New Escapologist : November 2020

Back to Normal, Everyone?

When headlines began to declare last week that a vaccine was good to go and that the most vulnerable could start receiving it as early as mid-December, my soul did a funny thing. It leapt. It did a little air punch and went “yeah!” but this celebratory motion of the spirit was quickly followed by a sense of, “oh.”

Maybe you experienced it yourself. It was like sensing that a long illness is over (“yeah!”) and that you can finally get out of bed and go back to work (“oh.”)

I know I won’t be the only one who did. Ever since the pandemic began, there have been environmentalists and critics of capitalism for example, who, while lamenting the crisis, saw that “normal” had long been part of the problem. We should use the time afforded by the pandemic, they said, to regroup and come up with a better model for life.

Chief among the concerns about so-called "normal" are unnecessary commutes to work in cars and jam-packed trains, unnecessary economic activity full stop, and flying around in planes for frequent holidays and meetings. The sleeping giants are waking!

The biggest event I had to cancel in 2020 was a trip to Portugal. I was already jonesing for travel at that point, having not been anywhere for almost a year. I haven’t been grounded for so long since that football went through the neighbour’s window in 1989. In practice, it hasn’t been so bad to go deep instead of wide but I’d still love to have width as an option again, which is probably how a lot of people feel about the return to work.

Going deep instead of wide has paid dividends for those willing and able to embrace it, and it would be a shame to completely give it all up. Here’s Nesrine Malik on how the activities with which she has filled her pandemic time are threatened by the return to normality:

With the suspension of the mindless daily activity of normal life, an entire hinterland of dormant relationships emerged. But even as I tried to pick up these pieces my brain kept skipping forward. I found myself dreaming of the time when the everyday could restart again – even though, in all likelihood, that would mean these threads being buried once more.

In no longer having to travel for work, she says, she’s been able to put time into important correspondence, feeling out and maintaining important human connections. Should we really sacrifice this, along with everything else, for the return to "normal"?

That the end of the pandemic is in sight is a huge relief. I just wish there had been more of an appetite for regrouping and questioning the nature of our return to normality. There has been a certain line of questioning, but I suspect that many people are going stir-crazy at home, are still a bit freaked out at the sight of masks and screens--the trappings of scary apocalypse movies--and just want to get back to flying around and driving and shopping and going to work in exactly the same way that they used to.

I also suspect we will see busybodies of various official stripes out in force saying “back to work, you,” “back to work, you.” I predict a moralistic pressure that we all “do our bit” to get the floundering economy "back on its feet" (that'll be the very phrase, though "nation" might be used in place of "economy" now that rationalism is out and nationalist fervor is in).

Will we return to a “normal” rejigged to be less competitive, more sustainable, more human-scale, more spiritually-rewarding? Or will the extrovert ideal once again prevail though, by its nature, shouting the loudest? We shall see.

Your mid-range prognosticator,

Robert Wringham
www.newescapologist.co.uk

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner Office

Hey, look! Everyone’s reading The Good Life for Wage Slaves, even adorable babies.
 

I originally posted this under the title of "Be a Winner Like This Baby" and later came up with the "Corner Office" genius above. Thank heavens for this newsletter and the second chance it always brings.

In case you're curious as to the identity of this smashing little one, she's our niece, Chloe. Hello, Chloe! Peek-a-boo! etc.

When I asked comedian Simon Munnery for life advice for Chloe, he said "stay young" and "always hide from the police." I think he panicked.

You Got Me Livin' Like a Slob

This is hilarious. Spongebob Squarepants once featured a short bluegrass song called “Hey, Mean Mr. Bossman.”

It’s a parody of Take this Job and Shove It, but more generally a piss-take of the sort of attitude we display here at New Escapologist. It’s great. It goes:

Hey, mean Mr. Bossman,
I’m a-quittin’ this here job.
You’ve been outside gettin’ tan
An’ I’ve been gettin’ robbed.

My life is worth so much more
Than a dollar an’ ten an hour,
Wakin’ up ’bout a quarter to four
An’ I’m startin’ to turn sour.

So, hey, mean Mr. Bossman,
I’m a-quittin’ this here job.
I’m sick of eatin’ oat bran
An’ livin’ like a slob.
You got me livin’ like a slob.

If you’re sick of eating oat bran and living like a slob, why not get yourself a copy of The Good Life for Wage Slaves?

