[Show Intro]
Jala
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! 
Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here!

[Intro music]

00:00:01.63
Jala
Hello world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (She/Her), and today I am joined by Desiree (She/Her). We somehow got to the end of the week.

00:00:13.51
Jala
Not that anybody cares about when we're recording this, but we made it. Yay. so Hooray. We have already talked a little bit in the green room about how we're both doing. ah We are both experiencing some form or fashion of the thing that we are talking about today, which is burnout. um But burnout bits aside, it sounded like you were having a pretty good day earlier, Des.

00:00:41.15
Desiree
ah So earlier I was playing D and&D with some friends which ah did not necessarily go super great. Like I was feeling pretty good about myself. I'm a half elf rogue and so got into the dungeon, got an item by being extra sneaky and rolling really well and now at the end of several hours of this I have a terrible disease that only a sixth level cleric can cure, and we are level five as a party, so.

00:01:18.81
Jala
Hooray. So um dare I even ask what the disease is like? Like, is it debilitating in ways or is it like, what what is it?

00:01:27.78
Desiree
oh it was some creature. Um... Aboleth, maybe?

00:01:35.80
Desiree
was the name of the thing that got me.

00:01:38.63
Desiree
So typically like an endgame bossy type aquatic creature, it basically dries you out if you are not constantly in water every 10 minutes.

00:01:53.39
Jala
Cool.

00:01:53.93
Desiree
So good times for me. And one other party member ahead, which that was also the reason we were down in the dungeons, was investigating other people who had had this experience happen to them and sort of ran into the thing. But I also found all kinds of other loot and treasure because of extra good roguiness. So, you know, i'm I'm sure we'll find somebody.

00:02:18.67
Jala
Well, that's cool. Maybe, maybe you can, uh, wrap yourself, like douse your clothes in water and then just keep them moist at all times. Just carry like a water skin and keep dousing yourself with it.

00:02:30.56
Desiree
Yeah, that's probably what will happen.

00:02:30.86
Jala
fine yeah You should just, have like some, some people carry you around, like have, have one on each post and and just make it like your throne and, you know,

00:02:33.00
Desiree
Or, you know, we'll just have a bathtub that someone has to put on wheels and cart the two of us around.

00:02:44.41
Desiree
and so Oh, yes, I like this.

00:02:48.24
Jala
Yeah. Although like if it's a bathtub, you have to have a rubber duck. I don't even know where you would get rubber necessarily, but you'll you got to make it happen.

00:02:54.16
Desiree
Right. And it's also kind of like yeah the antithesis of the stealth that I'm usually going for, so a cure sooner than later is better.


00:03:06.60
Jala
So yeah, that's cool. I don't have anything nearly so neat to talk about, although I did have Muay Thai class today.

00:03:13.92
Jala
And in Muay Thai class, we were doing blocks and parries and things like that. And I got to punch Dave a lot.

00:03:20.29
Jala
and The thing is, is that when I say that, everybody's like, oh, yeah, Jolly, you probably murder him. Like, no, I'm actually very gentle. I'm so much more gentle than he is. he I'm gentler than he is.

00:03:30.77
Jala
He is punching me and he is punching hard. And I am punching very carefully because I know he has weird depth perception issues with his eye.

00:03:39.45
Jala
So like I'm very careful so that way I can pull it if he doesn't react, which has happened um a few times.

00:03:45.77
Jala
So like I'm making sure that I'm not going to actually like clock him one. But he still insists that it's, you say that, but, you know, you say you just basically tapped me, but that was a hard hit. Like, well, that's because I'm heavy set. You know, i'm I'm heavier. I think I'm heavier than you, Dave. So that's probably right. So.

00:04:03.47
Desiree
And he has gotten in a few good hits on you accidentally.

00:04:07.38
Jala
Yeah, for sure, and on himself as well, but like Dave's Cluttiness is and its own podcast episode. Actually, Dave's Cluttiness is probably like the most common theme for all of the Omake Box bonus episodes that we do. so um yeah so Desiree, people have heard you before on my show.

00:04:28.81
Desiree
Yes.

00:04:30.34
Jala
When you have been on for talking about death positivity, DEIB, and the empathy episode as well, you've been on for several different topics.

00:04:30.39
Desiree
Yes.

00:04:38.94
Jala
It's been lovely. Every time that you've been on, um people love you. It's great. um You don't have anything out on the internet. I do not believe that you can you can tell the people that you do, so um unless that's changed since the last time I talked to you.

00:04:55.45
Desiree
No, I'm just as much of a rogue in real life.

00:04:56.63
Jala
Hey.

00:05:00.00
Jala
Yes, in a bathtub with a ducky. And um so my show, you can find us on ko-fi.com slash Jala and kick us a few bucks to keep the lights on and all of the stuff rolling.

00:05:12.91
Jala
ah We also have bonus shows. We have cutting room floor, which is extra stuff that Dave and I and other people talk about that relate to different episodes of this show and Monster, Dear Monster, our sister show. And we have um the Omake box, which is the goofy show that is just a bunch of random recordings of little stories that either I'm telling or Dave and I talking about weird things that Dave has just done or said or whatever. ah Very often it is the Dave. So it's like kind of like the Dave Dave hour, you know, you get there. um And then we also have A Glass Darkly, which is a little show where Dave and I are sharing our creepy stories that we have written. And Dave is going through a um

00:05:59.42
Jala
Rapture and the Maw, which is a Dark Souls 3 fan fiction. And I am going through Aplasia, which is a creepy story that I wrote that is sort of Resident Evil vibes. um And it's it's very weird how I got to doing that story in the first place by I think I talked about that in the first episode of that show. So ah if you become a patron, you can go check those out. It is wonderful. And again, that's Koffee, KO-FI.com slash Fireheart Media. So ah let's move on to talking about our topic of the day. So ah back last year, we talked about the grind culture thing. And part of that is, of course, burnout.

00:06:39.69
Jala
So when we were talking about grind culture, the everything that I saw was really about like how do you cope with dealing you know like being ah day-to-day in the grind? How do you manage and balance the grind along with all the rest of the stuff that you do? But um really talking about the topic of burnout, I delayed this episode for a while because I'm like, I don't want to just talk about like how do you handle burnout because we kind of already did that in that other episode. I want to talk about like where is it coming from? What is this experience like?

00:07:13.27
Jala
and like what systemically is you know like How did this come about systemically and what is it that can be done, if anything, to help with it? So um when I was doing a bunch of different reading about it, there were a lot of books that weren't hitting, again, weren't hitting the notes I wanted.

00:07:31.45
Jala
They were books that were in capitalist brain mindset, saying, you can deal with burnout, you can take care of it yourself, and you can feel better. And it's like, fuck you, no. ah No, there's problems. There's problems with the system. And we need to talk about that. But then I found this one book. And I was like, Desiree, you have to read this. And so this is going to be like our second time doing basically um a show that is more or less a book club. So ah the first time we did a book club sort of thing was the diversity in the next generation episode. That was in the first year of this podcast with Simone. We were discussing the book White Kids, which had a lot of studies about where racial ideas and concepts occur. of equality or whatever and biases ah come from when it comes to affluent white killed kids. Because everything that you study about that is usually focused on minority groups, not on the people in power and like where those ideas are coming from for them. so

00:08:31.46
Jala
um Anyway, that's a really interesting book interesting, you know show go check that out today. We are going to be talking primarily focusing on the book can't even how millennials became the burnout generation by ann helen peterson, which Uh, there's some things that I don't relate to as well in this book And I think deseret it's the same for you.

00:08:52.54
Jala
But overall this book every time I was reading a page I was like highlight highlight and i'm just like sharing the the information from this book in my Discord server and to Desiree and to Dave and to anybody who will listen to me. And I'm like, this is this, this right here. Oh, my God, this. And so I was like, OK, how about we just do the episode focusing on on some of the stuff that's in this book so that you know we can kind of present it to everyone and talk about what what's going on and how historically we got where we are.

00:09:30.90
Jala
So yeah, Desiree.

00:09:32.74
Desiree
Yes.

00:09:34.29
Jala
How did you like the book? How did you find the book? Let's talk a little bit about that before we get into the nitty gritty.

00:09:41.64
Desiree
So yeah, like similar experience in terms of just underlining, putting stars by things. So many of the words that are in here, like storms of debt was one of them. They're just, yep, that has been my life. And talking about broken systems and things. And some of these are things that I have talked about to other friends or family who cannot comprehend or sometimes sudden job interviews. um So it's just a lot of things that really

00:10:18.90
Desiree
resonated with me. Overall, like Jela said, it's not a here's how to end your burnout. It's not a how to guide, which could be frustrating for people who are looking for answers. But if you're just looking for some commiseration, some this is the system, and it's a systemic problem. This is a phenomenal read.

00:10:42.39
Jala
right. And so I will say too that when I was trying to focus on burnout and like trying to see, okay, what are some remedies? What are some things I can tell people? All the stuff that I found was basically the stuff we talked about when we were talking about grind culture. So ah when I, when, you know, we're talking about this book and you know, if you, everybody listening probably has burnout and some, you know, it's some

00:11:04.85
Jala
level or has and will feel it again because it's kind of ah all over now. So um if you're looking for so like ways to cope with it and everything, check out the Grind Culture episode. But just to talk about like, how did we get here? What is going on? And, you know, kind of commiserating going, yeah, fucking yeah, that that right there, you know, like that's that's this episode. So. So yeah, um a lot of what I've got in my notes are going to be quotes lifted from the books.

00:11:35.45
Jala
So um understand that most of these words and phrases that I'm going to be spouting out, unless it's in this kind of conversational tone that I'm using right now, um these are going to be direct quotes from the books. So ah for sure. And yeah, let's go ahead and get started with the usual, which is the description of what it is that we're talking about. What is burnout? So Desiree, I will pass to you. I've been talking for a minute.

00:12:02.12
Desiree
Yeah, so um burnout, if we are going off of jawless notes, which are a little bit differently structured than mine, which I always appreciate that sharing of the creative process. It was first recognized as an actual psychological diagnosis in 1974. So really not all that long ago, if we're thinking in terms of the time that humans have been looking at how the human mind works, and the psychologist Herbert Freud...

00:12:38.86
Jala
Freudenberger, I guess.

00:12:39.61
Desiree
Freudenberger, yep, had to look at that again.

00:12:43.51
Desiree
I should be much better with German things, but... Herbert Freudenberger. So he was the one who identified it as an actual diagnosis and applied it to cases of physical or mental collapse as a result of overwork. So in

00:13:00.48
Desiree
It was also important that this was the moment of distinguishing burnout specifically from something that was different from physical just exhaustion. So those two things are related, but exhaustion is where you're just going and going to that point where you absolutely cannot go any further. But then burnout is you reach that point and somehow you find some ability to keep going well beyond that point within my own internal world. I think of that as sort of a toxic trait of mine of perseverance to a toxic level.

00:13:42.50
Jala
Right, right. So um something that to me um really jumps out is like, okay, the reason why nobody had this this concept of burnout is because we didn't have the Industrial Revolution until a certain point, right?

00:13:56.74
Desiree
Right.

00:13:58.87
Jala
where like we can burn the midnight oil because like we have electricity and things like that. And then we have automated stuff and and this, that, and the other. And um then you have the world globalizing more and more. And as the world is globalizing and transit and stuff is getting easier, ah that means that things can be outsourced more, which we will get a lot more into outsourcing later, um and things like that. so it becomes a a whole vicious cycle of pushing yourself really, really hard for the man, the corporation, the whatever, because like corporations, like giant corporations and stuff didn't exist before, right? So

00:14:42.11
Jala
um you know It took a certain point of, here's the progress when it comes to technology, and then here's how capitalism has the primary ah thrust of most like many, many nations in the world. um you know like all of that to kind of come together for the corporations to form to become as big as they are and then to develop the way that they did. and You'll put a pin in that because we will get back to that and sit on that and talk about what happened with the corporations and how we got to where we are um later on. But that's why burnout wasn't a thing before is because we didn't have this particular late stage capitalism situation before.

00:15:29.10
Desiree
Right. And it's very different if you are in a much smaller, not global context. So you're not saying that people who ran their own small family farms and worked from sunup to sundown couldn't have experienced something that felt like burnout but that's a very different context than the one that most of us live in and exist in and have to endure today and that also might have been more akin to exhaustion versus burnout.

00:16:00.66
Jala
Right. Well, here's part of it too. When it comes to something like the family farm, it's that that's vastly different from working for a large corporation within which you are not appreciated and you have no control and your situation is precarious. That word will show up a lot during this episode, precarious, precariousness.

00:16:20.53
Jala
That is the state that millennials find themselves in. We are always in a constantly precarious state. There is no sense of security and that is what is causing the burnout. Now granted, if you're on a farm and you are struggling for subsist subsistence, yes, that is a precarious situation, but you also have more control over some things. You don't over things like weather and things like that, but you can take direct action to do something about the situation, whereas the situation that millennials are experiencing today is vastly different. So it's far more complex and um

00:16:57.32
Jala
it gets to the point where corporations are these more or less headless entities. They are so outsourced and so um compartmentalized that there's a bunch of like arms but no head on this body.

00:17:11.75
Jala
so So yeah, ah burnout arrives when every corner of our lives feels unstable and we convince ourselves that working all the time is what will fix it.

00:17:22.02
Jala
It's what happens when you feel that catastrophe could be around any corner and that there are no social safety nets to catch you. You keep doing all that's asked, especially in your work, but the world around you recedes and dulls to gray. There's just so little of you left.

00:17:40.81
Jala
So that's really powerful of a statement because like Desiree and I were just talking about, um you know, I've come leading up to this episode. Like I was in a good place. I was in a good place. And then like in the last couple of weeks, I started feeling deeply dissociative. I say feeling, um not feeling, not, I haven't been feeling anything.

00:17:59.11
Jala
That's a problem. Like I haven't been having feelings about anything like, you know, stuff that would normally make me mad, didn't make me mad. Things that I would normally have some kind of reaction to. I don't have a reaction to people. that I'm really excited to talk to. I don't really, and I'm in am you know impartial. i don't I don't care if I talk to them or not. And maybe I don't even want to talk to anybody because I just, I don't have any desire. Like I'm apathetic about everything. so um recognizing that and recognizing that that is definitely burnout symptoms, right?

00:18:30.20
Jala
I'm like, okay, why is this happening? And actually, interestingly, it wasn't because of stuff outside of work. It was actually because of work. Work has been so busy. We are kicking it off into hurricane season. I work insurance. I don't work with like health or life or or any auto or anything like that. So don't get mad at me. um I work with um company. insurance. So um people who are ah landlords who rent to tenants.

00:19:00.02
Jala
So that's who I deal with. um And I also you know work for like artisan contractors, things like that. And I write insurance for them. So during the summer, that's when a lot of contracting work is happening. That's also when a lot of building and um you know leasing of buildings and business openings and stuff are happening. So It's a very busy time of a year, but also when you add the fact that we have storms coming and everybody wants their property to have insurance on it, that means it's extremely stressful, very busy. so um Yeah, and it's just been ramping up and you know for the last like year or so. so

00:19:36.62
Jala
um because of that, my work has caused me to have some pretty strong burnout feelings. So I'm like, okay, I need to, first off, I need to do as much as I can at work. And then I need to check out, like i I do, I normally do anyway, but I also need to find some time and space while I'm at work to get up. And like, I've forced myself, even if I'm really busy to get up and walk away from the computer and go outside and go look at the flowers or go pet Moodle or something. Cause like, I just need to get away and, and

00:20:07.60
Jala
Take um like a break in the middle of the day because otherwise I was planted in my chair and not getting up and that's a bad place to be. so

00:20:15.65
Desiree
Well, there's also, I think, a different type of stress when you are very busy at work, but you know what you're doing, like you've been in your role for a couple of years. and compare that to the stress of a job when you don't know what you're doing. And so in terms of work, that's kind of the burnout stress I'm dealing with.

00:20:41.37
Desiree
I've been at the university that I work at for almost 10 years, but in that time I've worked for seven different departments and had eight different positions, partially because of budget cuts that either eliminate my specific job or an entire department. And so I've been in my current role for a little under a year. I manage a research grants, which is just a lot of spreadsheet management. Which would not necessarily be that stressful to me. I'm very good with Excel. I know the financial systems at the university. But during that time, my portfolio of people I work with has grown significantly. And I've gone through several different supervisor transitions.

00:21:26.72
Desiree
So I am currently on my fourth supervisor and for good reason, I will defend the changes that as they have made. And yet this circles back to something we talked about on the DEI episode. Intent does not equal impact.

00:21:38.88
Jala
Alright.

00:21:41.07
Desiree
Having this positive long-term intent for we're growing the team and that's why you had to shift and we're doing these things because we recognize you have too much on your plate. That does not do anything to mitigate the current fact that I've been through all these transitions. And after almost a year in this job, I still have no idea what I'm doing. And it's super busy. And so the stress of dealing with busy, even if your bosses and supervisors are reassuring and kind and saying, you know what, it doesn't matter.

00:22:13.57
Desiree
We're not saving lives here. The worst thing we could do is someone might miss a paycheck and even that can be remedied.

00:22:20.90
Desiree
That Reassurance does not do anything to minimize the anxiety which leads to the burnout because the anxiety does not dissipate. It only accelerates.

00:22:32.30
Jala
Yeah, absolutely. So the exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can't be silenced. You feel burnout when you're exhausted when you've exhausted all of your internal resources yet cannot free yourself of the nervous compulsion to go on regardless. ah Reckoning with burnout is so often a reckoning with the fact that the things you fill your day with the things you fill your life with feel Unrecognizable from the sort of life you want to live and the sort of meaning you want to make of it That's why the burnout condition is more than just addiction to work. It's an alienation from the self and from desire and that's that's another really important quote too because like

00:23:26.62
Jala
when you are burned out, you usually are working too much. um And that doesn't necessarily mean at your job. you You know, like I am a caretaker of my parents and we have to deal with stuff at the house and we also have to deal with, you know, whatever. We got a lot of different things that we juggle and um juggling all of those things were always on at my house. So, ah we are always doing stuff. We don't have a lot of time that is downtime that we can have for ourselves unless we very specifically schedule it in, right?

