American hustle-culture gone mad.
For a brief time earlier this year, Mrs. Aristus and I subscribed to a delivered meal program called Factor, on the recommendation of one of her co-workers. We're always too tired to make dinner for ourselves at the end of the day, and we're so sick of take-out. The meal program lets you select a menu of pre-prepared dishes that are delivered to your home, and that you can heat up in a matter of minutes, and then eat.
Despite an actually quite diverse menu, the dishes all ended up tasting the same, or too much like each other, at any rate, to afford real variety. So we quit the program.
The delivery boxes were marked with a slogan that went something like this: "Get Dinner Sorted Out So You Can Get Back To Your Goals!"
Goals.
Shit.
Everything is, has, or demands, a goal. Having a nice, relaxing dinner? Not a goal; a distraction from them. Saving our diminishing reserves of energy with an easy-to-prepare meal? Not a goal; a distraction from them.
Corporate America lives in mortal terror that someone, somewhere, somehow, has an object in mind other than drudging away for their obscene profits. "Life coaches" everywhere are nervously speculating that not everyone subscribes to the go-go-go, now-now-now, achieve-achieve-achieve culture that lends their vocation relevance.
If I were to have one 'goal' at all, it would be to end this shitty rat-race, and replace it with what many Western European nations have: a fulfilling, but not exhausting, work life, and enough time left over every day, and every week, to relax, socialize, turn our work-phones off without setting off warning signals to our employers, and enjoy the lives we are ostensibly working for.
That's it.
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