Vacation is ending, I'm afraid (Or: we need to change the system!)
I'm on my last week of summer vacation. Some might remember me being a bit negative about having a vacation. Well, that feeling is long gone, and now I just want to have more of it. Getting so much time with my daughter is wonderful. During work periods (which is most of the life in this current system we humans created) I find myself always being on the clock with her, either getting her ready for bed or preparing her for pre-school. This is usually not quality time, which is very sad. "Soon" she'll be a grownup and all I did was trying to make her fit into our schedule. I guess this is necessary in some way, since the alternative will send our daily routine crashing down and I won't be able to keep working.
What I'm after here is perhaps this: just chilling, hanging out with friends and family, going on trips, teaching my child about the world, seeing her learn and process information in a wonderful way, throwing it back at us with her own twist – all this feels so natural, normal. Surely this is more how we should try to create our society, to maximise these moments in everyones life? Yes, I know there are chores that needs doing to keep a society (and a family) together, but do we really – in 2024 – need to spend sooo much time away from everything that matters? I think it's insane. We've automated EVERYTHING to the point that nowadays so many jobs are obsolete1. Still, here in Sweden, the workday has been 8 hours since 1973. That's 51 years! Before that we had a gradual shortening of the workday (and week) and parallell increase in productivity. People just got a better life and did a better job, I guess. Why are we still working 8 hours a day?? Inventing jobs to keep people working. No, this has got to stop.
There is so much to say about this, and there's been a "work critique" here in Sweden for a couple of years, that I might dive more into at some point. It could be a good reason for me to read up on it, to be able to write about it here. Would that be something anyone would be interested in reading about?
Anyhow, I will be back at work next week. Back to early mornings and getting home just in time to put my daughter to sleep. Don't get me wrong, I love being a nurse and working with people; doing something positive for their health or easing their pain. It's just that I'd rather have it take up a little less time in total. Perhaps working three days a week, doing other things for four days.
Well, I'll have to add something to the title, or it will be very off topic.
Reply via email
Even jobs we could use, like an easy to reach customer support, is being bot-ifed. So what are people working with that need us – as a society – to have everyone be away from family and friends so much?↩