00:23:55.74
Jala
So, um and then especially when things get overwhelming and there's a lot going on, then it's really a lot harder to get that downtime. And even when you get that downtime, it takes more time to decompress when you have that burnout state and that stress level and that anxiety. And you know you're thinking about all these things you need to be doing and and so on.

00:24:17.95
Jala
So um you know it's really tricky, really a slippery slope. So um yeah, and another thing that this book is points out is that like the pandemic showed us that it's not just one generation that is the problem because the boomers want to blame the millennials. The millennials are the problem.

00:24:40.45
Jala
you know like we're We're the problem. we We are the reason why we are burned out, but that's not the case. We will talk about that. But um the you know pandemic, a lot of people got burned out, not just millennials.

00:24:53.52
Jala
Everybody got burned out for the most part. Although I will say during the pandemic, I was blissful and happy. I had stress from the concept. like I had to adjust everything because I had the constant fear of bringing COVID home to my parents.

00:25:10.29
Jala
but I was very careful and I adjusted all of my activities to things that I could keep a very big distance from people or that I could do at home so that I didn't have to expose myself and thankfully I never did bring it back home to my parents but like

00:25:25.46
Jala
Otherwise, like I was living my best life. I'm like, I have no problem and doing all this stuff and and you know like spending my time in this this fashion, I'm good. so um you know like I was fine with that, but um I know a lot of people were deeply affected by pandemic and still are. um you know Even now, a lot of people that I know are in this deep sense of loneliness that they still carry from pandemic because their social lives never did kind of recuperate back to that pre pandemic level. And that's something that a lot of people are struggling with.

00:25:57.89
Jala
So because again, um this has already mentioned social safety nets and having friends to decompress with or to vent to or to just you know,

00:26:09.17
Jala
and just commiserate with or whatever or whatever, whatever, whatever it is you're doing with your friends, so you know, like without those kind of ah release valves and stuff and like that sense of having somebody there who has your back, then it's tough. It's really tough. So.

00:26:25.39
Desiree
Right. And I mean, I had a similar experience with the pandemic of that was a time. Oh no, I have to stay in my house all the time with my spouse and my pets. Darn it. The things I love most in the world.

00:26:42.23
Desiree
I'm just surrounded by them all the time. And so that was a very peaceful time for me. I did end up having probably one of the most stressful jobs I'd had during my career in that time, but because that was the stressful thing, I didn't feel burned out in the same way.

00:27:03.25
Desiree
Because if you compartmentalize and your personal life is great, your animals are healthy, you personally are healthy, family isn't annoying you because, oh no, I actually cannot come visit you on Christmas.

00:27:18.59
Desiree
Darn. And you have to be okay with that.

00:27:21.07
Desiree
Like everything else in my world was great. And so that, that was, you know, the same thing with when there's a rainy day and everyone else is, oh, it's so rainy. And I'm like, yes, all of you are finally calm.

00:27:37.44
Desiree
It was peaceful. And so returning returning to the office, having that significant push for doing away with remote jobs, not great for a lot of people who had become accustomed to a slower pace.

00:27:49.45
Jala
Right.

00:27:52.16
Jala
Right. Right. And, you know, like, different people need different things. I definitely have some folks like, say, for example, Greg in my Discord, um he definitely misses having enough physical office. Like, he needs that interaction time because he lives alone.

00:28:09.39
Jala
And so like and he he's helping with his parents the way that I'm dealing with mine, although he doesn't live in the same house as them. So um you know he's got a lot on his plate and you know like his time you know at the office used to be for him you know, like time to decompress actually from his personal life, you know, and he doesn't have that space now because he's working remotely.

00:28:34.10
Jala
And you know, even after pandemic, he's still 100% remote. So, you know, ah while yes, that means that he doesn't have to have the clothes and drive the car and go to the place and all this other mess. Like that also means he doesn't get those interaction points that he would otherwise.

00:28:48.23
Desiree
Sure.

00:28:49.46
Jala
So, you know like There's definitely situations where it's kind of the opposite, where there are people who really need to be in an office. like they they have They thrive in an office setting. ah You and I are just not those people.

00:29:02.21
Jala
I'm fine in an office.

00:29:04.16
Jala
I'm also fine not in an office. i'm Either one is okay with me. um But with the situation with my parents, it's definitely a lot better for me to be able to be on hand for them. so um Anyhow, so another thing that was mentioned, and this is not really about burnout itself, but it's something that I wanted to mention because it is kind of related. ah The modern millennial, for the most part, views adulthood as a series of actions as opposed to a state of being. So, adulting. became a verb because adulting is all of these different tasks, which honestly, a lot of the adulting tasks, the way that mill millennials label them, those are the tasks that are on that to-do list, which we're about to get to the to-do list. They're all the tasks on the to-do list that you have to do, that you are so overwhelmed that you can't do them. And that's why

00:29:55.05
Jala
The adulting is hard and this, that, and the other are catchphrases for our generation, right?

00:30:00.58
Jala
So what does burnout look like in your life? My to-do list, specifically the bottom half of it, keeps recycling itself from one week to the next. None of these tasks was essential. This is a quote from the book, of course. um But no matter what I did, I couldn't bring myself to take the knives to get sharpened or drop off my favorite boots to get resold. All of these high effort, low gratification tasks seemed equally impossible. I couldn't shake the feeling of precariousness that all I'd worked for could just disappear or reconcile it with an idea that had surrounded me since I was a child. That if I just worked hard enough, everything would pan out.

00:30:38.57
Jala
And all of that is relatable.

00:30:41.94
Jala
you know like I have a rolling to-do list that never goes away. It's always got something on it. And there's always so there's several things on there that have been on there for a long time that just haven't been done, because we just don't neither neither me nor Dave, neither ah one of us has bandwidth for these things. you know And we just have to be OK with that, right?

00:31:00.53
Jala
Eventually, maybe one day, I'll do it. but you know ah The decommission time is lacking. you know like there's There's a fine balance that needs to be had. And like right now, I'm trying to recalibrate everything to allow myself the space I need to keep myself from writing that burnout line. so

00:31:19.19
Jala
um Yeah, but precariousness, everything I work for could just disappear. This is something that's heavy on my mind too, because guess what?

00:31:25.42
Jala
It's hurricane season and I live on the Gulf Coast. So that means, yes, ah it's supposed to be an active hurricane season. Literally at any time, there could be a storm and my house could be completely obliterated with everything in it. So I could die if I'm still here in the house. ah Even if I evacuate, I only have whatever's whatever' is in my car, everything else is gone. that that's potential at any time until November. It's a long time that we're sitting in this state every year.

00:31:56.67
Jala
ah So so that's what I've got. So, you know, like aside from the the burnout part part, you know, feeling precarious because of the political climate, the economic situation, ah the work situation, that this, that and the other.

00:32:11.71
Jala
And, you know, the stuff at the house and my parents precarious health and all of these other things that are precarious. I also have that on top of those things. so

00:32:21.28
Desiree
Yeah, and Similarly here, I live in Kansas and right along Tornado Alley. So again, at any moment, my house could be wiped off the map and thinking through, yep, we have a basement, we have carriers set aside to be able to put the pets in, the two smaller critters, all the rabbit and chinchilla are already in the basement, but that would not in any way, you know, stop the devastation from happening and

00:32:49.51
Jala
Right.

00:32:50.72
Desiree
precariousness in terms of finance. I mentioned I work at a university. I'm a state employee. We had an absolutely abysmal governor a few years back who did cut after cut after cut to higher education. the elections could swing that back in a direction that would go that way. And even though I work in a more secure area, since so I work at an R1 or research-heavy university, they're not likely to get rid of the grants people.

00:33:23.96
Desiree
But still, I've had several jobs eliminated now. And even before working at the university, I've worked for companies that no longer exist. So it's always a thought in the back of my mind, no matter how secure a job should be, I can never fully accept that as a reality.

00:33:41.65
Jala
and Right. Right. And that's actually a really good way for us to transition into the next section. So the way that I have my notes is we just talked about what burnout is, then the next part of my notes is just about what it is to be a millennial. What is the millennial identity like? And then we shift into like, well, what if about millennials makes us the burnout generation. And then we go into boomers and boomers being our parents. What about them? How were they and how did that affect us? So ah before we move into other topics. So let's shift into millennial identity. So when we entered the workforce, boomers believed that our expectations were too high and we were scolded and our work ethic was too low. ah We were sheltered and naive, unschooled in the ways of the world and so on is what boomers said. So um

00:34:35.27
Jala
Yeah, talk to most millennials, though, and the thing that they'll tell you about growing up isn't that they conceived of themselves as special, but that success, broadly defined, was the most important thing in their world.

00:34:46.54
Jala
You work hard to get into college, you work hard in college, you work hard in your job, and you'll become a success. I was definitely fed this when I was a kid.

00:34:56.80
Desiree
And I was as well and I think it was compounded. being a first generation college student. So again, going back to many, many of your episodes that talk about identity, every piece of your identity is intersectional and interacts with the others. So the idea that you are a first generation college student, you have that additional pressure to be successful. And you've been told what I kind of think of as a lie in that you get the college degree, you will be successful.

00:35:27.80
Desiree
And so you wholeheartedly believe that and it's not just your success then is the success of your family that you are carrying as a burden.

00:35:38.79
Jala
Yeah. And that's, I'm first generation American, first generation um college student as well. So I was the first one in my family to get my college degree. So at least in my nuclear family. So yeah. and part of that what we were fed is all roads need to lead to college and from there with more work, we'll find the American dream.

00:36:01.07
Jala
And so, especially as an immigrant, an immigrant child, you know, child, child of an immigrant who also went to college and was the first one to go to college, iExtra had a lot of that on there. So yeah, millennials are drowning in student debt, an estimated $37,000 per debtor that's permanently stunted our financial lives. We're moving in greater numbers to some of the most expensive zip codes in the country in search of the intense high profile jobs of our dreams.

00:36:32.13
Jala
We're saving far less and devoting far more of our monthly income to paying for childcare, rent, or if we're lucky enough to somehow get the money for a down payment, a mortgage. The poorest among us are getting poorer and those in the middle class are struggling to remain there. So I have not moved to an expensive zip code. I am where I am by default because I am taking care of care of my parents. So um I actually do not thankfully have student debt. I managed to pay ah pay off my student debt pretty quick because I worked my ass off. I was working full time while I was going to school and you know I was living at home so that I could do you know pay for everything with my money that I was making.

00:37:13.02
Jala
So I worked my way through college and that is how I managed to keep from having student debt But then I had medical debt So, um you know, I still have thousands of dollars to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to pay ah because of that So I still am in the same stunted financial state.

00:37:28.58
Jala
I just have a different reason so um But yeah, like I never moved anywhere.

00:37:33.74
Desiree
Right. And, you know, credit card.

00:37:37.51
Desiree
Credit cards are definitely part of that too, especially if you come out of high school or out of college, you're living on your own and people are giving you all of this money, whether it's in student loans or in credit card debt. And if your job is only paying you minimum wage and you're only making the minimum payments, it is still that same type of hole that is challenging, not insurmountable, but challenging to dig out of.

00:38:06.15
Jala
and Right, right. And, you know, like that's something that I think everybody from our generation, or I say everybody, a large chunk of people that I am aware of that I personally speak to, I'm not going to say everybody, there's some people out there do not have the situation, but

00:38:21.96
Jala
Most have had to dig themselves out of a hole of having a debt, whether it be a student debt, a debt because of something medical like me, or a debt like in Dave's case because he was unemployed during COVID times for various reasons, moving his grandparents, you know job issues with COVID, you know having to move states. um and things like that, ah a bunch of different reasons why he was having a lot of problems financially. and It just like wiped everything that he had in his savings and then put him in debt. so um you know like there There are a lot of different reasons why people have those issues, um but it's pretty commonplace that a lot of people are dealing with that.

00:39:05.31
Jala
So ah yeah, we're also more anxious and depressed. I don't think I really needed to read that line for everybody to know that.

00:39:10.41
Desiree
Hahaha.

00:39:11.62
Jala
um Most of us would rather read a book than stare at our phones, but we're so tired that mindless scrolling is all we have energy to do. I can say for myself, there are some times where I'll sit down with my book because like I do a lot of audio books.

00:39:23.96
Jala
I do read some on Kindle and then actual physical books as well. um But like there are times that I am laying there and I am trying to read and I can't focus worth a damn. And so mindless scrolling is literally the only thing I have energy to do because I can't focus on what I'm trying to read. Like I read it and then like I have to stop and reread the paragraph because like it's just not sinking in, you know.

00:39:46.71
Desiree
on I being in school, so I'm currently in school for a PhD, which I would not be in. if it wasn't for the fact that I got a job for the university, was told if you want to advance, you need at least a master's degree. So me being me, I went ahead and got two of them. And I didn't have student loan debt prior, but I did take out the debt for the master's degrees because I was told it was going to lead to a career that would potentially double my salary. And then the student loan debt would be no big deal.

00:40:19.94
Desiree
Plus I work for a university so I could have public servant loan forgiveness and then, well, came time to start making those payments and there was no way I could afford them. So I just hopped right into another degree.

00:40:38.99
Desiree
But yeah, it's we're definitely more anxious as a result of carrying those types of debts and far more depressed as a result of that. And so back to the point that Jell was trying to make. Reading. um So reading for school is nearly impossible for me.

00:41:02.26
Desiree
I have not read an entire book to completion. Even for school, I'm very adept at skimming. But I read children's books for fun because then I can actually complete those and feel like I read a book. or a graphic novel or something that is not as intense or not as draining because I need to engage in something fun and schoolwork is not fun and I'd only started recovering and being able to read actual chapter length fun books a couple years after I'd completed my master's degree so it's

00:41:39.63
Desiree
If you're in school and having to focus on that, it's also completely normal to not enjoy the same things that you used to if it's still connected in the same medium that you're working in.

00:41:51.04
Jala
um Right, right. That's absolutely true. And I will just have to stop and say children's books are fucking amazing. And if anybody disparages that, they can just go shove it because kids books, like a lot of the artwork and stuff is so beautiful and so imaginative. And it's just fun and cool. And like back when I used to work in the bookstore, I used to love organizing the children's section because I love flipping through those books. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

00:42:18.40
Jala
I fully support you, Desiree. um So yeah, ah we are more likely to have bad insurance if we have it at all. I know I've got a high deductible plan.

00:42:28.08
Jala
and That's what I got, so everything's out of my pocket until I hit my ah impossible to reach deductible. It's ah basically a mass major catastrophe has to happen before I hit my deductible. ah Yeah, ah we also have um little by means of a retirement plan. We all have 401ks if we have ah anything. And 401ks are only just so much. um Our parents are inching towards the age at which they're going to need more of our help, financial and otherwise.

00:42:58.83
Jala
Boy, yeah, they sure are. and They're not inching.

00:43:02.36
Desiree
Tell us more about that.

00:43:03.51
Jala
Yeah, they're not inching.

00:43:05.63
Jala
They've been there for a fucking long time now. um Anyway, the only way to make it all work is to employ relentless focus, to never ever stop moving. But at some point, something's got to give. Yes. That's where you get the burnout, where you don't have any feelings left.

00:43:21.78
Desiree
It sure is.

00:43:23.15
Desiree
And I think a lack of understanding there too. Like I remember being probably 24 and my dad starting in on, well, you need a Roth IRA. You need a Roth IRA. I make $7.25 an hour. I am having to put the light bill and the phone bill on a credit card just to be able to afford groceries. Where do you think I have this mythical extra $50 that I can put in this Roth IRA account?

00:43:51.27
Jala
Right. Right. And you know, like, that's, that's one of the things too. My parents don't have any savings to speak of. They don't have anything. So, uh, they never saved. And that's why, like, well, first off, they're, they're in a bad precarious state. But second off, my dad is very much like, you go to save all this money. And like, I can't.

00:44:15.37
Jala
Do you understand the minimum payments that I have to make that I need to be paying a lot more than if I'm gonna ever pay off things? Do you understand the cost of living right now and this and the other and the number of disasters that keep happening? You know like no yet like you should because you live in the same house as me, but you don't you know, so So yeah, but ah we will get to boomers in a little bit here

00:44:36.48
Jala
Millennials live with the reality that we're going to work forever, die before we pay off our debts, potentially bankrupt our children with our care.

00:44:39.55
Desiree
Nope.

00:44:44.64
Jala
You and I don't have kids who don't have to worry about that. ah Or get wiped out in a global apocalypse that we're sharing with the next generation.

00:44:51.76
Jala
So you're welcome Gen Z. um Yeah, and although that's that's that's not all on the Millennials.

00:44:57.88
Jala
The Millennials weren't in places of power. That was boomers. so ah

00:45:02.94
Jala
But anyway, so what makes millennials the burnout generation? So ah we were told things like we should work hard, but exude work-life balance. We should be incredibly attentive mothers, but not helicopter ones. We should engage in equal partnerships with our wives, but still maintain our masculinity. We should build our brands on social media, but live our lives authentically. We should be current conversant and opinionated about the breakneck news cycle But somehow not let the reality of it all affect our ability to do anything of any of these above tasks Trying to do all of that at once with little support or safety net That's what mill like makes millennials the burnout generation.

00:45:44.73
Jala
Um, all of that right there sounds a lot like the barbie speech It sounds like the barbie speech, you know, uh, it's just

00:45:53.99
Jala
wild and then like this is just like from the the kind of like white people version of it right so just imagine the marginalized millennial identity you know so um no matter the movement or era tiana clark wrote being burned out has been the steady state of black people in this country for hundreds of years

00:46:19.96
Jala
So when it comes to you know um non-white individuals you know non non-people of power, you know minority folks, disenfranchised folks, those folks are in an even worse state.

