Time slips by – one day it’s Wednesday and you’re walking to work. Your heart is thumping because the day before, everything seemed to go sideways. You haven’t been happy in your job for a while. The new bosses are young, dynamic, and have made sure that you feel like a dinosaur ever single day. Your way of doing things is not their way, and of course you try to adapt. It is their office now, their work, and you are just a thorn in their side, despite your efforts. Things have come to a head, and you have managed to negotiate an end to your contract, to your advantage no less, but their has been too much shouting, too much recrimination – you’ve kept your head down too long and you feel beaten into the ground. But it is the last day at work, so you go – you’ve helped train the two new women hired to replace you, and through the last month, you’ve tried to keep the atmosphere light so that the patients don’t notice. You smile, smile, smile… even though you feel like just getting up and walking out. But you are anything but a quitter. So you stay, and finally, it’s the last day.

I suppose I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed. I did the same job for 12 years, but the last year has been difficult, and I just couldn’t find the energy to write. I didn’t realize that creativity depletes you, just like stress, and worry, and illness. When I stopped my job, end of December 2022, I spent a week just sleeping; then I started to paint. Drawings and paintings flowed out of me, and I managed to pull myself together more and more. Now, words are coming back, and with them, stories.

But it’s made me wonder about the myth of the starving artist. Yes, there are artists and authors who have managed to paint and write under horrific strain – but how many more talented people are slogging through life in exhausting jobs, cominng home too tired to imagine for an instant sitting down to write or paint? How much creativity is out there just waiting to shine – but crushed under teh weight of depression? If I, (an entitled, spoiled woman who had a job she mostly liked, a warm home and supportive family and friends, healthy children, and enough to eat) found it nearly impossible to be creative while I held down a full time job, than how many people who truly have problems are being stifled? It frustrates me to think of all the books, art, music, dancing, and beauty we are missing because people are being ground down by our unfair economic system.

Of course, now some people will be muttering “socialist dreamer”, “commie utopist”, “woke wanker” (OK, I made that last one up, but it’s true that as soon as someone starts suggesting that our current system might be horribly unfair, there are those who think that that person is out to empty their bank accounts and give it all to drug addicts and slackers.) But it’s not that. I would like to find a way to have a shorter work week – shorter hours even – higher wages, better healthcare insurance, more parks and gardens, more trees, better public transportation, and more affordable and comfortable housing. Seriously – is this too much to ask? Instead, they (They – the conglomerats that rule us) are pushing our retirement age back, threatening social security benefits, and ignoring global warming. While the solution is as simple as this: tax the rich fairly. Yes, that simply means Tax corporations and levy a 50% death tax on anything over 200k. (in the US, the exemption cutoff is now 12 million – wrap your heads around that…) Tax capital gains. Invest in education, not arms. The list is long, and oh so easy to imagine – and completely inoffensive to anyone in the middle class income bracket. Well, as long as I’m dreaming – how about a fairy godmother for everyone, with a magic wand that will do nothing more than smack some sense into people who think that we’re all out for their guns.

Oh dear – I see my post about creativity and the sense of feeling overwhelmed has turned into a political rant. I suppose I ought to go drink some herbal tea and get ready for my meeting at the unemployment office to try and find a new job before I become too creative and do something drastic, like vote for Bernie Sanders (I would) or join the protests in the streets against raising the retirement age (I want to).

Until then, I will go back to my painting, which should be dry by now, to add the details. And so I shall- and wish everyone a stress-free, creative day.