Karl Marx, creative work and social media
I feel I have been gone for what feels like a lifetime. I was first in Nice and later in Barcelona, with work. In Nice, I felt the urge to write, but I could not. Busy in a long day meeting, I could not find pockets of active time that felt entirely mine. After that work meeting, I found myself exhausted. So, I posted the photo you will see below, in my Instagram stories. This picture led to a lot of confessions in my DMs and an indirectly related conversation that I will unpack in more detail in the next article. Let’s see if I can untangle a series of reflections around 9 to 5, creative jobs and social media. Especially now that I am finally sitting at my desk in Brussels on a rare sunny day, a mug of tea close by and my cherished solitude.
I am trying to answer to myself whether “creative work”, defined as anything that escapes a 9-5 setting, is still a privilege.
Let’s go step by step…shall we?
Social media gave us illusions about work
Now, my current work is a huge improvement from the previous one. So, writing this feels like being ungrateful. I did pray for a series of improvements at some point in the past that materialised in this job. So, it is with more than a pinch of gratitude in my heart that I write this. I was the kind of kid who knew when the electricity bill would come at 6, and now, thanks to this job, I found myself posing a question a few days ago to Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple. I do not mean to brag, I just want to allow myself to notice when unbelievable things happen to me. I owe it to that kid who was worried about bills before being able to properly read.
Back to Nice now. It was around 5 p.m., and I found myself running away from that meeting at Godspeed. I was staring out of the window from time to time and felt a sort of panic down my spine. I can feel my work becoming so demanding lately that I am not always able to tend to my passion, which is writing. I would not want to be a full-time writer. I am not ready for that kind of freedom, nor do I believe I would be able to handle it yet. But, I am also convinced I am someone who has to juggle between things to not get bored. It is counterintuitive, but to ask me to focus on one thing only is to make me underperform.
Then, as I was wrapping things up, I went out, and there was such a beautiful sun. The air was so fresh, so evidently fresh compared to what I am used to in Brussels, that even I started acting and talking like someone who does Kundalini yoga in Los Angeles. The more I noticed that the day outside was gorgeous, the more I wished the day to last longer so I could go back to the hotel and write, and the more I felt a wave of desperation overwhelm me. Then, I returned to the hotel and felt so tired. Naturally, my toxic coping mechanism led me on the phone for a scrolling session.
In thirty minutes, I had reels of beautiful, healthy-looking women who make money with their passions while travelling and sharing about their lives. Then, perhaps my algorithm felt some sort of pity and fed me super-productive second-generation US immigrants from the early retirement movement who are managing to be super frugal and hold multiple side businesses. That didn’t make things better.
I am not going to lie, I cried. It was a combination of being tired, feeling trapped and feeling unable to be as many things as I wanted to be. I recently bought a kitchen timer, I usually set it every 45 minutes and at the end of it I stand up and do some squats. I do those squats like a monkey who is aware of her imprisonment, to be honest. I dread them, but I do them because in my times of freedom I very much still would enjoy having a nice ass you know? I am vain that way.
Every time I enter social media, I feel I am wasting my youth behind a screen or that I am not smart or strategic enough to shape work around my rhythms and strengths. Luckily, after getting a good night's sleep, when emotions are not crushing me, I usually manage to tell myself that what I am being fed by the algorithm is the reality of a few. And I usually also manage to believe myself about this. While it does not prevent me from still aiming at making that my reality one day, it does prevent me from feeling despair, which is a feeling of defeat I entirely reject.
What the screen oftentimes does not show is the compromises those people had to make, the supporting system they can rely on and the cultural and social beliefs they hold and you don’t. Nobody’s fault for being born rich, nobody’s fault for being born poor. Just a matter of luck. I don’t know who I’d be today If I had always had money either, you know? There is no point in trying this imagination exercise.
What I know is that I spend one of the two days of the weekend cleaning my apartment, grocery shopping and meal prepping. What I know is that it took me the last 10 years to examine the previous 20 and make some sort of sense of it. To be here, talking about what I want for myself as a person, it first took years of discerning what others wanted from me and that I could no longer comply with. It took accepting that to become someone I like and can live with; I might need to accept I might be someone my parents will not accept, at least initially. It is also taking a lot of time to step into a new identity I am not so familiar with. The self-image I have of myself until right now can only bring me so far, I have realised. There has been so much unlearning to do while I was trying to learn a new way of being. All of that is exhausting. Clarity is pricier for a lot of us.
This is not to create excuses for myself. I have never been very lenient on myself. It is to be fair to myself, which is an entirely different point. Creative work has always been a privilege. One has to be able to afford it and also have the guts to give it a go. The thing is that usually, money makes you much braver. Money defines the width of the fall and the recovery time from the bruises. I used to think poor kids deserved to be artists and entrepreneurs more than rich kids. And yes, to me, entrepreneurship is creative work. I no longer hold this conviction. I have abandoned the idea that only pain is a propeller to something deep and meaningful. There are lots of people who suffer and make nothing out of it. Pain isn’t a badge of honour. Believing that since you had it hard, you are entitled to a special turn of events is entitlement. Just as much entitlement as an Ivy League kid but with less shiny features.
But with the arrival of social media in the game, we have the idea that creation is democratic. Is it true, though? Is it true that anyone can turn into a lucrative artist or entrepreneur thanks to social media? Perhaps it is true that I suck at promoting my work, but it is also true that I do not have nearly enough time, focus or emotional stability to do things as they should be done here to give this newsletter the spotlight it deserves.
When I took that selfie, it was after I took a shower that washed away my feelings of powerlessness, the mascara and the tears. I had a five-minute debate with myself where I thought of my ex and how ruthless he was with his time, how decisive he was about the fact that his career in the arts was his most important goal, how he had entirely accepted that either he is all in or he will be miserable. He did make us all feel second and third-degree importance to him, but he now advises Yale about arts. So, I guess it worked. I respect that he accepted his cross and carried it.
What is missing from social media is not democratisation. It is a display of sacrifice, what people are really sacrificing to get to see their dreams become reality. Do we ever see the exhaustion? Do we ever see the internal dialogue we have to defeat? That evening, I put on my PJs and went down to the lobby to order a glass of white wine, proceeded to write for two hours and then let the wine knock me down to sleep. I did not write my best piece. But it was more about feeling I had control over my life and my time that mattered. Do we ever see how nasty we are to the people who love us the most because we are frustrated? Do we ever see the doubt that overtakes us when we produce something and it does not get any recognition?
Social media democratised access, but it did not democratise the rest. Access is just the first step. It is sustaining this kind of process that is the hard game. But we do not see it. We see only the final results; it gives us the illusion that it is feasible for all of us, and it turns us into harsh judges of ourselves when we don’t manage as easily peasily as we had imagined. I guess me posting this tonight, Sunday evening, instead of tomorrow, Monday morning as social media strategy suggests, because I have to be at the office tomorrow early morning proves the point. The point is to do the best with what you can, where you are and with what you have. That’s a form of winning in itself.
Even Marx, the guy who preached about the people, workers, equality, freedom and so on, could do so because he had a wealthy friend and wife who both liked his yapping enough to financially support him throughout his life. Let’s trust what people do instead of what they say or show. It is not always easy with social media.
As I posted that selfie on my stories, a friend of mine commented on how rich people see social media usage. And while it seems unrelated, it sent my synapsis into a dance of pleasure. But let’s leave it for next week.
Social media is classist
Vilma Djala