DoomBloomDialectic [they/them, he/him]

either my one boomer colleague or members of the public are snitching on me/general front desk staff for not Doing the Song and Dance enough - directly after giving me phony ass praise for taking on an extra project, my direct supervisor told me “also, make sure you’re not forgetting to say hi to people as they walk into the rec center :) :) :)” (idk if it’s really his fault, he probably has limited latitude to just Not Respond to those kinds of customer complaints, but still but still but still)

can we bring the original, actual definition of emotional labor re: service workers/public servants back into public consciousness and destroy the pop psych “oh shit being a good friend or partner is hard sometimes, sorry buddy that’s a you problem ” conception of it that’s taken over???

career switching to this parks department community service shit sounded real nice on paper (serving the collective good!! no (direct) profit motive!!) but goddam do i fucking hate the american public & their expectation that just because you’re in a public-facing position you become some wholly servile wretch rather than just a motherfucker who’s there to do a job for a wage.

dystopian as it is have any of my adhd brethren had luck using medfinder during shortages? paying 50 bones for the privilege of just finding a place that has medicine that lets you function is obviously degrading and humiliating but ive blown more money than that on lame nights out drinking and my lock-in pills actually help me be a full human being and shit.

switching to a field where i am constantly socially available (either to my colleagues (100% of the day) or the general public in addition to my colleagues (~50% of the day)) & there is zero privacy may have not been the move for a neurodivergent introverted sensory-issues-tweaker like me. and the fucked up thing is this is probably like a top two most tolerable job i’ve ever had & i still hate it.

im burning the fuck out on humanity and working with the general american public is part of what’s got me in a depressive haze and it’s making me a more isolated & less loving person & also i feel like my political organizing life is suffering for it. even just being mildly on the front lines at this job of all the ambient selfishness & entitlement & reaction floating around our class in this country has me in a nihilistic rut.

idk i am just struggling to find the lovable parts in people alongside the annoying/selfish parts even though i know rationally blah blah blah we’re all results of material conditions, people are reachable/changeable, they aren’t fundamentally bad, i’ve been many many worse versions of myself in the past so i should practice empathy & forgiveness to the greatest extent possible, blah blah blah yes i know and deep down i agree but rn i’m just not in that headspace.

like even when the public is Fine i feel like i sense a lurking darkness and transactional apathy and i don’t know if this is just me/my insecurities and my temperament being bad for this work, if i’m sensing something real, or a mix of both.

(my coworkers are a whole nother matter but i’ll leave that aside)

i’m sleepy. and capitalism, wage labor? yeah, you guessed it - still freakin hate’em

• Intro phone call getting to know you a bit - your political journey, interest in the party, etc. Then in my case, I was directed to the easiest way to plug into volunteer opportunities.
• Was an active volunteer for a few months. This period varies wildly in length depending on a bunch of factors (recruitment needs, other competing priorities, etc). The party does tend to prioritize non-white, non-cis-male-presenting comrades in onboarding to avoid the chauvinistic tendencies of a lot of Western left groups, and to recruit from the segments of the working class with the most revolutionary potential. But the entirety of the applicant is considered, and I know people who volunteered for the better part of a year before joining, and some who were onboarded quite rapidly. Not something to take personally! And also, nothing wrong with staying a volunteer.
• Two more meetings where you learn about the party’s positions and what’s expected of members, and after the second one you’re a candidate member. Sometimes a meeting or two between these if they have further questions about you (again, not personal, just doing their job vetting). Unless you’re interested in formal leadership, candidacy is much closer to full membership than not (def closer to it than being a volunteer).
• You take roughly 9-12 months of classes on the party’s organizing strategy & the 101 of socialist history and theory, and then you’re a full member assuming all goes well. This candidacy period is to ensure ideological alignment, to educate comrades who are new to socialism, and to train cadres on how PSL organizes. If you’re already a theory head, a lot will be repeated and maybe even oversimplified info, but there is learning to be had regardless in collective study with comrades across all knowledge and experience levels! (For context, I’m currently still a candidate).

I followed the Alienated Too Online Communist to Touch Grass pipeline, but a lot of people are recruited through pre-existing organizing and the path might look ever-so-slightly different there (I think they probably skip the phone call screening?) Also in smaller branches/before streamlining some back end stuff, online applications were falling through the cracks a bit more often - if that happens to you, check out your local’s Instagram and hit up an irl volunteer meeting to express interest there!