Work to Survive

You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did
- Bo Burnham, All Eyes On Me

For the last 3-4 years I have eaten mostly vegan. I would eat meat on occasion, but I was mainly eating vegan for environmental reasons. If we could all cut back on what we do, then maybe the world could be better. So I drank my oat milk, had my vegan butter alternatives, ate my weird slimy fake mozzarella.

When I was recovering from the surgery, I was ordering the hospital vegan food. I could barely move around in my bed. But here I was, thinking about this moral principle while having skirted the edge of oblivion. After like 5 days of trying the horrible fucking lentils, Weetabix with obnoxious amounts of oat milk, and the most basic boiled potatoes, I had enough of complaining about the food.

I decided to not be vegan anymore, to make my life in the hospital easier. Maybe it would be easier after the hospital to. What was the point? I was living this way as an attempt to perhaps push against the rising tide of climate change. But for me, my world had already ended. Why am I complicating something that I don't think I should have to care about anymore? I know this makes me sound like I am 70 years old and going to vote against someone building a wind turbine 10 miles away from my house. But sometimes I think it is justified to stop caring, and for right now, I'm putting myself in that category. I used to be terrified of climate change. Now I'm terrified my heart will stop.

Since returning home, my diet has been pretty "regular". I still get some vegan foods (Oat milk is still just better), but generally I'm eating meat every day. And you know what? It has been easier.

So when I vowed to quit my job while I lay in hospital, why didn't I?

Work

I like my job. I've been lucky at most of my jobs that I've had to work with brilliant people, who inspire me every day I get to work alongside them. It pays pretty well for a relaxed environment. It's just generally a positive job experience.

And I think I'm really good at it. I love programming. I like doing the stupid planning agile teams do. I even enjoy working on UI designs by myself or as part of a design team. At my current workplace I don't do anything with clients, but I think that's something I'm good at too, and hope to get back to in the future.

If I could spend my whole workday solving problems together with people, talking about solutions, and working as a team, I would call my career a success. As much as I would love to change the world, I think as long as I enjoy it, it can be enough.

But none of that is why I stayed at my job. That is something I've been struggling to understand.

In my last post, I spoke about the silence which permeates my post-death life, and I do think that is a big part of it. I didn't realise until like a month after leaving the hospital the first time how much I rely on the routine of a job to keep my brain moving. When you get put on bypass for heart surgery, they switch you off for a while. This has some unfortunate side effects for your noggin. Having your heart messed with is the most fucked thing you can imagine, but not being able to access "you" in your brain for months after feels just as bad at times. I don't remember 99% of what happened for the first 4-5 months of my new life, as it struggled to return to normal. Returning to work after just 2 months helped me navigate some of that. I think I played off having a barely functioning brain well at the start of my Microsoft Teams meetings. Maybe I didn't. I don't really remember so who cares.

Having had an aortic dissection as a 29 year-old is strange. Like most heart problems, it mainly affects men in their 60s+. So when I read stories about aortic dissection survivors, I read about people who have finished their lives, had a career, had and grown up with a family, and are now moving onto retirement with their now fixed hearts having completed most of life's achievements. Basically everyone I've met in my cardiac rehab groups (which include your heart attack and bypass patients) is so much older than me, by at least double my age.

My life got changed in the blink of an eye before I understood what it means to live, and I just got surrounded by people who have already lived lives. Right from when I was recovering in hospital, and speaking to the 70 year olds in the beds around me, telling me the stories of growing up in the 60s.

For now whilst I am still recovering, and with the lovely side effect of filling the silence, the easiest thing I can do to live my life is writing code.

I have been reading a couple of books this last couple of weeks. One of them was "Between Two Kingdoms", a memoir by Suleika Jaouad, who survived leukemia just as their life was getting started out of college. It shines a grim light on what it is to receive long-term cancer treatment, and how important those around you are in keeping you together. We later find out about others who have gone through or continue to experience various forms of trauma and their stories. It has made me appreciate how long cancer can go on for, how it can just destroy a life even if you do survive. It's an interesting read, but if you are triggered easily by depictions of cancer I give it a more careful recommendation.

It is re-assuring to read about cancer survivors compared to heart survivors, because there are so many of them of all ages. I haven't seen anyone my age at any point for any heart problems in the last 8 months of care (in my local area). They exist, I have no doubt about that. I don't think I'm that unique. But I find comfort in gathering and hearing the stories of other general survivors. If you go to Amazon and search "cancer" you get a bunch of books about living with cancer, some fuck cancer trinkets, related items. Now go search for "aortic dissection". It's grim out here man. I get it, there's way more cancer survivors, of many different types of cancer. But even just searching "valve replacement" gets you a bunch of plumbing gear.

Sorry this was a bit of a sidetrack.

Before all of this, I loved working in programming, but I hated the act of working. I have been (and still am) a staunch anti-capitalist for as long as I've been working [1], whilst still having to play this game horrible capitalist game in the real world. I've done the job switching to earn more money, dealing with politics in a workplace, it all sucks. I had rules of not working over my hours, keeping work at arms length, being disassociated with my job because it was means to an end of being able to enjoy the silence. But now, I don't want that silence. Programming is this shortcut to the next day, and you know where I can do some programming without having to come up with the ideas? So I end up filling my spare evenings with working.

It's easy to hate the world we live in, what it does to everybody, the lives it makes us lead. But I don't think I can live with bringing myself out of it right now because the silence will destroy me. I shouldn't complain much, I have a nice job with nice people. Plus what am I gonna do, go backpacking with my dodgy ticker and die trying to lug a 30kg backpack up a hill? I don't want to continue working for something meaningless, but it's more than a means to end financially for now. It gets to be a crutch for my existence day to day.

When I was in the hospital on god knows what drugs, I kept going on about socialism to the poor consultants and nurses whenever they would talk to me. I must have been a right prick to work on, but I do find it kind of cute to have had these ideals when I was at my most vulnerable. I think I kept telling one person to look up Marx, and calling them comrade whenever they walked past my bed. I haven't read a word of any communist literature since I was 19. I'm an absolute menace. Give me some truth serum or morphine, and I'll start talking about what we should do to the ruling class.

I will get to disappear from this hellscape one day. Hopefully it will be on my terms.

[1] I wouldn't count my foray into the student protests of 2010 as being socialist/anti-capitalist. I was 16, and generally just wanted to get involved in some mess. And I had a lot of fun doing it!