Work
Reading some ‘blogs is an exercise in self-restraint so as not to post too critically too often of the endless silliness we as a web-community, the so-called “blogosphere,” perpetrate on the internet (enough that Google will filter ‘blogs from their main search engine, an enhancement, as far as I’m concerned, because I use Google as a research tool, not for entertainment per se). In other cases, I’m intrigued by the content in an employment-related philosophical way, even though the only “lawblog” I actively read is my brother’s. The posts related to the profession are profuse, and rightly so, if the ‘blog is to belong to its category. The “warblogs” have probably had their moment, and were, in any event, just ‘blogs that became devoted to particularly focussed ranting, and can now get back, perhaps, to just being ‘blogs, more likely than not rather boring ones anyway. Lawblogs, however, offer an interesting perspective because they are about work. Given that we spend upwards of 8 hours per day working, those of us who are not dole bludgers, anyway, it ought to be in some measure surprising we don’t post about our working lives any more than we do. But not really, because most of us are not engaged in thinking beyond the immediate demands of our jobs, that is, being truly creatively engaged in our lives. I’m not knocking work. I like working. The harder the job, the better I like it. But that’s because the more difficult the task, the more problem-solving thought is required to perform it. In law, work is not simply the process of churning out briefs, and even then, the briefs can demand a significant effort. In my job, although I often have to trace and solve problems both technical and functional, to use the distinction drawn in IT circles, I am not creative. This is a very middle-class problem, a bourgeois dilemma, to use the Marxist dialectic. When I think about work, I am disengaged from the product, and my thoughts tend to run toward only the immediate requirement of the job (except when I’m thinking about getting a new one). My creative moments come outside of work, when I have them. I have wondered once or twice in my younger days when family would pester me about going back for a law degree if perhaps I made an error in not doing so in the first place. But I don’t think I did. I think I made the right choices in education, by and large, if not always being anything more than lucky in my employment history. Now in Australia and faced with an alien marketplace for my skills I think about these things a good deal more. The conditions I face as a working person over 40 are much the same, regardless of the significant social services available here (once I’ve been here two years). I have to think about what happens after I stop working. I have to think about being employable. I have to think about the breadth and depth of the marketplace available to me. I have to think about not ‘blogging at the office so I don’t get fired. Meanwhile, I can ‘blog what I think, when I’ve got time for either.