00:46:35.47
Jala
than the privileged white people who who have the situation. Not every, you know, like white white people has like a, you know, a spectrum of of privilege. Right. But there is still a ah privilege associated with regardless with the color of the skin there.

00:46:51.00
Jala
But um yeah, ah something that's important to note at this point is that acknowledging somebody else's burnout does not diminish your own understanding that black people have been burned out for fucking ever, you know, thanks to, you know, this country being the way it is and all of that. um That knowing that, recognizing that, and being empathetic towards that does not you know do anything to diminish your experience or invalidate your experience. Your experience is valid. Their experience is valid. They can both coexist in the same space. It's fine.

00:47:24.44
Desiree
Right, it's not a burnout competition of who is the most burnt out. um i.e. every conversation I've ever had with my mother about the topic of being burnt out or overworked. It's a space for commiseration of sharing identities, acknowledging each other's place, and that we can all be burnt out to different levels and for different reasons. And for some people, it's much more systemic than it might be for others.

00:47:56.54
Jala
Right. Absolutely. So millennials have a pervasive feeling that despite some of the legitimate wonders of modern society, our potential has been capped. And yet we strive because we know nothing else. For millennials, burnout is foundational. The best way to describe who We've been raised to be how we interact with and think about the world and our everyday experience thereof. And it isn't an isolated experience. It's our base temperature. Our base temperature is to constantly work, work, work, work, work, and do all of this other stuff and feel burned out and stressed out and no safety net. And you know like you have to be all of these different things and juggle all of these things.

00:48:38.09
Jala
So entering it into adulthood has always been about modifying expectations of what it is and what it can provide.

00:48:44.72
Jala
The difference with millennials then is that we've been we've spent between five and 20 years doing the painful work of adjusting our expectations, recalibating recalibrating our parents and advisors, very reassuring understanding of what the job market was with the realities of our own experience of it. but also arriving at a wholly utilitarian version of what a job can and be and should be. For many of us, it took years and shitty jobs to understand ourselves as laborers, as workers hungry for solidarity. So, you know calibrating your expectations

00:49:24.47
Jala
So yeah, like my parents and everybody else, they were like, yeah, you're going to go through college. You're going to go. And it doesn't even matter what the degree is. If you have that degree, you're going to get hired. I don't know how often I heard that. And it's like every single millennial has a fucking degree.

00:49:38.27
Jala
That is the base, base, you know, you just have to have that on the resume as part of the thing, you know?

00:49:46.28
Jala
So and and so that doesn't mean anything, you know?

00:49:50.47
Desiree
Now and...

00:49:52.28
Jala
Not a basic degree, anyway. like You have to have like a specific like specialized degree in a thing that is very specific for the one job that you're trying to do for it to make a difference.

00:50:02.38
Jala
Because otherwise, if you have a PhD on there or something, for example, for you, Desiree, that'll put you out of the pay grade for a lot of stuff.

00:50:07.17
Desiree
Oof, yep.

00:50:10.09
Jala
So like then that puts you in a trip tricky situation because there's specific places that you can apply and specific things that you can do. But that also, that PhD being on there, if you're going to a new job, is going to put you at a pay grade.

00:50:23.61
Desiree
Oh yeah, absolutely. and I also have made the potential mistake of investing in degrees in library science without being aware of how incredibly insular the field is because I've applied for so many jobs both at my university, in my community, beyond, and I get to an initial sort of interview phase and get asked, well, what is your library experience though?

00:50:55.26
Desiree
And I have to say, well, you know, I have these degrees. I did a practicum. I've tried to be involved in X, Y, or Z. But no, they want you to have had a traditional career track of you came in as their reference librarian or someone just shelving books or whatever at the absolute bottom tier of the pay grade. And then maybe you worked up to a circulation clerk or something and made your career track all within the library and then you use the library to pay for your MLS degree.

00:51:26.86
Desiree
And then that's okay. But if you spent your time in higher education, well, you don't have the experience that we're looking for. So I have essentially useless pieces of paper since my other degree, my other master's degree is in English and those are a dime a dozen.

00:51:43.94
Desiree
So, you know, who knows where any of that will lead me.

00:51:49.34
Jala
ah Right. And I'm not trying to pick on you. I'm just trying to say like, but i I only say it because like Dave, Dave doesn't, you know, have a PhD, but he is also locked out pay wise, pay grade wise out of jobs when he has applied and tried to find something.

00:51:52.21
Desiree
Oh, please do.

00:52:06.27
Jala
And he is just looking for something just like a baseline office job just to to get, you know, in the door to do something that is not logistics. And, you know, having a hard time with that. And so it's it's been rough trying to to find work for him. but

00:52:24.55
Desiree
Well, and even having those advanced degrees, like right now as I'm moving into closing in on the dissertation writing phase, I'm looking to shift jobs again to something back to like an administrative assistant. I just want to work the desk Monday to Friday, eight to five. I 1000% know exactly everything that I'm doing. I'd be back working more one-on-one with students, which is very rewarding to me, be teaching them things, which being an educator is one of those core pieces of who I am. And yet I also have to prepare myself for those discussions of, no, no, no, I want less work right now. And once I finish the PhD, I also may not go anywhere.

00:53:14.38
Desiree
for a long time because I am so burnt out that I'm going to need several years post-PhD to recover.

00:53:20.23
Jala
Right. Right. And that's something that um when Moon was on for the ah Grind episode and we were talking, ah there was this whole thing about like, you know I'm still burned out from this job that I had you know years ago. and that's ah Seriously, that's a thing. That's absolutely a thing. You can have burnout from a thing for like a long fucking time for years. You can have that burnout and be carrying that with you until you can like unpack that and hopefully unpack that. you know Sometimes that's not even something that is something that you are able to do because you have other sources of burnout. you know you've If you've got too many pans in the fire, you can't get them all out of the fire. you know Something's always on fire.

00:54:03.69
Desiree
Because burnout is essentially trauma, and especially if that trauma is compounded with other forms of trauma, either related to directly or indirectly to the burnout.

00:54:06.80
Jala
Yeah.

00:54:15.53
Desiree
Because if you are experiencing trauma and burnout in the workplace, it might be harder to leave work at work, and so that might spill over into your personal relationships, romantic or otherwise, and then you know cause additional bad feelings and trauma because of this other that you're experiencing in this terrible web of all this bad stuff and being able to parse what's actually causing all of those things and process all of that trauma takes a long damn time.

00:54:44.30
Jala
Yeah, absolutely. so So that's where millennials are. Let's talk boomers, our parents. So ah boomers like to say, stop whining. You don't know what hard work is. That definitely is my dad. So ah boomers were the ones who taught us to not only expect more from our careers, but to consider our thoughts on the state of work and our exhaustion important, worth expressing, and worth addressing. If we're as special and unique and important as we were told When we were kids, it's no surprise we refuse to shut up when our lives don't make us feel that way. And they that can oftentimes sound like complaining, especially to boomers. Now, here's the thing. I don't even know that like I like this phrasing because it's more like we were we were told to vocalize about stuff. you know We were told to express our our opinions and our thoughts and our this, that, and the other to be treated like people, right?

00:55:43.87
Jala
I don't think that millennials do any more complaining than boomers do.

00:55:48.55
Jala
Boomers complain a fuck ton.

00:55:51.80
Jala
Everybody complains. That's normal. That's like the the state of people. People like to complain. you know That's how you commiserate. um It's just that we were taught to be communicative and and interacting and team players and things like that. So you know anyway, ah boomers were anxious and overworked and deeply resentful of the critiques levied at them. The problem and why it's often hard to ah to think of them charity is that, or charitably, is that their inability to tap that experience in order to empathize with their own children's generation. So like the Boomers had been given shit because their parents had gone through yeah war and this, that, and the other. And so they were given shit. You don't know how hard we had it.

00:56:34.32
Jala
right? So they already got that shit. So they resented that. So they're like, we're not going to raise our kids that way. So then they raised us the way they raised us. And then we had this idealized vision of what was going to happen when we got out of college, but then everybody had the same vision. And then, you know, nothing went anywhere. A lot of spinning wheels. so So ah white middle class boomers are at their heart sociopaths, lacking in empathy, egotistical, and with a high disregard for others. There is a book about this in his book, a generation of sociopaths how baby boomers betrayed America by Bruce Gibney. So um the author,

00:57:13.39
Jala
argues that boomers are also antisocial, not in the doesn't want to go to the party way, but in the lacks consideration for others way. Now, this is like, again, this is a sliding scale, some people more than others, like there's definitely people in power who are a thousand million billion percent this, um you know, and and people in power, not just in politics, but like, you know, also just out in society who are like this, you know.

00:57:39.20
Jala
um Boomers retreated from the liberalism of the 60s into a meaner, more selfish outlook, hostile to the aspirations of those less fortunate. They broke the social contract that, according to the ahka lema economists, Mathias, I cannot say that last name,

00:57:59.94
Desiree
Matthias Dappik.

00:58:01.46
Jala
Mathias, Depeck? Okay. And Fabrizio Zilli-Bolte? I don't know. these These people, some economists said some stuff and they said, um They said that the social contract defined the post-war period and decided, ah like they they decided that they were gonna look out for themselves rather than for each other. So they invested more in their education and their individual success while deeming social protection less important. Instead of let's cling together, you know, like Tactics Ogre, let us cling together.

00:58:35.28
Jala
They're not playing that game.

00:58:36.66
Jala
it's they're They're playing Call of Duty.

00:58:40.92
Jala
So that's that's what this is saying. So ah hostility towards others was motivated at least in part by their fear of falling from their class perch and the social human humiliation that would follow. ah So yeah, there was a whole discussion of like the rise of yuppies and what yuppies are. ah Yuppies eventually turned into tech bros. So, um but yeah, like how yuppies and college-going successful people are one class of people, and then everybody else is something else. So ah they ah are surrounded by perceived threats and growing in uncertainty. So then middle-class boomers doubled down on what they could try to control, which was their children. So they were like,

00:59:24.58
Jala
All of it's going to be invested in you, child, and I will live vicariously through you. That was 1,000% my parents.

00:59:30.88
Desiree
That was very, very much my parents and perhaps even more so compounded because I'm an only child.

00:59:39.03
Desiree
So only child and first generation did a whole lot of pressure there.

00:59:49.09
Desiree
I also tend to think of kind of a fundamental difference between my parents and myself is my parents look at the world through the lens of I went through this, I survived, so you can and should too. And I look at the world and all of the trauma and terribleness and say, you know, I went through this. I want to do everything I possibly can to make sure my students, because I don't have children, and don't have to go through this.

01:00:20.11
Desiree
So what can I do to help make things easier for the next generation?

01:00:20.44
Jala
Absolutely.

01:00:24.73
Jala
Right. And I've talked about it before, especially on the pursuing your passions episode, but this podcast and fucking everything that I've been trying to do with myself and my my quote unquote spare time has all of this stuff that I do. It has been always trying to reach out towards other people in some form or fashion. Granted, I know it sounds weird to say, I'm going to reach out through, you know, to people through artwork, but like people still see artwork and

01:00:49.61
Jala
they're impacted by it. They have feelings about it. they They can relate to some of what they see illustrated there.

01:00:55.26
Jala
and you know like I was writing and I was doing personal training, trying to lift people up and show them the way and teach them because I had to go through everything and do it all myself and it was hard. and I wanted to help other people get there. And so like this podcast, you know it's it's definitely not just wellness focus, but there's there's a lot of wellness topics and like self-identity things and exploring and growth and whatever. And like all of those things are things that I'm trying to put out there for the same reason that you're trying to do what you do, Des, is because you're trying to make things better for the next generation.

01:01:29.91
Jala
You're trying to help people, you know next generation, friends, family, other people, whoever, like whoever, you're trying to help people. And that's what you're trying to do. You're turning around in service, whereas boomers don't do that. And my parents definitely are are the lookout for number one. you know my My parents will try to help people out sometimes a little bit, but like it's not the same like reason to get up in the morning. you know

01:01:54.59
Desiree
who Yeah, my mom I will say is far, far more generous than my father. A lot of that I think comes from her growing up in a very, very small rural community. So that rural agricultural, well, maybe someone's crops failed. So all the neighbors sort of combine and come together to help that person. Well, this person doesn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. So they're going to come on over and be part of the family dinner. There's not a lot to go around, but it's all kind of shared equally versus my dad who grew up in a much more urban environment. He was one of eight siblings, so everything was very cutthroat. So he has become one of the most sociopathic people that I probably know, one of the most mercenary, and he is going to get his.

01:02:50.21
Desiree
You know, same thing like I was telling you with the ah Roth IRAs. He is not rich by any means, but he would have had the money to say, you know what, I believe in the financial security of having some multiple investments. Let me give you a hundred bucks to get you started on a Roth IRA or whatever.

01:03:13.30
Desiree
he absolutely did not do that and would not be the kind of person to think about that. I said something to him a quote about kindness once and he sort of rebuked like kindness what's that ever gotten anybody? Yep right there's the fundamental fundamental difference between the two of us sir.

01:03:33.42
Jala
right right and so my dad is the one who because he he was a you know one of eight children but he grew up as an immigrant here in this country so um he is really ready and willing to give away things all the time he wants to give everybody stuff away he has given away my things before um

01:03:56.72
Jala
So that is just him. But when it comes to like going out of his way to do a favor for something, that's that's you know, like if it starts being uncomfortable for him, then that's that's less likely to be a thing that he's actually going to do.

01:04:10.93
Jala
And if he does it, he's going to be grudge it and then be like grumpy about it after that, provided that he does it in the first place.

01:04:17.35
Jala
So that's him. But um anyhow. So ah meanwhile, my mom is the one who will try to be more considerate and stuff, but she won't give stuff. She doesn't give people stuff usually, like every once in a while, but like not usually.

01:04:33.35
Jala
She she hasn't hadn't had throughout you know the history of our lives really given people stuff. Unless it was stuff that she didn't need anymore, then it's like, oh yeah, I'll i'll make sure this goes to a good place you know that needs to.

01:04:46.42
Jala
So if I know somebody who needs it, I will give it to them. You know, but like not giving to a place where she feels like uncomfortable, you know, but she will do things.

01:04:55.57
Jala
She will do favors for people. So like they kind of balance each other out in that way a little bit. But both like my mom is more socially oriented. My dad is definitely like, you need to get yours when it comes to work and you need to take care of, you know, number one here and whatever that kind of thing. So, um but yeah, like, how do we get to where we are?

01:05:18.86
Jala
Let's talk about that. So ah this is this is a quote from the book that I really liked. So the unique thing about the middle class, after all, is that the middle classness ah must be reproduced or reclaimed with each generation. In all other or in other classes, membership is transmitted by simple inheritance. If you are poor or if you are rich, you are You inherit that by birth. You are a poor person at birth. You are a rich person at birth. But the middle class is constantly having to reclaim it and to fight for that ground.

01:05:53.66
Jala
And as everybody knows, the middle class class is shrinking. So that's what we got going on. ah But yeah, thanks to wage stagnation, the amount of money you receive every month stays the same or even goes up. But its actual worth, along with the rest of your savings, goes down.

01:06:10.00
Jala
In The Great Risk Shift, ah Hacker, the the author, maps the concurrent development of the personal responsibility crusade, or the increasingly popular idea articulated in various forms across social culture and society, evident in the tax code and reigning economic thought that government should get out of the way and let people succeed or fail on their own. Central to this framework, Hacker argues, was the notion that Americans are better off dealing with economic risks on their own without the overweening interference or expense of wider systems of risk sharing. In other words, risk sharing, be it in the form of robust funding for higher education or company-wide pensions,

01:06:53.69
Jala
was presumptuous and indulgent and unnecessary. And then there was the argument now so familiar to conservative thought as to feel mundane that safety nets make people lazy or ungrateful or self-indulgent and are thus in their at their heart un-American. By protecting us from the full consequences of our choices, Hacker explains, insurance was thought to take away our incentive to be productive and prudent.

01:07:25.03
Desiree
Yep, all of that.

01:07:26.49
Jala
i all like I put that whole big thing in there because I'm like you know like the the the shift to the personal but responsibility crusade. So that must have happened really like after wartime. you know like The wartime was, let us cling together. you know Tactics over, let us cling together. Then we switched to Call of Duty. and So then now that that's where this is.

01:07:48.74
Jala
So um basically all they're with the ah conservatives are playing Call of Duty. So ah the myth of the holy self-made American, like all myths, relies on some sort of sustained, willful ignorance, often perpetuated by those who've already benefited from them. So that would be like the quote unquote self-made Americans would be people who they they might have done it by themselves, but then they're the ones who perpetuate these myths and then, you know, make it make it harder, you know, make it more deceitful in a lot of ways for other people trying to emulate that same path.

01:08:23.20
Desiree
And in many cases, it would be impossible to emulate the exact same path because of different advances in society or ways other things have changed working your way through college

01:08:38.62
Desiree
might be feasible if your college tuition is say $3,000 a semester. sir That is not possible when your college tuition is $18,000 a semester.

01:08:54.57
Jala
Right. Right. So um from here, the book was shifting into how we were raised. And it goes into the concept of concerted cultivation. So that's when every part of a child's life can be optimized to better prepare them for their eventual entry into the working world. So that would be like, You know, OK, well, now she's going to have swim classes. And then after that, she's got to go to Scouts and this, that and the other, because she's got these things that she needs to have on her resume that she's building from childhood.

01:09:31.00
Jala
Right. And she needs to have these things, these social connections in place.

01:09:34.28
Jala
And she needs to have this, this kind of stuff going on for her. Now, my parents didn't do this this degree of a thing. like i I didn't experience this, but that's probably because my parents were too goddamn busy to do a lot of that. like but um my When I was when i was um young up to the age of eight, my mom was a stay-at-home mother.

