Well, there’s No Point
Is there? On work-related apathy and how to (maybe) avoid it.
There is no point, I said. I could have been at home. I could turn back now, maybe at this next gate. Maybe the one just beyond the corner, the one at the end of a constant, deeply threatening and vaguely terrifying sheet of ice. You know when the ice isn’t even trying to be black ice but is starkly visible, bare and invites the careless soul to dare place a foot, paw, hoof or tire on it and make it across? That’s how the ice was today. And here I was, stupidly trying to get to work on my bike, attempting to bridge the sea of ice for a few hours of drudgery.
The biggest joke’s on me: the school term hadn’t even started yet. Therein lay one of the cruellest, least funny parts of an academic year. When one starts to train as a teacher, and then consistently at every family gathering or social interaction hence, the same comments and thinly-veiled barbed humour repeats on loop:
“Oh, you’re a teacher!” says an unidentified auntie/acquaintance, clutching their virgin martini protectively as if I might grab at anything vaguely alcoholic, “You must work so hard. But good job you get all these holidays, right?”
At this point I would burst into the driest, bitterest laugh ever and they would shrink away from this madman. The trouble is, see, it’s an illusion. The capitalist productivity-centered world suffers from this in spades, but teaching as a profession is particularly susceptible to it. Every holiday, generally after a few weeks of actual holidaying and catching up on my growing list of tasks, I and most teachers around the country would glance away from their glasses of wine and look furtively at their ID badge and work keyring tucked away in the corner, and think:
“Hmmmm. I ought to go in. Only for a bit, you know. To catch up. Maybe do some marking. Maybe I can tidy my desk. Dunno. But it’s only for a bit. Really, promise.”
At this point, we’d only really be convincing ourselves as our friends and families knew the truth far too well - the holiday was officially over. On average, out of a 6-week (SIX!) summer holiday, over the past few years I have spent around 2-3 weeks maintaining, if not an actual work schedule with a commute, at least a daily routine involving completing some work and spending some hours in front of a laptop, a sheaf of papers or some nameless, mindless form or ‘training’ exercise to complete.1
The late anthropologist and anarcho-communist David Graeber once wrote about ‘bullshit jobs’ and how workers operated under a sense that their work, the job they were paid to do, was pointless and could happily disappear without anyone noticing.2 The trouble is, though, my job isn’t pointless. As a teacher, I know that the work I do matters somewhat and that the people and children in particular I interact with would notice if I was gone. My Year 9 form tutees in particular might miss having someone to practise their latest Tiktok dance, or eulogise about Donald Trump, or bemoan the lack of adequate seating areas, with.
Instead, though, I get the distinct impression that my otherwise-useful jobs is packed to the gills with useless, pointless, fruitless bullshit tasks. In actual practice, I only teach or interact with my students for 30 hours in a week, but get there at 07:30 and leave at 17:30 nearly everyday. The remaining hours are spent on paperwork, planning, evidencing, form-filling, behaviour report-logging and administrative Morris-dancing. Only some of this is actually useful; the rest is, to wit, work for appearing to do work’s sake.
The performativity of such work is not limited to the Morris dancing, though. As schools are increasingly managed and regulated and accountability culture permeates every pore of assessment, teaching and behaviour, everything from where I stand at the start of my lessons to how I log an ‘Excellent’ on a student’s report card, are strictly regulated.
In and around such pointless, silly, meaningless and performative nonsense, do we resist and reproach? Or do we lean in, and counter silliness with more silliness of a flavour we can actually enjoy?
Back on that icy, cold and silly morning, I snapped back out of my thoughts. I was also, it seems, horizontal. Underneath me was the single sheet of ice, and sandwiching me from above was my bike (mercifully unharmed). My aching left hip - which, I’m sure, is 80% scar tissue from years of being a goalkeeper - was being rendered numb by the cold and dull impact of striking the ground as I slid dramatically off my bike.
There was no real point of that ride, if I’m being honest. I did get around two hours’ worth of work done, and my mental ducks in a row ready for the start of term. If I hadn’t done it, maybe I’d have spent a bit longer at work on Monday instead. It saved me, and I’m guessing, around 0.025 thaums3 of anxiety which I might experience throughout the month anyway.
Fine, so the destination of the ride was a tad pointless. But what of the ride itself? Apart from the sketchy ice and my aching hip, I felt EXCELLENT. The cold hadn’t really permeated past my many warm layers and the skies were bright, clear, beautiful. A deliciousness crispiness permeated the air and tickled my face and nose and brought me gloriously, resolutely to life. I hadn’t gone especially quick but my shoulders ached pleasantly from the constant careful maneuvering. From where I lay and indeed, from atop the bike, the entire landscape was coloured in a glorious, blue-white-tinged icy coating.
It was a gloriously stupid thing to do, but now I’d done it, I wasn’t half upset.
I heard the sound of cautious, crunching footsteps approaching - one set sounded like heavy winter boots, the other like four soft, padded paws. Snuffling, apologising as they did, the dog and his walker arrived to check if I was alright.
“Sorry, sorry mate!” said the man, aghast at what he had wrought, “I really am! I shouldn’t have warned you - I guess it distracted you and made you fall? You alright? Does it hurt?”
I giggled and winced as I pushed gently off the deck. The dog sniffed anxiously at my face for any signs of concussion or, possibly, insanity.
I straightened, massaged life briefly into my side and made my mind up.
“Yeah,” I said, and I meant it. “I feel pretty damn excellent, actually.”
