Hustle has always been romanticized in American culture, which promises that nobly sacrificing yourself on the altar of endless work will pay off in the end. But it’s increasingly clear that for most people, it won’t...The notion that hustle will eventually pay off is an insidious pipe dream. Everyone is in survival mode all the time. The system has failed. The place is unfixable.

— Carina Chocano, How ‘The Bear’ Captures the Panic of Modern Work (The New York Times Magazine, Published Aug. 3, 2022. Updated June 22, 2023)

“We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”

—C. S. Lewis

GREEN MILK | #003 | crawling over the finish line & burn out & disability & the root of writerly malaise

All Patreon newsletters are free and readable for everyone, I'm using it as a newsletter platform with scope for allowing people to see (and maybe even support???) future RPG work from me.

I was really cooking with this one. I've been stewing on this for a while and today was the lucky day I was finally compelled to write it.

If you want to know what it's like to try and get any work done as a person with unmedicated ADHD and autism, and why my TTRPG adventure The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick has been four years in the making, you should give this a read.

It's pretty candid, but what else should I do, pretend to be someone I'm not? Fuck that, this shit is hard as hell and my work is worth the effort.

It's a long read but a good one. It has good advice on thinking the relationship between self-worth and productivity (hint: you are not the problem), especially if you've got similar brain soup and circumstances to me.

Also if you want to sponsor a trial of ADHD meds for me you can like, consider assassinating and/or otherwise generally terrorising the government and corporate officials hellbent on destroying the National Health Service, I guess. Or I suppose you could just vote for the other team, who are also very vocally all in on genocide and the systematic destruction of the NHS? That would surely be as effective!

Until next time, drink it while it's green!

Ecclesiastes 9:10

‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’

Each day we have a great opportunity to do the best that we can do. Life presents us with a chance to make a difference and be a blessing. Don’t waste time with a wrong attitude, either grumbling or complaining.

Take advantage of the time you are given and make the best use of it.

Prayer: Lord, thank You for this new day and this new opportunity to be productive and kind. Help me not to waste a single moment, but cause my life to be fruitful and successful as I do what I need to do with all my strength. In Jesus' name, Amen.

the almost crushing feeling of relief when you realize your dreams might actually be possible>>>

@neil-gaiman setting the record straight for the Sigma Grindset crowd.

Thank you

Madonna came back home last night (1/15/24) to Detroit to give an intense 2 1/2 hour concert. Absolutely badass as usual. Last time I saw her was in 2001 for the Drowned World Tour. 23 years later, her show still hasn’t lost any of its riveting theatricality. In this clip Mads gives her father (who was apparently somewhere in the audience) the most beautiful tribute, thanking him for instilling her with such a formidable work ethic. She knows the infinite power of Tough Love. 💙

God helps him who strives hard.

— Euripides

Working under the table is underrated. I'm not talking about fuck stick farmers and ranchers taking advantage of illegal migrant workers to pay them shit while still charging the full price to the wholesale market, in turn making a larger profit margin. No, I'm talking about people, young adults or teens, trying to enter the job market for the first time. My first jobs from 15 to 17 were all under the table pay. I started spotting nails and trash around housing construction sites, moved my way up to moving drywall sheets, to carrying the mud buckets for the mud tap bazooka, to running the mud bazooka. Then I moved to chucking roofing shingles and tar paper to laying roofs. The last of it was hanging and laying cabinets. All of it under the table. I got paid out at the end of every day, depending on the day, what I was doing and how long I was there and of course how much effort I put into my work it could be 50.00 to 400.00 in a day. There was no obligation to come back either. At 16 that's one hell of a chuck of coin in your pocket. In 1986 (I was 16) the minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, if you could find a "per hour" job. Most places it was pay+tips and that meant you were getting paid wound $2.50 and hour. On a $50 day I was making in 8 or 10 hour shift whey my buddies were making in 2 days or an entire pay week. Working under the table and being paid based on the work I did and effort I out forth also gave me a hardcore work ethic. Older dudes on the sites would say "Kid slow down, you're making us look bad." and laugh. I never lost that "All in" work ethic. Over this Summer my 15 year old picked up an under the table job, times have changed of course, so he gets paid 10.00 an hour, plus tips, That's 1.25 under the states minimum wage but 2.75 over the federal minimum. He's making between 75.00 and 120.00 a shift. That boy is every bit his old man and puts forth 100% effort, last week after 2 months of work his boss bumped him up in position, no bump in pay just yet. I guess the point I'm trying to make is under the table work is a damned good place for young folks to test the waters in many areas of work, most of them skilled labor areas. But starting at the bottom of the totem pole and working your way up through the skilled labor tree the old fashioned way, by hands on learning and ground up experience.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people. Colossians 3:23

Why work with all your heart? Because you are working “as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.”

No matter what I do, I am to do it as if I'm doing it for God.

Les problèmes sont des opportunités en vêtements de travail.

- Arthur Rimbaud

There's been a sharp and measurable drop in survey answers that are thought to reflect a person's work ethic among 18 to 21-year-olds. The survey respondents say that they think they won't have to work hard in order to make a comfortable living, that they don't want to work, and they don't think they'll be happy at work.

The article thinks this might involve a reaction to COVID and the lockdowns, but there seems to be more to the story. And part of the story is an optimism: 18-year-olds after COVID seem to believe that it will be easy to be rich.