01:09:52.88
Jala
And so during that time, I would be taken to the library and to the museum and to places like that. And we would go and do you know we would do like girl scouts for a little bit anyway. And we would go do some stuff. But it was all like for education, general education stuff, not for like this grooming of the child for you know like the entry into the work world or anything like that.

01:10:14.43
Jala
It wasn't that kind of a thing. My dad was not didn't take part in any of that at all. And my mom, after I was eight, ah we could not afford for her to be at home anymore. And so she had to start working full time. And then nobody had any time for anything.

01:10:29.18
Jala
so And we didn't have any money for me to do a lot of extracurriculars. So um that's where I turned into a type A personality. I guess I was kind of type A to to begin with, but it worsened. ah It worsened at that point because then I felt like I needed to be driving myself forward and giving myself purpose and meaning and things to do and ways to go about utilizing all of the the stuff that I had at my, but you know, that all the potential I had inside of me, right? Because I was fed the lines, but then I was turned loose and like, okay, do it.

01:11:01.75
Jala
You know, well, OK, I guess I'm going to have to make my own path.

01:11:06.60
Jala
So um that's how like my that that started the pattern of how my life kind of went from there, because like I've always kind of made my own path and everything that I do um because I was kind of turned loose like that.

01:11:18.67
Jala
And my parents didn't have the resources or capacity. So like problem solving and trying to teach myself new things was something I've been doing for most of my life in some form or question.

01:11:29.48
Desiree
And I think you highlighted something that kept coming up for me throughout this book was the idea of privilege that is present in so much of this. So this idea of concentrated or concerted cultivation of the children is privilege. Being able to afford piano lessons and swimming lessons and having one parent who maybe isn't working so can manage all of the schedules. and buy the instruments and buy the equipment and pay whatever fees to go to the places and even organizations like Girl Scouts, which I was also in for a number of years, there are summer camps. Will those cost money? There are field trips. Will those cost money? And there are so many of these things that are part of a lot of millennial identities that it's hard for folks to realize are actually privilege.

01:12:25.23
Desiree
um But my parents divorced when I was 10 and that was a huge cut to our finances and I spent the first nine years of my life living in a trailer and then we finally moved into a house and so my mom was determined to work three jobs to keep that house. So that meant she was never home. And so, you know, I'd spend some of that time with my grandparents, but most of the time it was just sitting at home and reading because we couldn't afford all of those other extras that could have potentially cultivated a lot of these things that would have been resume-able.

01:13:03.39
Jala
Right, right. So yeah, and that's that's probably part of the reason too why once I hit ah high school, I just got into all of these different clubs and like they weren't ones that had anything financial attached to them. It wasn't like I was in orchestra or something where you have a lot of things that cost money. It was like the National Honor Society, the National Hispanic Honor Society, the literary magazine, the yearbook, and that you know all this this different crap, a bunch of different different groups.

01:13:30.50
Jala
I was in a bunch of them, but like they weren't ones that cost money, so I could do those, and I could negotiate rides and things like that to be able to do those extracurriculars. So I had something to put on that resume. you know and some

01:13:44.71
Jala
So yeah, but like i I didn't have access to a lot of things. I had to make do with whatever it is that I could do on my own. And you know that that made me somebody who has a lot of initiative and I will just go and do the thing.

01:13:57.52
Jala
And you know people, a lot of times they're just like, dumbfounded. They're like, how did you teach yourself all of these things? And it's like, I've been doing it like forever. i ah How do you not? How can't you like you? You can. You can just go and you can do it. Just make ah an outline of all the different things you need to start. like Where's the starting point? Okay, find it. All right. Well, then look at the steps. And if you don't know the steps, you can learn about it. you can These days, you can Google it. You can read a book about it. You can find a person who knows about it and ask them.

01:14:30.19
Jala
You know, like, there's so many avenues that you can do to to teach yourself without spending money to do it, right? Like, you can you can rent a book from the library, the library is free, yeah you know? And whatever, like, there' there's ways. you can You can make, you know, a lot of stuff happen without money and, you know, you just have to to understand

01:14:49.60
Jala
that sometimes it's not going to be like, well, I just want to take a class. Well, sometimes you can't afford a class. So you have to make it happen. And you can, but like it's going to take time and effort and research and everything to go about doing those things. So anyway, ah circling back to the parenting, though. So ah part of the thing that the book talks about is it's not as if lower class parents were bad parents. It's just that, ah well, so so this book is saying it's just that the skills that they cultivated in their children, including independence and imagination, are not the ones valued by the bourgeois working place.

01:15:26.38
Jala
So yeah, ah to be valued there, you need plans, lengthy resumes, ease and confidence of interacting with authority figures.

01:15:34.80
Jala
And okay, I got that. I don't have a problem with that. And ah innate understandings of how the job ladder works, which like I learned that also when I was in high school, I didn't have to worry about that. But like, you know, the resumes, them missing the resumes, missing the the extra opportunities to do some of the things that um I could have otherwise done that would have looked better going out into the work world. So ah some millennials were raised ah this way, alternately resisting and reconciling themselves to their parents' best intentions. Others have struggled their entire lives to adopt and approximate behaviors that they were never taught.

01:16:09.98
Jala
So that second part, adopting and approximating behaviors they were never taught.

01:16:14.25
Jala
So like, this is a weird thing because like, I don't, I don't, I don't care about whatever the behaviors of of ah you know whatever, quote unquote, white collar people are doing.

01:16:27.00
Jala
like i don't I don't care. um I just want to do stuff with my life. and and like i was The the thing that i was told you know things that I was told was that I have all this capacity. Yes, I do. um I have the ability to do anything I want to do. Yes, I do. okay ah I have you know like so much potential. Yes, I do. so I want to do something with it. so I do a lot of stuff with it. and I'm going in a bunch of different directions all the time and I'm juggling and I find out. you know like Here's one of the things.

01:16:57.81
Jala
The working world likes it when you specialize.

01:17:00.40
Jala
they like i i On paper, when they hire you, they want you to specialize. But when they want you in the workplace, they want you to be me.

01:17:09.63
Jala
They want you to be able to do everything. And they will chronically underpay the people who can do everything.

01:17:16.72
Jala
and the people who specialize are the ones who end up as like the the people at the top of the company. The problem is that um I thrive when I'm given variety, when I have capacity to do a lot of different things. So um that that's something that was hard for me to come to grips with is that like, no, I actually like changing out what I'm doing constantly and and doing different things and and having um new things to learn. constantly and because like I was always taught when I was younger that I had to specialize. I had to do the one thing, pick a lane and stay in that lane is what I was told. But millennials are like the generation that has had to change jobs slash change careers more than like any of the other generations before us. so

01:18:02.23
Desiree
Oh, yes, I have. I have worked in bookstores and coffee shops. I worked at an in-home health care company for a water chemical treatment company, a crop insurance company, and now higher education. I have run the gamut of millennial careers.

01:18:20.93
Jala
Right, right. So ah some questions that I have for folks listening, though. ah Are you an aspirational classist? That is, do you do certain things in order to put on the air of perceived higher class? This is something that I've noticed among certain individuals who will remain unnamed, ah whom I have association with. And um They're people who do, they do certain things in order to put on the air of having a higher class because they're kind of trying to do that whole thing where it's like, you know, dress for the job you want or whatever.

01:18:56.57
Jala
Like they're going by that maxim and they're trying to live their life in a way that is

01:19:01.87
Jala
mirroring and miming the type of life that they want for for whatever career they're going for. um So here's the other important part of this question. Do you look down on certain behaviors, occupations, or hobbies? And do you resent other people for having free time because you're always on the move?

01:19:20.41
Desiree
Heavy questions.

01:19:21.88
Jala
heavy questions that really need some serious thought. So I'm gonna read all of those one more time and then we'll move on. Are you an aspirational classist? That is, do you do certain things in order to put on the airs of perceived higher class? Do you look down on certain behaviors, occupations, or hobbies? Do you resent other people for having free time because you're always on the move? Just think about it and, you know, non judgmentally, just observe within yourself. What feels, you know, like accurate for how you actually live, not your ideals because we talked about this before, but your ideals and your actual actions.

01:20:02.75
Jala
don't necessarily line up. So in your head, you might have an ideal of this. But when it comes to your actual actions, you act differently than what your purported ideals are. And um I think we talked about that on the Empathy episode a little bit, didn't we?

01:20:19.72
Desiree
Oh sure, yes, that episode that I definitely remember being on.

01:20:22.72
Jala
Oh, that's right. You forgot you were even on it. Woo. Okay. Yeah, moving right along. So ah many millennials end up defining themselves exclusively by their ability to work hard and succeed and play it safe instead of their actual personal tastes.

01:20:38.64
Jala
or willingness to take risks or experiment and even fail. And one of the primary messages gleaned from a family's downward mobility was that ah one can play by the rules, so pay one's dues, and still be evicted from the American dream. There's no guarantee that one's best efforts will be rewarded in the end. The words, we can't afford it, should have been monogrammed, ah been been on a monogrammed pillow in our house is is another quote from this book. And that right there, that definitely is should have been on one of ours.

01:21:10.66
Desiree
But even the having monogrammed pillows, right?

01:21:13.21
Jala
I know, i was like um I was about to say, meanwhile, my dad was dumpster diving to get us furniture.

01:21:14.41
Desiree
Like, you yeah.

01:21:20.10
Jala
So like our pillows probably were on the curb when somebody threw them out and we were praying they didn't have any kind of like lice or bed bugs or something um is the situation for us.

01:21:32.93
Desiree
Right. Like, that's one of I would say the potential pitfalls of this book are those subtle, like, maybe not fully understanding. how poor people lived. The idea of monogrammed pillows and vacations are brought up several times.

01:21:49.05
Desiree
I'm like, all of these things are white, rich people privilege stuff.

01:21:52.97
Jala
Right, absolutely. And so that's part of the reason why I wanted you to be on this episode is because I didn't want like another person. Yes, yes, yes, this exactly with the book and and not be like understanding the other side of the coin, you know.

01:22:07.41
Jala
So ah yeah, our current best practices for achieving middle class success

01:22:11.43
Jala
Build your resume, get into college, build your resume, get an internship, build your resume, make connections on LinkedIn, build your resume, pay your dues in a soul sucking low level position you're told to be grateful for, build your resume, keep pushing, and eventually you'll end up finding the perfect stable fulfilling will paying job that'll guarantee a place in the middle class. Of course, any millennial will tell you that this past is arduous, difficult to find without connections and cultural knowledge and the stable job at the end. isn't guaranteed and probably isn't stable.

01:22:47.12
Desiree
So all of it can really be boiled down to a Star Trek quote of doing everything right and still failing, right? You can do all of the right things, reading through that. Those are all of the things that I did, the resume, the college, the connections, the networking. I have done everything and I am in many ways so much worse off than I think I would be if I had skipped much of that and just gone into a trade or something and I might be a lot happier.

01:23:24.18
Jala
Right. Right. And that's something that is mentioned in the book as well is how like, because our now my, it's funny cause my dad is a trades person. My dad, you know, was an artisan contractor. He was ah an iron worker, a welder. He was a remodeling contractor that owned his own business. So he was a self-made man and he did a trade job and he worked that trade job and he was great at it and, you know, had his job all his life doing this. But Then for me, he didn't want me to have a trade job.

01:23:56.11
Jala
He didn't want my sister to have a trade job. He wanted us to have something better. you know and Better was supposedly at the end of college. and If you just get through college, you'll just have that white collar job and you'll just be made. Everything will be great.

01:24:09.67
Jala
You'll have a retirement, you'll be at a company forever, and it'll be fine, except that's not what happened.

01:24:14.74
Jala
so but Yeah, so let's talk about jobs and the do what you love trap.

01:24:21.08
Jala
So yeah, all of us were fed this idea of that doing what you love, right? ah The desire for a cool job that you're passionate about. It's a very particularly modern and bourgeois phenomenon. And um yeah, a means of elevating a certain type of labor to the point of desirability that workers will tolerate all forms of exploitation for the quote unquote honor of performing it. The rhetoric of do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life is a burnout trap. By cloaking the labor and the language of passion, we're prevented from thinking of what we do as what it is. It's a job, not the entirety of our lives.

01:25:02.62
Desiree
Oh, I could speak for an hour on this and I'm i'm not going to do that. No one needs an entire hour of me monologuing, but I 1000% wholeheartedly see this every single day in myself, in my coworkers. in so, so many people in the field of higher education. This is one of the places where you are supposed to be the most passionate, the most buying into the mission, loving your students, being fulfilled by working with them, seeing their progress, contributing to their education. And I love all of those things. I do love the students. I love teaching. My husband pointed out the other day that I'm absolutely miserable if I go a whole day without helping somebody.

01:25:49.78
Desiree
But, big but, to me, if you turn something that you love into something that you are earning money for, capitalism inherently taints it in a way that makes me not love it as much anymore.

01:26:09.36
Desiree
Because this is something I tell my students and other people that I'm helping find jobs all the time, do not invest entirely entirely wholeheartedly in the work that you do, because no matter what the work is, if you died, they would have your job posted the next day.

01:26:30.04
Desiree
Even if your co-workers like you, even if your boss likes you, they might shed a few tears, they might come to your funeral, your memorial, your wake, whatever. The places where you matter are with the people that you build those connections with, your friends, your family, your pets. Those are the people who are going to miss you and think of you and continue sharing your story and your legacy until the remainder of their days.

01:26:54.72
Jala
Right. And, you know, I have been in the insurance industry since I kind of like fell into it because I knew somebody. And um so the the story of how I got the job doing insurance, I was working as inventory manager in retail at a bookstore. And You know, I was doing that, doing that, but I was trying to get something else and I was trying to get like an office job. I was real over retail. And so a friend of mine was, had been in the insurance industry for a while, cause this is an older friend and that friend is like, I just got promoted to an underwriter and I need an underwriting assistant. And you know, like, I know you're looking for something. How about you apply for the job? My entire interview was, you do you think you can work with her? Because basically she's a firebrand and nobody wants to work with her. They're scared.

01:27:43.27
Jala
You know but like I happen to have known this person since I was a little so like no problem Like we have worked together for the last 18 going on 19 years so And it's been fine um So I ended up stumbling into it that way but I started feeling burnout multiple times throughout the entirety of the time that I've been working there and Part of it is because I felt that dissatisfaction that millennials feel when they're doing a job that they don't care about.

01:28:10.72
Jala
like I don't care about insurance.

01:28:12.75
Jala
It's a paycheck. like i I do my job. I do my job well. I take interest in insurance while I'm on the clock. I do not care about it when I'm off clock. But, you know, like, for the purposes of of my job, yes, I will do and I will do well. And, you know, I do well with attention detail oriented things. You know, I was an inventory manager before that, obviously, like by multiple, multiple places I was already in detail oriented jobs. So, fine. But um for a while, I was like, I need to move off and and do like personal training or something I'm more passionate about.

01:28:44.76
Jala
But then when I started, you know, like I did that and I tried um doing art work and everything and like ah not they're both hard gigs.

01:28:53.00
Jala
But more than that, when I was trying to have to market myself and sell myself and sell my product, it just made me sick.

01:29:02.09
Jala
And I didn't want to do that. And I don't like it. So, um you know, that's why I'm like, you know, I I can't with this. I don't want to do this as my job and then hate it. you know like i you know I would take commissions and stuff every once in a while, and that would be fun just to do something different.

01:29:13.39
Desiree
Right.

01:29:17.99
Jala
But then like when I had so many commissions coming in regularly that I didn't get to paint or draw anything that I wanted to paint or draw, it was like, No, this sucks. I don't i don't get to the relief I used to have out of this. and then so like After I stopped doing all the commissions because i just I needed to because of my parents' health, I have not gone back to doing a bunch of artwork regularly anymore because it stopped being that outlet for me and I had to find other ways to get my outlet. right And the same sort of thing happened with personal training. I was training people. I was having fun. I was teaching classes, different types of classes, um Tybo, and which is cardio kickboxing and bootcamp and things. But then I got burned out and it's like, you know, then I would, ah you know, like I still do some um programming for clients online, but like I'm not doing active personal training. Like I still have my personal training certifications.

01:30:10.40
Jala
And I'm still growing my knowledge for that, but it's really more for myself at this point than it is for, you know, actually actively using it in like a work setting or something. Cause like, you know, I just, when you put the money in there, you involve the money in there. That just ruins it for me. I can't coexist with that and then still enjoy it to the same degree, you know?

01:30:33.87
Desiree
Yeah, same thing for me with death. I very much enjoy talking about it, helping people process it, make plans for it, and as I've been having my sort of existential crisis with jobs and work and what do I want to do and all these things, and doors being shut and being told no. Life loves to tell me no. It's fantastic. People have brought up, well, you know, you've read this book by this death doula. You've talked about that. Could you do a death YouTube channel?

01:31:04.97
Desiree
Could you get your death certifications? What about funeral directing? I'm like, I think it sounds weird. That would take some of the joy out of it for me to have to focus on, well, then you are building a brand.

01:31:21.45
Desiree
because these are not mainstream careers, right? If I wanted to get into like managing a hospice facility, but not as a nurse, more so as sort of the person that helps facilitate the conversations around hospice, helps make the connections to the resources, sits down with folks to make the plans. That takes a very entrepreneurial kind of spirit to insert yourself into funeral homes and get all these certifications and that I do not have the bandwidth for that. Similarly, the idea of, you know, I've been told by friends that my cat is an internet goldmine and I will never make them their own Instagram account, no matter how cute they are, because I've seen the other side of that on social media of people get upset if you don't post every single day, if you don't post about every single health update and all of the judgment that comes with that.

01:32:19.23
Desiree
So I'm not going to taint my relationship with my pet by trying to monetize it.

