Nope, that’s not the title of something I’ve made recently, nor does it really represent my reality. The Tokyo state of emergency actually changed very little. Some businesses opened with shorter hours, trains were a little less crowded, work slowed down and I mostly worked from home, still getting my full salary, which is nice. I spent a lot of time improving my place, fixing it up a little, improving the layout, adding a lot of plants and basically turning the place into a little bit more into “our” place.
A lot of people talk about returning to normal but let’s be honest, normal sucked. Like too many people, I worked way too much. I spent on average more than 12 hours a day in the studio I can’t remember a time where I got two full weekends off in a row. I have over 40 days of holidays stacked up with no realistic way of taking them. The job description for my title of “creator” is purposefully vague, which makes it so that my job is basically to do whatever I’m told, on top of the directing and editing that I would normally be doing.
Our studio’s building once housed only 7 people but has now grown to over 30 creators, producers, assistants, marketing, management and interns. Don’t get me wrong, these are mostly all lovely people, but it’s a crowd. The once quiet editing bays that housed only the editor and an assistant are now filled with computers as different teams work on different projects, not always quietly. I still haven’t found a way to focus on a project while other people are having a very loud meeting a few meters away, that’s when I even get a computer to work on.
Covid-19 has made all of these things painfully obvious to me. My workload hasn’t really been reduced, but I realized how much more quickly I can get through it when I don’t have to worry about all the bullshit that surrounds the studio. Not only that, but my break times are also more productive. I’ve been able to squeeze in workouts, piano practice, reading, blender tutorials and healthy home cooked meals everyday, while getting more sleep than I have in the past 7 years. I also made this:
All of this has made me realize that my life in the past couple years has been completely unbalanced and as we slowly return to normal, I really hope I can find a way to create a better balance where I can both work on my career, and on living a better life for myself.
While I am living and describing this in a very personal way, it’s clear to me that this is much bigger. Our entire generation has been pushed to longer hours for smaller pay year after year. We take pride in living “the hustle” and in the insane amount of hours we put in to whatever job (or jobs) we’re doing at that time. We work for people who look down on us as they regurgitate the nonsense they read in Facebook articles about millennials while giving us the smallest amount that will prevent us from quitting. They wrecked the economy around us and left us in a situation where most of us will never own property or even retire.
It’s time for a paradigm shift. We have to rethink our approach to life and work. We won’t live the life of our parents but we don’t have to settle for a shittier version of it either. We have to re-evaluate our values and create a better life for ourselves.
I’m mostly just talking out of my ass. I don’t know how to transform the economy. I just hope I can convince my boss to let me work from home once in a while.