{"id":21036,"date":"2021-05-12T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=21036"},"modified":"2021-05-25T12:07:26","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T19:07:26","slug":"student-editors-letter-blue-collar-dreams-turn-to-quarantine-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/05\/12\/student-editors-letter-blue-collar-dreams-turn-to-quarantine-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor\u2019s Letter: Blue-collar dreams turn to quarantine questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 27, and for all those years, I\u2019ve bought into what I was told: that hard work meant happiness. That 15-hour days were impressive, and that working through lunch was how you got ahead. Sure, take a nap if you want, but do so with the knowledge that someone else is contributing to society while you\u2019re slacking off. <\/em><\/p>\n

My grandfather made his living in his 20s mending nets on the Fraser River. He chain-smoked like an idiot, and would often work two or three days straight without sleep and only a sandwich or two for sustenance. He got paid based on how many pounds of fish he caught. Lunch meant spending money, but it also meant not getting paid for 10 minutes. As such, I don\u2019t eat much while I work, and will always, forever, associate cigarettes with hard-working, blue-collar jobs.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re still unclear about how stories impact generations, that\u2019s how.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun’s Interurban campus during COVID-19 (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flow\u2014the psychological term for a decreased sense of time, self, and environment that happens when immersed in a fulfilling activity\u2014sometimes invigorates us, and, really, is a more descriptive and encompassing term for productivity.<\/p>\n

But what happens when productivity doesn\u2019t feel productive? What makes it productive, exactly? Is it the work you complete, the feeling you get during it, or the long-term payouts of it\u2014a degree framed on your wall, a paycheck, or letters after your name? I\u2019d venture to say all three, but I\u2019m not so sure. Not anymore.<\/p>\n

I was up at 6:45 this morning, scarfing down a breakfast burrito, and hunched over a pile of textbooks by 7:00. I kept stopping every few minutes, gazing out the window at the cerulean dusk and taking prolonged sips of coffee. Something was\u2026 just\u2026 off. There was no enjoyment to any of it, despite it being a perfect morning on paper. But I wasn\u2019t sad or depressed. In the New York Times<\/em> on April 19, American psychologist Adam Grant called languishing the dominant emotion of 2021.<\/p>\n

He also suggested work as a remedy to the emotion, but I don\u2019t think work does anything to your emotions other than bury them further away and give you a more productive escape than, say, a 3 Musketeers bar at 2:00 or a dry martini at 5:00.<\/p>\n

The issue isn\u2019t so much working from home as it is the incessant stagnancy of life under COVID. The isolation and uncertainty has become as much of a regular commodity as oxygen or water. It might lay dormant, but time turns it malignant; it pops up in peculiar ways, no matter how much we stay focused on the goals of the week rather than the emotions of the day. It\u2019s important to remember that in this world, no matter how productive the day is, there\u2019s still portions of it missing: a hug, a laugh with colleague in the break room, or a dinner inside your favourite restaurant. The fact that you notice it missing is a good thing. If life like this stops feeling empty, run.<\/p>\n

Being productive doesn\u2019t just mean finishing a paper and doing laundry on your break then studying for Monday\u2019s lab; it means being able to feel as though you\u2019re part of a college community\u2014a global community\u2014while doing it, and I miss that.<\/p>\n

But, hey, in September, I won\u2019t have to miss it anymore. I might risk my health at this point just to get it back.<\/p>\n

For 27 years, I\u2019ve bought into what I was told, but today I\u2019m ready to change that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m 27, and for all those years, I\u2019ve bought into what I was told: that hard work meant happiness. That 15-hour days were impressive, and that working through lunch was how you got ahead. Sure, take a nap if you want, but do so with the knowledge that someone else is contributing to society while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21037,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036\/revisions\/21037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}