01:32:23.90
Jala
Right. Right. And so that's kind of like where, okay, so my podcast has the coffee. The coffee is there not because I'm like expecting to launch off into the stratosphere with my oh so popular weird fucking podcast about random things that's like so niche, right? um No, I put the podcast out there because I love y'all and I want to, number one, I want to discuss with folks on the show and I want to work through things actively with everyone on the show. And I also want to share that with the world because it's been productive and helpful for many people who have listened to the show.

01:33:01.91
Jala
however ah the Ko-fi is there to literally just help us pay for the hosting, pay for the equipment that we have to you know upkeep and things like that and to keep it going. you know So that way it's not a burden upon us.

01:33:17.39
Jala
Like we already, Dave and I and the other people who are on the shows already do actively a deep amount of research for the things that we do. And we devote a lot of our time and attention and you know ah all of that stuff to creating this for folks. And so, you know, like, I'm fine with it being a small podcast, a handful of folks listen to, because I'm doing it for the betterment and enrichment of whoever happens to listen to it.

01:33:48.17
Jala
And you know, like, I can say to somebody, look, you know this conversation that you and I are having right now about this particular topic, I've done an episode on it, or I'm gonna do an episode this year, or it's on the docket to do an episode next year, or whatever. you know And I can bring up these topics and say, hey, I've got something on that that might be helpful for you. So have a listen. And like it gets me actively studying and looking for information, not just for my own edification, but for the benefit of other people so that we can have a discourse, so that we can reach out and chat with each other and and discuss what's really going on.

01:34:27.01
Jala
you know so um Even though like yes, there's there's, oh yeah, we have the coffee you know and stuff like that. like Nobody's going to be like throwing money at me, tons of money at me. you know But like the people who are supporting us there, bless you, ah you are keeping the lights on literally for the podcast because otherwise it costs us money to have to do all of that, um to get it up there and out into the world for y'all. yeah so ah

01:34:54.57
Desiree
Well, I think people should absolutely be throwing all of the money at you um because this I think is the example of a pure passion project. And I don't know that, you know, if you had all the money in the world, I don't see this type of format changing significantly because it is something you're doing out of love. And like you mentioned, things that you love that you do for money can become tainted by it. And that can also be taken advantage of by employers if they say, Oh, well, I know you love doing this. So how about you do this side project and suddenly sort of a 40 hour work week,

01:35:34.57
Desiree
You're at a 50-hour workweek. And if you're salaried, even if you had a good salary, you're now dividing that number by 50 hours instead of 40.

01:35:42.45
Desiree
So that hourly rate is going to keep chipping down lower and lower.

01:35:47.28
Desiree
So people will definitely exploit your passions if you give them the opportunity.

01:35:51.95
Jala
Oh, absolutely. And because i was you know because I'm an artist, I was put on like the advertising team that won like a national insurance competition one year and stuff like that.

01:36:02.69
Jala
But I insisted that it be while I was on the clock, because at that time I was hourly. And so you know like I was like, nope, that's going to be on the clock.

01:36:10.36
Jala
If I'm going to do that, I'm going to get paid for that. you know And granted, the payment that I was going to get hourly, the payment that I would get at work is not what I would charge for artwork. you know artwork would be a much higher rate than that so you know they still exploited me but at least i stood my ground enough to to do whatever but um

01:36:22.88
Desiree
Right.

01:36:29.43
Jala
And either case, yeah. And like, uh, just one more thing I want to say about the podcasting thing. Cause I know a lot of the people who listen to this are people who podcast and a lot of them have Patreons and they do stuff and like, you know, some of them, yeah, they're, they're experiencing growth and stuff, which is great, which is great. If you love it, and that's what you want to do for your job, a hundred percent of the way I am so behind you all the way. But the problem that I see a lot in the podcasting sphere is a lot of people really, really desperately want to grow their listener base. and they are trying to advertise themselves out on the internet where everyone is advertising and everybody's got a podcast, right?

01:37:04.11
Jala
And so like, the money is getting passed around from one one support, you know, one Patreon to another, like, you know, these two people might be patrons of each other.

01:37:14.22
Jala
And so they're just passing them the $5 back and worthy now is all they're doing and I mean like yes it's a show of support and I like your thing and it's whatever and and like if that if that doesn't for you great but like it's a trap y'all it's a trap to try to to monetize this and I mean like if you're doing it just to keep your lights on

01:37:33.49
Jala
great. But like if you're giving yourself a lot of extra work and you're stressing yourself out about, I have to get this out there in the world and I have to do these extra things because I put it on my Patreon, maybe rethink that a little bit, step that back a little bit and think about like where you are. Are you burned out? Because like if you aren't burned out, bless you, then you must be thriving. Great, great. But if you are burned out, and a lot of podcast people I know are,

01:38:00.54
Jala
re-think about that. Think about what you know like what your goal is, how practical it is, what actually needs to go into it if you want to have an all out ad campaign to get a higher listenership and things like that. and Because it it will take money and it will take time and it will take extra work, not just, hey guys, please rate and review us. you know like yeah Yeah, that's always great to do. you know But Also, like there's so much more that needs to happen to make a podcast stand out.

01:38:31.91
Jala
you know I'll get off the soapbox about that.

01:38:34.65
Jala
But um yeah, so the equation about the ah do what you love and you never work a day in your life or whatever is itself based on a work life integration poised for burnout. What you love becomes your work, your work becomes what you love.

01:38:50.35
Jala
And then there's little delineation of the day on the clock and off or the self, work self versus actual self, because it's just one long mobius strip

01:39:00.90
Jala
of a person pouring their entire self into a quote unquote lovable job with the expectation that doing so will bring both happiness and financial stability. So as the artist Adam J. Kurtz rewrote the do what you love maxim on Twitter. Do what you love and you'll work super fucking hard all the time with no separation and no boundaries and also take everything extremely personally.

01:39:27.69
Jala
Yeah. I can't, it's truer words, man. you know um It's easy to see how a profound slippage can develop between pursuing passion and overwork. If you love your job and it's so fulfilling, it makes sense that you'd want to do it all the time. So let's shift into a little history. During World War II and in the post-war period, scientists were hired that had single-minded obsessive special interest focus on their work. And this was promoted by headhunters.

01:39:59.24
Jala
This eventually translated over to tech bros in Silicon Valley, where the the scientists from World War II and the post-war era, that kind of single-minded focus and the head hunters and all of that, that translated over into technology. So so Silicon Valley thinks the quote unquote old way of work is broken. It loves overwork. It's ideology of disruption to move fast and break things as Mark Zuckerberg famously put it. is contingent on a willingness to destroy any semblance of a stable workplace. In the startup world, the ultimate goal is going public, creating a high enough stock valuation and afterward unmitigrate unmitigated growth, no matter what the cost, human cost in particular. And that's how these companies pay back the venture capital firms that invested in them. And that's how they make their founders, boards, and early employees very rich.

01:40:55.48
Jala
other industry disruptors include Uber and Airbnb among many more. So like these industries, you know these disruptors come in, they do a thing, they are overworking like hell. They make a lot of money, but then anyone who comes after that initial wave of people who start doing the thing are then you know just overworked, but they don't get those benefits. So Solidarity becomes suspect when each individual views him or herself as an independent contractor locked into a zero-sum battle with the rest of society.

01:41:28.40
Jala
Every moment he or she spends not working means someone else is getting ahead to his or her detriment. So for example, if a coworker insists on set work hours or even just taking a vacation, they're not setting healthy boundaries, they're giving you an opportunity to show that you can work harder, better, and more than they are. So if they take time off, they're lazy. And so I'm going to overwork and and I'm going to show how good I can handle everything by doing all of their job too. So when we don't talk about work as work, but as pursuing a passion, it makes quitting a job that relentlessly exploited you feel like giving up on yourself instead of what it really is, advocating for the first time in a long time for your own needs.

01:42:13.56
Jala
The fetishize fetishization of lovable work means that plain old jobs, non-Ninja, non-Jedi jobs that might not be cool, but then nonetheless offer magical powers like stability and benefits.

01:42:20.52
Desiree
Beautiful. Oh.

01:42:26.51
Jala
come to feel undesirable." And that right there, that sentence, that's where I was when I was starting to feel real burned out. And I was like really deeply thinking about just like, I'm going to jump off this and you know insurance gig and go do something else, you know something I love. And then I was like, you know, never mind. I'm going to keep my my stable job. I don't give to two shit shits about when I leave. ah Like, I don't care after I'm off work. It's so funny. Sometimes ah friends will sometimes, if they don't know me well enough, try to ask me, how was work? I don't want to fucking talk about work.

01:43:00.96
Jala
Don't ask me about work ever. like If I have anything to tell you about work, I will tell you of my own volition, get it out of my system, and then we'll move on. I don't ever want to talk about work.

01:43:10.04
Jala
I'm not at work. Let's not talk about it.

01:43:12.20
Desiree
Yep.

01:43:13.43
Jala
so So yeah, how did work get so shitty? So it started with temp agencies in the 70s offering alternatives to salaried employees with benefits. So temps never took time off on the employer's dime, did not receive benefits and were disposable and easily replaceable. So ultimately temp work was so thoroughly feminized as well and effectively trivialized that little thought was paid to whether or not it was exploitative. because you had Kelly girls, for example.

01:43:42.86
Desiree
right yep and temp work is work that i did for a long time after graduating with that supposedly magical college degree that was going to take me places the first job i immediately had after graduating was

01:43:43.51
Jala
You had your Kelly girls. So, you know, you would just hire a Kelly girl. So nobody cared because it was women. Thanks guys.

01:44:09.15
Desiree
the cashiering job at Menards that I'd worked the last year or so of college and then moved out to Kansas and took me a whole month to even get a job anywhere and it turned out to be at a coffee shop, which was the same thing as the exact very first job I'd had as I started my college career, taking a pay cut from like 10 bucks an hour, M&R's down to that minimum wage of $7.25. And when I finally got out of coffee and doing something real as an office manager, it was through a temp agency. And so eventually, you know, work to get hired on full time. Well, my first sim agency job was for the water chemical treatment company then onto to the healthcare.

01:44:55.91
Desiree
but ah you know, that was what was available to me it was these temp agency jobs. It wasn't that I wasn't applying to other things. I was sending out so many resumes. Anytime I saw something open up at the university where I am now or at other places around this college town that I live in, where a college degree should be valuable, but because it's a college town, Everyone has one of those pieces of paper. The market is saturated. It means absolutely nothing, especially when your bachelor's is in psychology. You can do basically nothing with a bachelor's in that. And my mom also went through that experience of having to work for a temp agency between intermittently getting laid off from different companies. So it's definitely been a symptom that has hit many generations.

01:45:51.62
Jala
Right, right. And so similar narratives too have also accumulated around gig and freelance work in the wake of the Great Recession. So ah when driving for Uber is framed as a voluntary side gig instead of a desperate attempt to supplement a dwindling teacher's salary, then it's all the easier to ignore the reality of the economic situation and the companies that take advantage of the workers they've failed. So um Peterson, the author of this book, actually has described a new social class and called it the precariat.

01:46:26.45
Jala
The precariat is someone whose economic and class status is precarious, which renders them ever vigilant for even the smallest piece of bad luck that could sink them into poverty.

01:46:39.05
Jala
Above all, precariat workers are exhausted and regardless of the specifics of their job, burnt out. The precariat is the first class in history expected to labor and work at a lower level than the schooling it typically requires.

01:46:56.28
Jala
The heads of public corporations, desperate for increased stock valuations in an increasingly volatile market and beholden to investors who could potentially oust them at any point, began slowing off any non-essential components of their business from janitors to entire arms of a company in order to make it as lean and agile as possible. You might know this strategy by the more common but vague name of downsizing. So the companies have become, at least from the profit margin obsessed perspective of Wall street Street, bloated. That bloat, however, was often related to the compensation packages and structures that made work better for most people. It might've made life good, but that didn't mean it was wasn't disposable. So in the book, Temp, How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary,

01:47:50.69
Jala
Lewis Hyman traces the development of consulting along with accounting as means to apply order to the sprawling corporations that grew over the course of the post-war boom. And while accountant's major task was keeping the book straight, consultant's task was more theoretical, analyzing how a company ran and then telling it how to run better. The corporation under the consultant's helm was no longer an enduring venture, Hyman writes. It became a monetary assemblage whose value was not in tomorrow's progress but in today's stock price.

01:48:25.91
Desiree
And then the example that you have ah provided there of Toys R Us. So 2005, Toys R Us was bought by a collection of private equity firms. So that loaded the company with debt. Two years later, by 2007, 97% of those profits were directed towards down where paying down the interest. So in practice, that meant there was no time limit for innovation or remodeling stores or devising new strategies to compete with competitors. So these private equity owners cut the fat, and then they cut it all the way down to the bone. And then, so 10 years later, 2017, the company went entirely bankrupt. So stores were liquidated.

01:49:18.05
Desiree
ah Jala, very familiar with that, same as my husband with Borders Books and Music.

01:49:24.60
Desiree
Similar kind of thing happened there. Blockbuster, that was where John worked before. If you need someone to close down a company, apparently hire him.

01:49:34.37
Jala
Right.

01:49:34.78
Desiree
ah So a lot of people assume there was Amazon or Walmart that killed Toys R Us, but in reality it was selling massive numbers of toys until the very end. and the anti-monopoly activist Matt Stoller writes, quote, what destroyed the company were financiers and public policies that allowed the divorcing of ownership from responsibility.

01:50:01.96
Jala
Right. And then from here in the book, we get into the fissuring of the workplace and how this, the fracturing of, of how the responsibilities go leads into that situation where there's a bunch of arms, like I said, but there's no head to the company. You know, even though there might be a CEO face, there's not like a responsibility chain that ever really leads to the CEO, the alleged head, right?

01:50:27.23
Jala
So ah companies used to employ the people who made work possible at all levels.

01:50:32.41
Jala
The ramifications of this arrangement were huge. If you worked as a janitor at say 3M, you were entitled to the same benefits as ah the author's granddad who worked there as an accountant. Not the same salary, but the same pension structure, the same healthcare, and the same stability. This was a massive equalizing force. You might not have the same earning potential, but you had the same protection from risk, and at least in some cases an opportunity for advancement, which could include moving up and out of janitorial work altogether.

01:51:03.62
Jala
This gave way to outsourcing to specialized contracting companies. So instead of hiring, you know, a janitor that works just for 3M and this one building, you have instead the janitor, you know, janitorial company that comes in and they have people that they have clean your stuff for you. So ah this model could theoretically work well for everyone involved. Cleaning companies know best how to clean stuff. Why trouble another company with training and so supervising one or two employees in an area totally outside of its expertise? The pay and the quality of the work conditions could even potentially be the same.

01:51:42.65
Jala
But within what David Weil calls the fissured workplace, companies have become so devoted to their core competencies and brand maintenance that they've largely shed the responsibilities that a company being a direct employer outsourcing to subcontractors is also a handy way to get rid of unions, which are generally viewed through the consultant mindset as impediments to profit. The solution to the union problem is simple, lay off every employee ah but you know every employee in the company and in time through a subcontractor, hire back the people to do the very same job without benefits.

01:52:19.66
Jala
I know several people that this has happened to.

01:52:22.81
Jala
so ah One crafty way to outsource risk is to become a franchise, a move that effectively cuts off corporate headquarters from direct responsibility for the thousands of iterations of the brand owned by individuals that dot the world. At Google, subcontracted employees and temps, 121,000 worldwide as of 2019, outnumbered actual employees, 102,000. They work alongside each other and are at least ostensibly equal, but temps and contractors make less money, have worse benefits, and in the United States, earn no paid vacation time. And because of non-disclosure agreements signed upon hiring, no one's supposed to talk about it publicly or privately.

01:53:09.09
Jala
As Pradeep Chauhan, who runs a service that places contract workers, ah told the New York Times, it's creating a caste system inside companies. So in 1993, Apple published an essay within which they stated, the emerging workplace has a head and no body. It's centralizes free floating talent resources as necessary to meet current needs and changes size from moment to moment as the marketplace dictates.

01:53:40.73
Jala
So outsourcing doesn't keep employees, employee wages steady. It doesn't make employees work life better. What it does do is increase the overall value of a company on the stock market, which benefits stockholders and those lucky enough to have a 401k while depressing wages for those who've been outsourced. And because so many people are willing or desperate to find a job, any job, the company they that employ these outsourced workers have little incitement to provide stability, regular scheduling or benefits.

01:54:11.77
Jala
Now, what this doesn't mention is the outsourcing to other countries where, you know, like the the quality of life and this, that and the other are different and like the pay can be even lower.

01:54:22.59
Jala
you know It's very popular for people to outsource. like my My company outsources to India. so you know like A lot of the people who work within the company itself that we get emails from are not, you know like they're they're the other side of the world. you know

01:54:40.12
Jala
so But, um, yeah, so the economy is quote unquote thriving, but the gap between the rich and poor keeps expanding in the middle class, which is created through that period of relative corporate benevolence continues to shrink because companies aren't giving the benefits. They aren't giving the stability and then they're outsourcing and then their gig jobs and then their freelance and all of this other mess and hiring temps and this, that, and the other. And, you know, not being,

01:55:10.74
Jala
you know taking on the responsibilities of what it means to be an employer you know now if you are someone who runs a small business. you are conscious of your employees and you are trying to offer them the best that you can offer them for your small company. But once you get to corporate level where you've got this massive bureaucratic organization, then it stops, you know, like that, that accountability stops somewhere along that line. Once you get, especially like shareholders and stuff involved, when you get stocks involved, you know,

01:55:44.64
Jala
So ah not to say that there aren't terrible people who run independent businesses as well, but you know what I'm saying.

01:55:50.68
Jala
So um yeah, what is clearly unique in the recent history of capitalism, the Wall Street anthropologist Karen Ho explains, is the complete divorce of what is perceived as the best interests of the corporation from the interests of most employees. It places the workplace against the workers. So when inflation is factored in, wages are largely stagnant. And no matter how low the unemployment figures are, they take on new meaning when compared to the number of people still living in poverty.

