a little weary at this point. All of us have been crushing our ticket numbers this week but the backlog keeps growing -- we're up to around 700 tickets now, and that number is sure to shoot up over the weekend. We've launched yet another promotion for COVID-19 yesterday where we ask for a few bits of information in exchange for a significant and permanent discount on the monthly subscription charge for our "bootcamp-style" course. Given that most of these last four months, that's nothing to sneeze at.
But it also opens up a ton of student questions that Support will have to field. Folks will try to game the system to get a bigger discount, or apply the discount to multiple courses, or try to get extensions on their subscriptions due to life being hard. On one hand, that makes responding fairly easy -- we have a small list of email templates that we can use and bam, ticket closed. On the other hand, it makes the bulk of the work rejecting people who're asking us to show a little sympathy for their circumstances. As someone who is just...done...with capitalism and companies taking money from people who don't have any to give, it feels bad.
This is my job, though, in a time where having one is increasingly precious. I get that I'm really lucky, but it feels gross that my job is basically telling people "Sorry, but you made this decision and we're keeping your money. If you don't like it, cancel your subscription and fuck off"...in so many words. I don't like that aspect of it, and I'm not sure I ever will. It's one of the reasons why I was so happy with being hired on for the Enterprise side of things. It's one thing to tell other corporations about why we're not going to cater to their every whim, but it's different when you have a young immigrant or middle-aged office worker trying to adapt to new technologies telling you that since the pandemic hit they've had less than zero time to use a service they're paying hundreds of dollars a month for.
It feels like a violation of Right Livelihood. But...what choice do I have? There is no way I could quit and find something else. I don't have a college degree. I don't have any technical certifications. I don't really have a strong, diverse network. If I lost this job, I would be kind of screwed. I'd basically have to be a Doordash delivery driver or something.
I think that's the most draining part of my job right now. I want to be in a position to help people, and right now it feels like I'm in a position where I have to screw other people over to keep this struggling business afloat. The folks at the top -- the executives, the founders, etc. -- are going to be just fine no matter what happens. But for the folks in the trenches, we basically have to be the mouthpieces for that malevolence. It's just...not a great feeling.
Unfortunately we live in a system where exploiting your fellow man is inevitable, especially for a paycheck. We're put into positions of enmity with so many people, trapped in a system that doesn't serve us, that encourages us to be at odds. And there's no way to opt out.
The only thing I can do, I think, is enact some kind of social judo. Figure out the ways I can help despite the system, and focus on that. It's a good thing I have a whole month at home to think about how that works.