No, No, and No Again

My friend Tim likes to read books about Economics. In one of them, he found this and sent it on to me:

“It sounds like something from Escape Everything!” says Tim. He’s right too.

I Googled this enlightening passage and it seems to come from William Bernstein‘s forward of Johnathan Clements‘ book, How To Think About Money. I don’t quite know who either of those people are (though some of the FIRE fighters among you surely will) but it’s nice to have one’s dreamily-arrived-at sentiments echoed by some deep-browed types.

Godspeed, Box!

We take advice from many literary sources here at New Escapologist. From children’s fantasy to DH Lawrence.

The words “barrel” and “scraping” might come to mind when I tell you this, but the lid of this knackered old shoebox has some good advice for life too.

I’m sure it’s only there as a point of corporate greenwashing, but you can’t knock the words when you take them at face value.



I decided to follow the “reuse” advice and use the shoebox to ship a stereo speaker I’d sold on eBay.

Something went wrong though and the customer returned it, so the box did double-duty by coming all the way back to me.

Even after all this, the box was not yet ready to disintegrate. So I used it to send five copies of you know what to the legal deposit agency.

Here’s hoping they make it. Gulp. Godspeed, box!

More Music

I stumbled recently upon a seemingly rare bit of idealist anti-work music. It’s “Mr. Job” by The Alan Bown Set.

Are You Glued to the News?

Oliver Burkeman’s amusing (but ultimately useful) Guardian column about self-help was always a good thing. He recently stopped doing it but, almost in its place, rises a newsletter called The Imperfectionist, which is (so far) even better than the column.

On November 3rd, the day America went to the polls, he observes that people have, in recent years, developed a tendency to “live inside the news”:

[Since 2016 it] was as if more and more people were shifting their psychological centre of gravity, so the news was somehow realer to them than the concrete world of their work, family and friends. I don’t just mean that they were “spending too much time online” or “addicted to social media” (although they were, and we are). I mean that the realm of presidencies, referendums and humanitarian crises had become the main drama of their daily lives, with their actual daily lives relegated to the status of a sideshow.

He’s right. I noticed that too. When I first worked in an office in 2006, it was against the rules to read the news during work time and most of the major news sites were blocked. When I made a brief return to that world (and you'll never guess where this link goes) over a decade later, it was generally considered inhumane to disallow access to the news. It had become common to practice to keep a rolling news app in the corner of the screen and we’d all openly talk about news events as they unfolded.

In the “how then shall we live?” corners of the Internet, a lot of us used to suggest turning a blind eye to the news in the interests of mental good health and focusing instead on more important or fulfilling things like idling or the development of escape plans. The really important information would reach you eventually, was the general idea, and the rest of the news was beyond your control and tantamount to gossip. Better to ignore it, we said. But since 2016 (and especially now in 2020) the ostrich strategy hasn’t really been possible. We need to know where it’s safe to go and what we’re allowed to do. For better or worse, that’s important information and we can’t just look away.

There is, however, a line between staying usefully informed and being swept away by the sort of nervous, unproductive horizon-scanning that emerges from general anxiety. There’s also a difference between being open to useful guidance from political or cultural leaders and hoping so fervently for certain outcomes that one feels like one can’t ever look away. Staying glued to the news at the cost of, say, reading a novel or going for a walk or being consciously present with loved ones, doesn’t help your hoped-for outcome to happen.

Anyway, Burkeman says it all rather well and he urges the reader to find ways to focus on friends and family and generally more local pursuits instead of, this “living inside the news,” so I urge you to check it out.

You hear it said that it’s a marker of privilege to be able to back off from the news – to spend a pandemic planting bulbs in your backyard, or get absorbed in your creative work while democracy declines. But if it really has become a privilege to retain one’s sanity, I think it’s one the privileged need to exercise, not disavow. In an era when the news leaves half your friends paralysed by misery, it’s no indulgence to make time for whatever’s pleasurable or engrossing in your life. On the contrary, the world needs sane people more than ever.

Trailed

You won’t remember this, but when I wrote about the 2001 Bartleby film (in this post), I said it resembled my own office experiences so closely that someone could retouch the movie’s trailer to serve as one for The Good Life for Wage Slaves.

Well, reader Adele only went and did it! Cheers, Adele.

I'll leave you with that. Thanks for reading once again.

Remember to be careful about how you read the news and do put some thought into the measures of control you might have about the return to normal.

Onwards and Upwards! Or at least interestingly sideways.

Your friend,
Robert Wringham
www.newescapologist.co.uk