01:56:22.60
Jala
There's something I saw that was like, the average income in America is 79 something. And then it's like, if you take out the 1%, that drops it down to 48 something.

01:56:28.55
Desiree
Haha!

01:56:32.43
Jala
And if you take out the you know top 2%,

01:56:35.92
Jala
it drops it down and then like when you actually take out like the the the cream of the crop if you will the people who have skimmed over the tops of everything and benefited from their their shareholding and this that in the other you know like these these folks when you get to the average actual income for Americans it's like the below the poverty line or something like that so uh that's where we're living So to be employed, quote unquote, employed today does not mean that you have a good job or a stable job or a job that pays well enough to bring a family over the poverty line. It just means that you are working.

01:57:15.35
Jala
And that doesn't mean anything.

01:57:15.74
Desiree
Right.

01:57:17.23
Jala
You could be working for Uber.

01:57:18.93
Jala
That doesn't mean that's enough money for you to make for like, you know, your life. So precarity is the new status quo. So that's why I like this whole social class concept of the precariat, because that's a lot of folks in the millennial age group.

01:57:35.34
Desiree
And that is also why it's very important to understand the data behind the statistics that are being spouted. So in colleges, they monitor employment rate after getting your degree. Yes, I was employed after getting my degree. Have I worked in any of the fields that I have pieces of paper in? No. But the colleges that I graduated, Faram, are still reporting me among, oh yes, our students are employed after graduation.

01:58:08.02
Jala
Right. Absolutely. So let us pursue then the question of why does work continue to be shitty right now? So ah American Overwork ethic has become so standardized that there's no feeling of before or after. It's just how it is and how it always will be. So bearing ah barring a significant psychology alter altering intervention, when someone equates, quote unquote, good work with overwork, that conception will stay with them and anyone under their power for the rest of their lives.

01:58:43.84
Jala
So once a manager thinks good work is when you're working and not getting up from your desk at all and you're working overtime and you're doing this, that and that other, then that means that's going to be the model going forward, not just for you, but for everybody else who works under you. so

01:59:03.28
Desiree
And I think there is a bit of, hopefully, old guard retiring and as millennials move into more positions of ah power, hopefully that will be part of this shift because I had a co-worker who was retiring tell an incoming co-worker, oh, you don't need to worry about the vacation benefits or any of that because you'll never be able to take it.

01:59:27.70
Desiree
Thankfully, that co-worker, as nice as they are, retired, and hopefully that can be a mindset that we're able to shift as they retire.

01:59:38.19
Jala
Right and that part of the trick is is that if you are in the burnout mode and you are deeply believing the burnout, you know, sentiment that we were all taught as millennials when we were growing up, right?

01:59:53.89
Jala
Then for you to separate yourself from those those feelings of, oh, I have to just work, work, work, work, work. I can't take a day. I can't do this, that. You know, like, then that means that that

02:00:05.93
Jala
is still going to be perpetuated so long as you're carrying that around with you. So part of the reason for this episode is to kind of talk about that and hopefully ah bring it to more folks' attention so that that they can be aware of it within themselves. Because this is this is kind of like one of those things like dealing with fatphobia or something like that, where it's like it is endemic to the society that we live in because there's so many things around us that are are constantly um you know for It's like you know dealing with toxic masculinity or toxic people in general, not just toxic masculinity, cha toxic people in general, you know things like that.

02:00:42.06
Jala
like You're always going to have to battle that. You're going to have to deal with that.

02:00:45.64
Jala
I feel like in America, I don't see an end to the situation, you know ah at least not within my working lifetime. so You know, ah we conditioned ourselves to ignore every signal from the body saying this is too much. And we call that conditioning, quote unquote, grit or hustle. So doers, the only type of person fit to survive in the gig economy, have effectively silenced their body's warning system. After all, it's far easier to take some five-hour energy than it is to look straight in the brutal face of our current economic system and call it what it is. The idea of overwork has become so pernicious, so pervasive that we attribute its conditions to our own failures, our own ignorance of the right life hack that will suddenly make everything better.

02:01:31.93
Jala
That's why books like Grit and Unfuck Yourself have become so massive, such massive bestsellers. They suggest the fix is right there within our grasp because the problem these books suggest isn't the current economic system or the company that exploits the profit, and exploits and profits from it. It's us. so That right there is what I kept finding when I was looking for stuff on burnout, which is why I started getting really frustrated and why I was like, I can't with these books.

02:01:59.80
Jala
I'm not bringing this to my show. Not what these people are telling me.

02:02:03.38
Jala
This is bullshit. you know So ah surveillance culture, let's talk about that. Open office, for example. So that doubles as both a cost-cutting method and a way for everyone in the office to know what everyone else in the office is doing at a particular moment. So unlike the private offices that were once the the norm for most people, office open offices make actually completing work incredibly difficult, subject to constant interruptions, or if you put on headphones, suggestions that you're a cold bitch and not much of a team player because you're being antisocial and not engaging with your coworkers.

02:02:37.82
Jala
So the goal of surveillance might be productivity or quality control, but the psychological effects on workers is substantial. In the job, work and its future in a time of radical change, the organizational psychologist, Amy, I cannot pronounce that last name, ah tells ah someone that the close monitoring by supervisors makes it difficult for us to think independently and act proactively and nearly impossible for us to make meaning of our work.

02:03:08.30
Jala
To start, there's the digital time clock, which penalizes workers for clocking in even a minute after their shift begins, and the general stress of the worker's schedule, ah which uses an algorithm and past data to determine exactly when the store needs more or fewer employees. Now, that's more retail, but still. In practice, this means ever-changing, totally unstable schedules generally distributed to employees just a few days ahead of time. So that's something that Dave is dealing with right now.

02:03:36.44
Desiree
And that's something I dealt with at Menards, we would have the schedule, but the frontline managers were periodically every couple of hours getting a report of where profits were for the day.

02:03:50.88
Desiree
And sometimes if you just really wanted to go home, that was great, you would get to go early, but other times your supervisor would tell you, Hey, yep, you should have six more hours in your shift. I got to send you home right now.

02:04:05.89
Jala
Yep, absolutely.

02:04:07.01
Desiree
And, you know, that may have been money you were counting on at the time I was in college. So I wasn't counting on it for rent because I was living at home, but there were full adult people working there trying to support families on that money. And you can't make a family budget if you can't have guaranteed income.

02:04:28.87
Jala
Right. And then to the other side of that coin is that when there's a sudden rip and a sudden rush that is not anticipated by the algorithm, then that means everybody's yelling for backup and then there's no backup to come to help.

02:04:41.74
Jala
So that maximizes misery for workers and customers. And it's inhumane and it's stressful and it's whatever, but it's profitable.

02:04:45.91
Desiree
Yep, absolutely.

02:04:50.19
Jala
So companies keep doing it.

02:04:52.62
Desiree
Yep. Uh, and then there's also this fetish fetish.

02:04:57.91
Jala
Fetishization.

02:04:59.44
Desiree
Yep. There we go. Uh, freelancing. So this idea that strong job creation numbers are flouted all the time. We hear it in so many different news reports. We've heard it a lot by Obama. We've heard it by Trump, Biden, I'm sure has said some jobs numbers things in there as well. It's just that they're not the same sort of jobs as they were before. Also, there's that idea of these jobs mean that people are employed and what does that number actually tell us, right? So is a job a 10 position? Is it something that's given to a freelancer?

02:05:42.15
Desiree
Even seasonal gigs or part time jobs are going to be part of those job numbers. So actually understanding how those statistics are compiled. According to one study, nearly all of the jobs, quote unquote, added to the economy between 2005 and 2015. So 10 year period, peak recession and terribleness were contingent or alternative in some way.

02:06:08.50
Jala
yeah That's going to be your gigs, your freelances, your temps, you know, stuff like that.

02:06:15.29
Desiree
So the general logic behind freelancing goes kind of something like this. You've got this marketable skill. Maybe that's graphic design, photography, writing or editing, ah digital editing, web design. A lot of those are really popular these days. You get advertisements for certifications pushed at you, cybersecurity, coding, that kind of thing. So these companies are in need of that skill. In the past, medium or large-sized companies would have hired full-time employees for that skill, maybe even a whole team of those folks. But in the fissured workplace, those same companies are reticent to hire any more full-time employees. you know There's a lot of things that goes along with a full-time employee. Fringe benefits, the health care, the insurance, things like that. So instead of paying salaries plus all of those hidden fringe costs,

02:07:11.59
Desiree
they hire multiple freelancers to do the work of a full-time staffer, which gives the company high quality work without the added responsibility of all of those fringe benefits. Also, the amount that they are paying that temp agency is not going to be anywhere close to what that temp worker will see.

02:07:33.45
Desiree
um So then, you know, from the outside, freelancing might seem like a dream. You get to work, when you want, where you want. You are in control of your own destiny, ostensibly. But if you're a freelancer, there are a lot of dark sides to that perceived benefit of flexibility. That freedom to set your own hours to sort of do work at your own pace comes with you are also paying your own health care. If you're an independent contractor, you are also

02:08:08.45
Desiree
most likely going to pay a ridiculous amount of ah taxes at the end of the year.

02:08:15.58
Desiree
ah Thankfully, the passage of the Affordable Care Act made it easier to purchase individual plans off of the marketplace. ah Before that, there was a concerted effort to attempt to undercut the Affordable Care Act and make obtaining affordable health care as a freelancer has become increasingly untenable. so All of politics are wrapped up into this, and there are all sorts of hidden numbers and figures that the average person might not see or might not be thinking about. Freelancing also means no employer facilitated 401k. That means also no employee match. So you put in 8%. Your employer puts in 4%. You're not getting any of that.

02:09:03.22
Desiree
And no subsidized or concerted means other than the portion of your freelance checks that goes into Social Security or to save for any other kind of retirement. So those four IRAs, you might have a traditional IRA through an employer. Anyone can start a Roth IRA at any time if you have that disposable income that is all on your own to go out and sort of set up. um So quoting someone from the book, Alex wrote, I get no general or consistent feedback on my skills. So this is someone who works as a freelance designer and illustrator. And they said, quote, I accept pay less than my worth just to get a job. There's the consistent price of undercutting.

02:09:55.61
Desiree
And there's the anxiety over the lack of control over my own life.

02:10:00.16
Desiree
So freelancing might feel like, oh, you have all this control because you can choose which jobs to take. However, you don't choose how hungry your stomach is. And so you have to take jobs to be able to pay your bills, keep the lights on, keep food coming in. So it really is removing or at least severely restricting that freedom.

02:10:22.60
Jala
Right, right. And then Uber in the past was claiming that an Uber driver could make 90,000 a year. But the majority of people driving or cleaning or renting their spare room or or whatever in the gig economy are doing this as a second or even third or fourth job. They're not doing it as like a full time gig. And so this gig isn't replacing the traditional economy. It's propping it up in a way that convinces people that it's not broken. Oh, well, all you have to do is just rent that room when you're not there.

02:10:55.55
Jala
You know, you just have to do that and it's fine, you know, or whatever.

02:10:59.57
Jala
So in today's economy, going freelance means internalizing the fact that you could and should always be working more.

02:11:09.81
Jala
So yeah, it's it's a rough thing. And you know like that's the thing. That's also why a lot of people, and this is something I've talked about on the Passions, Pursuing Your Passions episode, was ah how when you have a skill, every single millennial I know has always heard somebody say, you can make money doing that. You can make money doing that. You can make money doing that.

02:11:33.41
Jala
like you know You need to do that for a job. you know about everything. You need to sell these, you you know this thing that you made. You need to X because you know that's that's your passion, right? And you've got to do the thing that you're passionate about and you can make some extra money if you just X. So, you know, and like, that's, that's, again, that's, that's gig economy stuff. That's like, you gotta, you know, do this thing and you've got to try to make money any way that you can, because, you know, like the reality is you do in a lot of ways, uh, have to, if you want to scramble together enough money to make ends meet.

02:12:10.59
Jala
You know, for a lot of folks, that's the reality of it. They have to, you know, it's not a choice, but like it is real toxic to be like, you can make money doing it.

02:12:19.60
Jala
Don't do that. Don't do that.

02:12:22.06
Jala
I mean, like, yes, it's it's sort of a compliment, but it's also a bad, like it's a toxic thing that you're trying to put out there in the world. You're trying to make everybody monetize themselves at all times. They can't have a hobby for the sake of having a hobby. They have to have a hobby that can be monetized. Because capitalism you know it's like the the brain rot of being like so you know up in capitalism's ass That you know like you you are so wired in that you can't deprogram.

02:12:46.75
Desiree
Sure.

02:12:50.58
Jala
It's like the Borg come on guys to keep the Star Trek thing going so

02:12:55.72
Desiree
Well at least they seemingly had universal health care so maybe we should look into that.

02:12:59.90
Jala
right right seriously so yeah so let's let's shift into technology so phones apps smart devices what these technologies do best is remind us of what we're not doing who who's hanging out without us or who's working more than us or what news we're not reading um you know and And so so the way the the author in this part ah kind of loses me a bit. There's some parts that I'm like, yes, I agree with it. Other parts I'm like, I can't get on board with this weirdly, deeply negative feeling that you have about literally everything that you see on the internet.

02:13:35.25
Jala
um because like you and I have talked about this off off mic but like both of us were like I don't know man I mean like my instagram feed because like ah the author categorized in this part of the book how how she has this like super toxic and terrible way of

02:13:51.99
Jala
like interpreting literally everything on her feed. And she lists out what her thoughts are and what the thing was that she was responding to.

02:13:59.47
Jala
And I'm like, I don't know, that sounds like a personal disposition thing to me.

02:14:04.54
Jala
Because my Instagram is full of cute fucking animals and like Muay Thai and some other stuff and like sometimes comedians and, you know, like workout videos and that's it.

02:14:16.61
Jala
And I don't know, I don't have a problem with my thing. You have to actively curate your social media for sure. And I know that ah that curation process can be one of those, quote unquote, adulting tasks that people don't want to do, but like for your own health, mental health and otherwise.

02:14:23.70
Desiree
Yes.

02:14:34.69
Jala
um You know, also understand that like just because you're friends with somebody, you can mute them, you know, like just because you're friends with somebody and you you don't want to unfollow them on the media, even though you don't like these terrible things that they're saying every once in a while or this negative viewpoint that they've got that really affects you, you can mute them.

02:14:51.46
Jala
mute them for a little bit. Unmute them when you're ready to to have them back in your feed again. You know, although the algorithms aren't even really showing us half of what our friends are saying anyway. So, um you know, it's all just like a big trash fire. But anyway, kind of the whole point there is um

02:15:09.27
Jala
I don't 100% agree with the some of the things that are being presented here. ah Yes, the pings on your phone can for certain types of people like really be a bother to them to where like they can't focus until they clear all the little little red marks on if their phone saying that they have X number of unread messages or whatever. and all the reminders and this, that, and the other. ah The development more recently of do not disturb mode is a godsend.

02:15:33.84
Jala
I love do not disturb mode because like there's there's definitely a point where like the visual distraction of seeing notifications pop up on my phone screen over there when I'm in the middle of doing something and I'm focusing on it. you know That really does bother me, but I don't want to put my phone away just in case there's something that like You know, I really need to see, or if I'm checking the time and that's why that's there or because I'm listening to an audio book and I've got it on speaker and it's over there or whatever. You know, that's, that's, I just want to put it on, do not disturb. Like I don't want to see the pings. Don't show me the pings. I just want to, you know, so.

02:16:05.88
Desiree
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things. Like I think one, the author is sort of coming at it and she even says a well curated Instagram or Twitter can lead to a job. I don't know many folks that are using Twitter or Instagram for jobs. That's what LinkedIn is for.

02:16:24.68
Desiree
I also acknowledge I tend to be a very compartmentalize-y type of person. Twitter is where some chats occur. It's probably the most likely place I would be to have a conversation with somebody, Instagram is entirely cute animals and weird obscure accounts. Like a woman who tells me a new Scots word every day or a guy who's telling me about weird Ireland places, things like that. It took some time and work to sort of curate that, but it's not that much of an effort for me to tell Instagram, hi, nope, don't recommend that type of content to me. And that's where I think

02:17:04.69
Desiree
The author is overlooking the way that technology can adapt if you teach it things. And I think AI, as scary as that can be for a lot of folks, is going to potentially be helpful.

02:17:17.40
Desiree
AI is not nearly as smart as a lot of people think it is. I attended a whole conference on it as it pertains to libraries. but It can do a really good job of saying, I like this kind of thing. Show me more of that kind of thing. And that's where if you're going to engage with social media, do that. I think it can also do a lot and you can do a lot by learning the technologies. So like Jaller was saying with, you know, modes to mute things, customizing your notifications in general, that's something you're only going to have to invest the time in doing once.

02:17:54.00
Desiree
and you can change it, so only show me at mentions kind of thing or only show me notifications from these people. So working with your technology rather than against it because it is there to serve you, not the other way around.

02:18:08.71
Jala
Right now I will say go back to the internet and identity episode and and listen to some chat there about the algorithms and how the algorithms are also harmful because they make everybody insular because because they only show you stuff that's related to other stuff you've looked at you don't get any exposure to anything new.

02:18:30.13
Jala
And like your searches on the internet are based on the other searches that you've done before. And like it's all like the algorithms are tailoring all of your content to such a degree that you are therefore not getting any any broadening of anything. ah You're not getting any exposure to new stuff in the same way unless somebody else breaks you out of it by sending you something from their algorithm. you know

02:18:55.10
Jala
So ah that's why it's really important. That's why another reason why like I'm constantly looking at different stuff.

02:19:02.17
Jala
For example, I don't like the um subscription ah stuff like Spotify or things like that for music. I love music. I don't like Spotify and things like that because it's only going to have me listen to more stuff that sounds like other stuff that I listened to recently. and I will tell you, my music library has all kinds of random genres in it. And I have like so so many music files on my computer because you know I used to have like the biggest iPod, and I filled it up to the point that it could not fit any more music on it.

02:19:34.54
Jala
because I had that much music. and so you know like I miss the days of having a big-ass iPod like that that could fit all of my music on it. I can't fit all of that on my phone, and that's you know a limit to me. But like that's because when I used to work at Borders, I used to take all the sample CDs.

02:19:49.60
Jala
like They used to be like, okay, put your name on the sample CDs, and when we clear them out, like you know if there's more than one name, we'll draw names, or whoever has the least amount of CDs will get that one. and so you know like I would go through and I would put my name on random stuff because I'm like, that has an interesting artwork on the cover or this, that, and the other. And like you know that sense of adventure of trying something new. right And like algorithms don't give you new. They give you same. And that's something to consider as well. But anyway, ah that's neither here nor there. That's not beneficial to the conversation of burnout, except if your stuff that you're searching for is all things that give you feelings of burnout and stress because you're looking at the new cycles, for example, and then all you're doing is getting feeds of that because that's your algorithm, then you're going to have to retrain your algorithm actively to get it to where it won't burn you out to look at it.

02:20:42.62
Desiree
And that can you know be influenced too if you are a person who manages your work's social media account. If you have to use your private device to do that management and posting and things, the algorithms are probably not smart enough to differentiate that you're looking at all of this political stuff because that's your day job. So having to be very conscientious about how those things can bleed over into each other.

02:21:10.62
Jala
Right. So it is true, however, that digital exhaustion is a thing that millennials deal with. And not just millennials, other people do too. But ah millennials have, you know, we have this weird situation where our, some of our younger phases of life um were dominated by some kind of technology, not the same level of technology that we have now that Gen Z has. But we also remember the world pre-everybody having internet in their house.

02:21:41.38
Jala
you know And like you had to call somebody up on the phone to talk to them if they were on a landline and home, or go to their house and knock on their door to see if they were there.

02:21:55.92
Jala
You know, like there were those, they were, those were things people did before internet existed and before texting happened, you know? um So yeah. And um these technologies have changed a lot of things about how millennials go about their lives, how we plan things, how we behave, and then ah how we were held accountable you know in public spaces as well.

02:22:19.89
Jala
It's also about you know how we ended up like learning how to flirt or interact with other people. A lot of people have a much more vigorous digital life than they do in meat space, if you will. you know

02:22:33.73
Jala
so and that's because like it's It's a good thing for some people especially because if you are neurodivergent, being in a space where you don't have to worry about you know um having to perform a mask you know is great to a certain degree. Now, it also is, I would imagine, more challenging because you have to then interpret from the text some kind of a tone, but tone is already hard for you you know and things like that.

02:23:05.21
Jala
So there's pluses and minuses. If you have social anxiety, digital spaces are easier to deal with. And a lot of people who are millennials ah do have a lot of social anxiety. So you know that's a pretty common thing. but ah anyway like the whole point being like there's some pros and some cons it also means that a lot of people are more isolated because there isn't as much physical interaction in the world in these meeting spaces right like you don't go meet up with friends unless you've already texted and talked about it ahead of time you don't just

02:23:36.42
Jala
go hang out at this one place and just see each other there, you know, like that's not how that works. And like you're not interacting with new and different people unless you're specifically going to places and then starting out conversations with strangers, which is often not even culturally acceptable, depending upon where you're at, you know, in the world. So you know, like, it's challenging. And um we'll talk about that more when we get to the crisis of loneliness episodes, which will be a couple of episodes later on this year. But um we haven't, and neither has Gen Z, to my knowledge, suddenly figured out the formula, the magic formula for finding, you know, ah companionship and love and connection

02:24:08.19
Desiree
Go for it.

02:24:17.59
Jala
In the way that people need connection not just in like a digital space and having somebody to talk to but like you know all the ways that people interact with each other in a group you know. So ah we will talk more about that later but yeah so technology does all the stuff but some. So the thing is, is that all of this cool technology that does all this stuff, for good or bad, also means that we have a loss of privacy and of attention and of autonomy. So our privacy, you already know everything that we, you know, we're being tracked by everything all the time and all of our doings online and everywhere else are being tracked by everything.

02:25:01.84
Jala
But our attention is also divided. um you know There's been numerous studies about how the brains of people have changed since the internet and since phones that have the messages, the notifications pinging all the time and the dopamine squirts every time. Maybe we talked about this on the internet episode, so go back to that if you want ah to hear more about that. But um you know like all of these changes mean that we have a harder time focusing on a lot of things. it's it's We're distracted. Our society is distracted. And not only that, but companies are profiting on and ah relying upon that distraction.

02:25:39.21
Jala
for you to then, you know, end up going down to the clickbait hole or buying that weird random thing they showed you on the internet because you're distracted and you just see this thing and you have the impulse in the dopamine squirt, you know, all these things that we've just mentioned.

02:25:55.18
Jala
So, you know, like there's a lot of things to to consider about all that and autonomy. Autonomy, again, um internet and identity episode talked about it there. ah Like if you want to research a thing, once upon a time, you had to go to to a library and look it up. And you had to once upon a time, talk to people and go find people to learn from and stuff.

02:26:19.78
Jala
And so like when you're on the algorithms, the algorithms are going to, again, spit out stuff that's either the most popular information that has paid to be at the top of the the hit list or you know is is closer to the kinds of things you have search searched for before.

02:26:37.08
Jala
So, you know, uh, but everything is for convenience. And because of that convenience, there is profit that someone is making on your back on behalf of your convenience. So, um, yeah. And like there's. yeah it's Again, it's talking about other stuff where it's like, oh yeah, you can get a job. like yeah there's There's jobs that have developed like influencers and things like that. And those people have a situation where they're burned out because there is no off the clock. They're constantly getting messages and having to engage and do this, that, and the other.

02:27:10.84
Jala
And they become slaves essentially to their devices. So um see the episode on Simulacra, the IP of Simulacra video games. The second one in that series that we went over and talked about is about influencers and their feeling trapped by the situations that occur when you are an influencer and you have these crises or or whatever on the internet with your followers and such. So yeah, and um, it's a pretty rough thing because then it's all about your brand.

02:27:41.59
Jala
What's your brand?

02:27:42.70
Jala
You know, and I even hear people who are just like fucking people, you know, it's just people and they're just like, well, I gotta be on brand with my feet. I've got to curate. Why? Why do you have to? My Instagram feed is a whole bunch of whatever. I mean, like I throw in, of course I throw in my my workout stuff. I do that all the time because people are inspired when I post that. But I also post my dog and I post pictures when I go somewhere. And sometimes I post like, oh, you know, here's a duck.

02:28:09.36
Jala
Cool. Whatever. I mean, it's whatever. I don't know. It's like, it's not like, oh, it's all just very, very, you know, it's only this one thing that I show. No, I show you a bunch of random crap. Take pictures of my food and whatever. The same kind of crap. Oh, what do people, that's right. Why do people take pictures of their food? They're just gonna be like, oh, this, this food tastes so good. I need someone to see it. Like what is going on with that? I mean, I'm taking pictures too, but

02:28:36.52
Desiree
I mean, to be fair, there's a whole account that you follow and send me pictures of often that are the fun art that is made in latte foam.

02:28:45.56
Jala
Yeah, I know that's true. But that's artistic, OK? I have sculpted this toffee foam into a Pokemon. And then look, I can make it jiggle.

02:28:57.92
Jala
It dances. It's dancing for you. This is great.

02:29:00.78
Desiree
It's specialized.

02:29:01.88
Jala
It's very specialized.

02:29:05.66
Jala
But anyway. But yeah, um there's also this feeling that happens on the internet where you have this false illusion of participation. so um that's a thing that is true. So you know you feel like instead of despairing about political situations, you feel like if you comment on stuff and you like stuff on Facebook, or you share a post about a political thing that you are participating in politics in this way, because you're so doing the good job of sharing the stuff.

02:29:37.21
Jala
And now granted, some sharing of information, if it is accurate and factual, which It's hard to actually research, see the internet and identity episode for more on that.

02:29:48.54
Jala
It's hard to get it all all sussed out, but like um if you share accurate information, this can be useful. okay I'm not disparaging it as a negative activity, but that's not going to do anything about the larger overall issue, right the the whatever the issue is that is just making you feel despairing about it in the first place. you know like Sharing about Palestine is important, for example.

02:30:12.28
Jala
However, that's not going to fix what the hell is going on in Palestine. right You know, like now I'm not saying like, OK, so then, but you know, well, Jolla, whatever. OK, I'm not trying to say I can solve fucking politics for you. All right. I'm saying like you get the sense like you you get the dopamine squirt, right, for sharing the thing.

02:30:29.78
Jala
I shared the thing about Palestine. So I feel like I'm doing good because I'm remembering Palestine exists. And while I'm having my privileged life over here and not having to fucking worry about dying all the time. you know These people over here, you know like I remembered that they exist, so I'm doing pretty good.

02:30:47.06
Jala
like that That pat on the back stuff is real weird is what I'm trying to say here. like that's It's not a substitute.

02:30:53.39
Jala
Sharing about stuff online is not a substitute for actually trying to take some actions, whatever actions those may be, writing your politicians, which I know ah we had a whole conversation in the Discord.

02:31:03.85
Jala
That ends up getting you on mailing lists and calling with that you just get fucking junk, right? ah That's what's happened every time I've emailed my politician.

02:31:11.95
Jala
ah lobbying for stuff, showing up to protest things, ah doing things like that.

02:31:16.54
Jala
Or if you cannot do that, help if you have money to fund or volunteer for organizations that help support the causes that you are you know feel feel are important and things like that. But again, millennials are so burned out. It's hard, right? So a lot of us then too burned out to do any of these things that we would otherwise do in order to align ourselves with our ideals, end up sharing that that Palestine post, right? Because we don't have a time in the wherewithal.

02:31:45.45
Desiree
Well, and we've also been conditioned to like, like, comment, subscribe, and that translates into, you have done an action to contribute to my channel.

02:31:55.68
Desiree
You're helping by like, comment, subscribing.

02:31:58.27
Desiree
And, but politics and YouTube videos are not the same.

02:32:03.61
Jala
Right. Right. And, but again, like the whole kind of point I'm trying to make is like, we should all be more politically active.

02:32:15.74
Jala
Yes. who among us has the bandwidth to do the kinds of things that we know need to be done. you know um And that's that's where the burnout is is like, we can't change the system because we're too burned out to change the system because we're in the system and we can't get out of the system.

02:32:38.04
Jala
Right? So, um, you know, like that this, this episode is not claiming to give you any kind of answers to any of this. We're talking about the problem.

02:32:46.57
Jala
You know, uh, if anyone has bright ideas, please share them with us. But, um, so yeah, let's talk about relaxing a little bit.

02:32:55.05
Desiree
What's that?

02:32:56.19
Jala
Yeah, it's a word. Yeah, it's a word that a lot of millennials say like their relationship with leisure is broken. Yes, I can 100% agree with that. I have actively for the last like 10 years been trying to deprogram myself from, you know, like being like finding it odious or feeling guilty even for taking time to do something that I want to do for its own sake. rather than doing it for a production reason, right? Because that's capitalism, bad capitalism brain telling me I need to be productive at all times. So, you know, that's a tough thing. So with massive downsizing and layoffs across the business sector, every worker has had to prove their worth, both to their supervisors, but also to consultants sent to in to identify redundancies and inefficiencies.

02:33:50.25
Jala
So the easiest way to signal that you were working harder and were more essential to the company than the person sitting next to you was working more.

02:33:53.78
Desiree
Yep. Mm hmm.

02:33:57.26
Jala
At the same time, payment in hourly jobs ceased to keep pace with inflation, and the many hourly workers clamored for overtime pay or a second job to cover household expenses in the same manner as before. Today's work crises always seem to demand immediate attention, even when nothing about them or their ramifications would change if you waited to handle them in the morning. The continued globalization of work means that you might be needed on a conference call at 3pm in Berlin or 6am in Portland. A manager who is too frazzled during the day to keep up with her emails attends to it in bed at 10 p.m.

02:34:31.67
Jala
And her responses compel people to respond back to her by 10, 15 p.m. to show her that they're still working. Rich people have always had servants. The difference then is that those servants made it so they didn't have to work, not so they could work more.

02:34:49.15
Jala
But these days, it's it's like you know we outsource parts of our lives.

02:34:54.05
Jala
like you know Personal shoppers are having like you know food delivery, so you don't have to go to the grocery.

02:34:58.81
Jala
and like Granted, stuff like that is also good for people who are like housebound for physical reasons, like you know limitations, disabilities, things like that. but like it's also

02:35:07.54
Jala
you're But outsourcing your work so you can do more work because you don't have time to go to the grocery store and pick your own damn groceries up. you know like

02:35:16.74
Jala
The people who facilitate these productivity facilitating tasks are almost always independent contractors underpaid with little job security or recourse for mistreatment. Many of them are driven by their own set of unrealistic productivity standards, but instead of getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to grind themselves into the ground to meet them, they're barely making minimum wage. That person who's picking up your Uber Eats order is not making bank.

02:35:40.24
Jala
you know So, but that's also why people feel guilty for taking time off. Someone has to do their work, so it'll either be them drowning in a fire hose of accumulated work when they return, or their co-workers simmering in resentment while they have to pull double shift. So, in my job, ah I have one person who can sort of do what I do, but she doesn't know how to do everything that I do. There is no one else on my team who does exactly what I do. And so I can cover both of my other two teammates.

02:36:12.39
Jala
I am the only one that has the specifics of the knowledge that I have.

02:36:18.41
Jala
No one else can cover 100% my job. but So

02:36:22.69
Desiree
And similarly with mine, I said we each have our own portfolios, so we we're all grant coordinators all doing the same job, but we are told to find our own backups if we are going to be out of the office. And you know our manager will do it if no one else is able, or this or that. And so the idea is that someone else covers your work while you're out, so you come back to less. But it's still this idea that there's this amount of work that needs to be covered by somebody. which could be even less if instead of folks having 40 hours worth of work to do in a 40 hour week, if you only had 35 hours worth of work to do, if you're taking that time off, that split up wouldn't be as much of a burden on your coworkers. And you might have more time to be creative and innovative and not be so burnt out that you needed, like you reach your breaking point and you have to take time off.

02:37:22.19
Jala
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So bear in mind, at my work, I continually act, act and you know, ah am like advocating for myself and saying, I need someone else to learn exactly how to do the thing that I do. You know, I need someone to learn how to do this. And I have shown, because I'm on a team of three, And ah my one teammate, my primary teammate, I've had that teammate for the last 18, 19 years.

02:37:48.81
Jala
She knows most of what I do, but she doesn't know the new systems because we've been bought out a couple of times. So ah the other guy doesn't know how to do everything. And he cannot capably handle the amount of load that he has currently. So he cannot be given any more load because he doesn't know how to do it. So ah the best I could hope for would be for primary teammate to know. But she is so busy that even if she learned how to do my job, she would not have the time to do my job.

02:38:20.26
Jala
when I'm out. So my big fear is that I'm going to be gone and you know like I'm going to have like a a medical emergency or my parents will or something and I'm going to need to be out for a long time.

02:38:31.11
Jala
And then like nobody's going to be able to do my job.

02:38:33.11
Jala
And then like it's weeks of just stuff not being done. right But that's part of the thing.

02:38:39.52
Jala
like The company tells you and the managers tell you, you are responsible to figure out how you're going to have a backup, how that's going to work.

02:38:48.36
Jala
Like that shouldn't be on the employee themselves to figure out. That needs to be the man.

02:38:52.42
Desiree
Right.

02:38:53.02
Jala
What do you think a manager is for? A manager is supposed to manage the fucking workload, right? So that should be the manager helping to figure that out and organize that.

02:39:03.20
Jala
That's part of the point of having a manager with a title like that.

02:39:07.42
Desiree
And even the systems that are in place to supposedly support employees like FMLA, family medical the Family Medical Leave Act, all that does is guarantee

02:39:20.06
Desiree
that if you are able to jump through 12,000 bureaucratic hoops and get medical professionals, who by the way, you have to take work off time to go to the appointments, to sign off on all of these various forms and things and get all of your I's dotted, your T's crossed, get everything submitted, that you get this time off to see to whatever it is you need to see to, you are not guaranteed to get paid during that time.

02:39:44.51
Jala
Right.

02:39:44.95
Desiree
If you happen to have vacation, or sick leave the is accrued, you may get paid that time out. But even the supposed benefit is not a complete benefit. It's just saying, well, we're not legally allowed to fire you because, you know, your spouse or your child died.

02:40:04.65
Jala
Yeah. Yeah. So. looping to ah the the double shift thing and someone theoretically covering for you if you're out or whatnot. In our current setup, any attempt to draw clear lines around work and leisure or deal with a one's own burnout means creating burnout in other people. Like I don't take off as much time as I have available to me after working, you know, as long as I have in, you know, for this one company and then having like, you know, all of my time off and and benefits and stuff, grandfathered in, I could take so much time off, but I don't take as much time off as I have available to me because my primary coworker, primary team lead, she

02:40:51.01
Jala
is constantly burned out. She works long days every day.

02:40:54.58
Jala
She loves it. She's doing the passion as her job doesn't understand the difference between work and leisure thing. right um and It's her entire life is is work.

02:41:05.68
Jala
and I know that if I take time off, it's going to fall on her because my other teammate is newer and does not know the job the way that both of us do.

02:41:16.29
Jala
Because he's he's like the year and a half, maybe maybe heading up on two years now since being in the company.

02:41:22.64
Jala
so like He doesn't know nearly as much as we do. So, you know, it's tough.

02:41:27.93
Jala
So that means that it's like, if I take a day off or if I take a week off, I have to feel like, Oh, well, damn, that means that I'm going to be putting my teammates in a hole or at least the one teammate in a hole. So, so yeah, that means that, uh, the, what we feel is the only solution is the one that's going to actually put us more in a hole to work more. So yeah.

02:41:53.57
Desiree
And, you know, like I said, too, if you already have that 40 hour workload, that gives you absolutely zero room if you need to take off an afternoon for a dentist appointment. Yep, that's four additional hours you're going to have to find somewhere. I saw an advertisement for an AI calendaring thing that was talking about, oh, if you use our AI calendar, it will reshuffle your tasks when meetings are canceled, things like that. So your average employee who is only productive three and a half hours a day can go up to six hours of productivity. And I was like, whoa, wait.

02:42:31.68
Desiree
So you're telling me I'm expected to work eight hours a day, but like we're striving for six hours of productivity. Is that because we're all so burnt out that we can't focus on the task at hand? And if we were only expected to work that six hours, maybe then we would actually feel productive in that. time versus being expected to constantly be productive for that full eight hours, which is not possible for human beings.

02:42:56.61
Jala
Right.

02:43:05.41
Jala
Right, right. And then too, there's also like the the kind of stresses that we end up with in our leisure time. So ah in society's eyes, it's not enough to listen to NPR read the latest nonfiction national book award winner or run a half marathon. You have to make sure others know that you are the type of person who makes that regular part participant you know particular sort of productive, self edifying optimized use of your leisure time. And while many of the products and experiences associated with the aspirational class are fairly old school middle brow, reading best selling literary fiction, watching Oscar bait movies, the current mark of the cultured bourgeois is a taste for the high brow and low brow, the ballet and the best dancers on TikTok.

02:43:50.52
Jala
the best of prestige television and the plot turns of the entire Real Housewives franchise.

02:43:56.24
Jala
To be cultured is to be culturally omnivorous, no matter how much time it takes. We don't have enough time in our lives to do all the things that the the the class impositions that are assumed for us to be like to perform that that ah fake identity because most of us are poor. you know so But yeah, an even more effective way to feel secure in one's class is to make more money.

02:44:24.00
Jala
So that's why we end up monetizing hobbies. So let's talk about hobbies for just another second. We already talked about this, but a little bit more. Hobbies are evacuated of ambition. Any purpose is secondary. They're pleasure for pleasure's sake. So think about that for a minute, people listening and think about the stuff you do. How many hobbies have you monetized or tried to like turn into an ambitious project that you beat yourself up over because you need to get better at it and do this because that's what people have, you know, Little do you know that's actually like a classist thing that you're like turning this into like, you know, um classist, capitalist, millhouse kind of stuff you're doing there. Like, wow, when you stop and think about it and you realize what you're doing, it's a real wild experience because like I did, I'm like, oh man, there's a lot of things that I do that I have tried to monetize over time and there are some things that I do that I don't, you know, at all, never have.

02:45:22.68
Jala
But like, you know, it's it's just wild. It's wild to think about. So um just for self-reflection purposes. But yeah, for many millennials, then it's like you can't be a mediocre anything. You have to be the best one and because, you know, that's that's the way to do it. So, yeah, um we already talked about that in more detail, so we don't have to go into it further than that. 

02:45:49.44
Desiree
Oh, I was going to say very, very quickly, there's a Kurt Vonnegut quote that I absolutely love about this idea of like, practicing art, practicing music and singing and dancing and acting and poetry, painting, all these things, um no matter how well or badly not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you to make your soul grow. So just this idea that, and he gives this anecdote of like, write this fantastic story and then go home and tear it up into a million teeny weeny pieces because you've been rewarded by the writing of this poem or this story and you've experienced just doing the thing and he's got other quotes and things about just doing a little bit of everything and being the worst at all of it but you know in a room of engineers you might be the best artist and a room of artists you might be the best chef because you've experienced all these different things just for the joy of

02:46:39.58
Jala
Right.

02:46:45.95
Desiree
doing them and coming at it with that mentality. Also, I adore Kurt Vonnegut, so.

02:46:50.91
Jala
Great. Well, I mean, I can relate to that as somebody who is a wearer of many hats. I like to wear many hats and I like to do a lot of different stuff. And I accept that I'm not going to be the best at it because I'm the bodybuilder who dances or whatever, you know?

02:47:04.24
Jala
So, and it's funny that you mentioned that too, because um I had just recently posted something on one of my fitness posts. I had posted where I was like, you know, a lot of times people who are coming back to the gym after a lapse of any sort you know, for injury, for illness, for whatever reason, just being too busy, life happening to you or whatever.

02:47:24.20
Jala
Um, they come back to the gym and then they get so mad because they're not where they were before.

02:47:28.07
Desiree
Okay.

02:47:29.53
Jala
And then they're just like, they, they have the standard that they set for themselves that they, they feel like they have to get back there and they need to be back there at any cost. And then they very often get burned out or they end up getting injured or whatever or sick again or whatever, because they're pushing too hard. trying to reach this this goal that they've set for themselves and i'm not saying goals are bad i am so goal oriented however you know like there's a point where.

02:47:55.46
Jala
You know in my in my post i'm trying to say like you rob yourself when you do that and like you when you take it so seriously you take yourself to fucking seriously is the thing.

02:48:05.70
Jala
Um, don't take yourself so seriously. Enjoy the act of doing these things and working back up to those numbers.

02:48:12.40
Jala
You know, you want to lift three plates on the deadlift.

02:48:14.72
Jala
Cool. Well, you know, right now you're at like, you know, one and a half plate and that's fine. You know, like you're rolling back up there. Enjoy the process of doing it and learning it all over again and seeing, you know, um, this time how you can build back stronger and take that and, you know, live in the moment of doing the thing, you know,

02:48:35.94
Jala
And enjoy the moment of doing the thing that's what you're here for us because you like to do the thing the number ultimately doesn't matter because guess what we all get old and as we get old we lose our strength and that three plates is not gonna always be three plates up into your nineties or however long you live you know so.

02:48:56.28
Jala
Let it go. you know why Just be in the moment.

02:48:59.55
Jala
you know Be present. Enjoy the thing that you're doing. so yeah so Let's talk about collapsing social networks.

02:49:06.96
Jala
So in 2011, they found significant decreases in both familial and non-familial networks, but non-familial, most of all. American social networks are collapsing inward, Putnam wrote in his 2015 follow-up, Our Kids, and now consist of fewer denser, more homogenous, more familiar, and less non-kin ties. Part of the problem is that the ability to easily coordinate schedules disintegrated along with standardized working hours. If your schedule shifts from week to week, either due to algorithmic recalculations or your own inclination to stretch your work hours, it can feel impossible to make plans or weekly commitments.

02:49:47.03
Jala
But part of the problem too is a decline in social infrastructure. The places, public and private, from libraries to supper clubs and synagogues. I don't even know. Do people have supper clubs? Boy, I missed out in synagogues that made it easy to cultivate informal non-monetary ties. These places still exist, of course. I don't know. Do supper clubs exist? Where are they at? Where can they be found? Okay. I'm just real excited for dinner.

02:50:14.28
Jala
Okay, anyway, ah but they have become less central, less vital, and more importantly, less accessible.

02:50:20.49
Jala
Because of liability issues, more and more churches are limiting the ability of members to use the space off hours, even if they pay for it. Many public beaches and parks charge exclusionary fees for parking and entrance in areas without public transportation. Public playing fields and tracks are now locked or monopolized by teams that have paid to practice. Social infrastructure, though, ah helps to provide a relief from endless planning and replanting. But now, with the way the situation is, it's endless planning and replanting.

02:50:51.19
Jala
So so ah you know like the the infrastructure

02:50:54.71
Jala
would have saved us from having to do all of this, this replanting and planning. But like, again, it's that compartmentalization because we are so digital that we can outsource things so much for our convenience, that our deep convenience has made our social infrastructure collapse.

02:51:14.49
Desiree
I think there's also and a little bit of an element here related to class and not maybe realizing the labor that we'd need to go into keeping some of these institutions open and available to the public in all of these off hours. Like I've seen posts on library social media stuff that's like, man, wouldn't it be a great alternative to going out bar hopping to just go hang out at the library and do stuff there? And then librarians are immediately responding and saying,

02:51:48.50
Desiree
I am not working until 2 a.m. Thank you very much.

02:51:52.41
Jala
Right.

02:51:53.28
Desiree
I have a life and family and like maybe you could find a librarian that would want to do that but the amount of work and money and time they would have to go into the programming and so maybe these types of things being written by someone who's lamenting, oh I want my library 2 a.m. time, not understanding that the people who are working those jobs Don't want to be working those jobs at 2 a.m.

02:52:20.56
Jala
right well i mean like there is also an element of this could be something that could be facilitated should like an independent coffee house that's open 24 hours decide to have a book nook you know where people donate books and they just put them in there or whatever

02:52:36.00
Jala
You know what I'm saying? like There's ways for the community to come around and make those things happen, but it just kind of depends upon like you know the situation in each of these areas.


02:52:46.04
Jala
right so like Say, for example, for parks and things, there's parks around me that are open and available to me. However, at certain times of the day and night, I don't feel like I can go over there by myself because it's dangerous. Right? So, um you know, there's the safety issues and things like that.

02:52:58.20
Desiree
Yep.

02:53:01.17
Jala
And then because we're so compartmentalized, like I know some of my neighbors down the street, only because my parents know the neighbors, you know, like I don't go talk to the neighbors. Otherwise, I don't just get into conversations with people down the street.

02:53:10.67
Desiree
Yep.

02:53:11.36
Jala
That's that's not a thing that we do anymore. That used to be a thing, right? Like back when I was a kid, but like people don't talk to people down the street just randomly anymore.

02:53:20.02
Jala
So, like, neighbors don't know each other and they don't, therefore, feel deep obligation to help each other out or, you know, to have that sense of community, too. So, like, because of that compartmentalization and that lack of that socialization, there's not, like, I don't live in a place where there's block parties or anything, you know? So, nobody knows anybody else down the street. And then, too, there's a lot of renters and the renters come and go.

02:53:42.02
Jala
you know So like because of the the housing market and the way that those things are and in the the different stuff having to do with the economy and the fact that people of our generation cannot afford a fucking down payment for a house.

02:53:55.53
Jala
like and All of these things contribute to this this collapsing infrastructure and the way that people used to hang out and used to meet each other and talk to each other and support each other is just like not there so much anymore. So yeah, work and parenting expectations continue to expand and priorities continue to shift inward.

02:54:08.93
Desiree
Right.

02:54:14.63
Jala
Group commitments were one of the easiest time-consuming activities to get rid of. So as fewer and fewer people attended, the groups but themselves began to disappear with little to replace them, at least little that's affordable and has regular meetings that isn't religiously specific or doesn't center on children. So ah for many people, just the idea of any of these activities seem to require an insurmountable expenditure of energy. In short, we're too tired to actually rest and restore ourselves.

02:54:42.60
Jala
By the time I have leisure time, this is a quote from the book, I just want to be alone. Yeah, and that's that's where I had been for a long, long period of time.

02:54:53.48
Jala
um Like I said, ah when I can tell I'm getting burned out when I'm just like, I don't want to talk to these people that I love to talk to. like For me, that's weird. you know

02:55:03.45
Jala
So but yeah um there's also a whole section on parenting burnout and more or less it's talking about the fact that there aren't accommodations in the workplace for people who are parents um to take care of their kids or to accommodate you know like whatever other expenditures and and time off requirements and things like that are needed for parents. There's also the fact that you have everybody else parenting your kids for you. And like you can have like CPS called on you for just disciplining your child if somebody else thinks that you're disciplining them wrong. And the school will you know in impose its will upon you if somebody else says that you know they suspect something of you or this, that, and the other.

02:55:47.47
Jala
and like you don't have as much and like granted some of this is like you you know protective legitimately protective and legitimately helpful to you know prevent problems you know with with kids but like

02:55:59.71
Jala
yeah At the same time, there's also a lot of like people always got to put their opinion out there. it's it When you were mentioning, for example, the pet thing on Instagram, if you had your own pet Instagram account, everybody would be parenting your pet for you and telling you all about what you do wrong and how you need to do this different and how you're abusing your pet and this, that, and the other.

02:56:19.70
Desiree
Oh yes, I follow many disabled pet accounts and that is so frequent. The people saying, oh well, I have you know a better idea of this pet's disease than you do. Well, you're not a veterinarian and you don't live with this particular pet, so maybe just sit down.

02:56:39.50
Jala
Right. Well, and then too, like if you're a parent, you also have the fact that like you are burned out in and of yourself without adding in the factor of a child who is dependent upon you and requires your attention, your focus, your love.

02:56:55.26
Jala
And you have to be on at home the same way that you have to be on when you're at work. You know, and um I can relate to that in some ways, although it's not the same because my parents I'm always on. I've talked about this before. I'm always on at home. I don't have an off time. There isn't an off button for me because I have to be on because I'm a caretaker who lives in the house with the people who I am taking care of. um and now that is also necessary because my parents have had many problems in the middle of the night and have needed me in the middle of the night so that is just how that goes but um you know like that's that's akin in its own way not the same because adults you know as much as adults caring for adults and caring for children they're very similar they're also different uh they are tricky in their own ways let's just leave it at that um

02:57:46.48
Jala
So you know like part of the parenting problem is just like the burnout and not knowing how to best do for your kid and let your kid breathe and have space but also have some kind of like you fear for your kid but like your situation is so horrible when it comes to like the burnout and everything else that you're dealing with that.

02:58:01.60
Desiree
Yeah. Okay.

02:58:05.96
Jala
how do you keep that from projecting onto your kid, and how do you keep like the way that you were set up and then promptly dropped off a cliff when you got to the working world, how are you going to keep that from happening to your kid? like it's It's tricky and hard, and like I don't have an answer to that. I am not even a parent, so I can't really speak to that.

02:58:26.73
Jala
So um that's why I'm just kind of glossing over the parental part of it. There is a whole section of the book devoted to that. So if folks want to listen or ah want to to check that out, they can read the book, have a look at that and we can get into a discussion.

02:58:41.67
Desiree
Yes, I'm certainly not the person to talk to about children because I decided when I was eight years old that that was entirely too much responsibility for me and never going to happen.

02:58:52.57
Jala
There you go. There you go. So um that's all that I've got out of this book. there's hope There's three hours worth of talking about this book. I don't have anything else further to add.

02:59:01.02
Desiree
Yes.

02:59:02.74
Jala
Were there things in your notes desk that you wanted to talk about that did not get covered?

02:59:07.42
Desiree
Now I think we've covered so much of it and you know if folks like this episode on discuss discussing this book specifically and would want us to go into other pieces of our experiences with Burnout we sort of peppered them throughout but you know I've got plenty of my own stories that could be shared and things and if folks would resonate more with that that's also Totally cool. I think the main takeaway for me with this is millennials have been conditioned to believe nothing is guaranteed.

02:59:41.88
Desiree
So we're constantly in a state of anxiety and many of us had traumatic childhood. So then it kind of becomes on us to re-parent ourselves in a way to adjust our expectations for what it means for us to have a happy and fulfilling life.

02:59:54.34
Jala
Right.

03:00:00.34
Desiree
Because again, tomorrow, not guaranteed. So how do you want to spend your time today?

03:00:08.03
Jala
Yeah. Yeah. And the trickiest part about it is that even if you have a clear vision for that and you know what you need to do or your you know the steps that you need to take, so many people are so burned out that those steps are like basically impossible to take because there isn't, again, like a safety net of folks to help so you know for those folks it's like you need to find out the things that you need the most right and see what you can do to ameliorate those those missing parts you know a lot of people are missing the social element and they need

03:00:47.25
Jala
some kind of social social support. And they might have friends online, you know and they might have lots of people online to talk to, and they might be able to sometimes do like a GoFundMe or something and have people support them that way. But people need people in person as well. And so like you need to find ways to go about building your own kind of infrastructure in whatever small ways you can.

03:01:09.04
Jala
If that's like making a connection with your neighbor when your your neighbor's outside and you say hi to them one day and you start kind of talking to them a little bit or whatever, ah when you see them outside or whatnot, Great and you know if you start going and and going to like a book club or this that and the other and you just find A thing to go go do to interact with other people that is gonna so help you in the future I mean even if you are not Pouring your entire soul into these people Just talking to different people that don't have anything to do with the shit that's going on in your life is refreshing

03:01:33.35
Desiree
Mm hmm.

03:01:45.26
Jala
and helpful and therapeutic in its own way. So, uh, never underestimate the power of chatting with someone, you know, but, um, ah for a lot of people it's money. Unfortunately, there's not an easy answer for what to do with that. We are all struggling with that. So we have to like cut whatever corners we need to cut to get on with our lives, you know, in whatever way we can. And we're going to have to find creative ways to make things work out for ourselves. you know so but yeah uh so des you are on twitter

03:02:19.45
Desiree
Yes. Yes. So on Twitter, I would be at d9s. That's n-e-y-e-n-s. People can find me there. I don't post a ton. And most of what I do is reposting cat accounts, but it is a place I can be found.

03:02:36.72
Jala
Yes, that is indeed true. And I may be found anywhere that I am on the Internet and in real life at Jalachand, including Jalachand place where you found this episode and all of the others.

03:02:45.12
Desiree
Bye.

03:02:50.54
Jala
So um hard to say until next time, take care of yourself and remember to smile when we're talking about burnout. But this is all in service of like airing some things for you to think about and really like um Give yourself a good hard look in the mirror and and think about these things that we've been talking about. Reflect on it. If you need to, go pull this book. Hit up one of us. Talk to us. you know Let's have a discussion. you know See what we can sort out for you. you know and um

03:03:21.84
Jala
Take that as like a a starting point for for hopefully making some positive changes in your life, you know in whatever small ways that you are able to do so. So um on that note, with a nicer, warmer, friendlier ah way of ending the episode, until next time, take care of yourself and remember to smile.

[Show Outro]
Jala
Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net!

[Outro Music]