I love work; I hate work. Love it; hate it. Awesome; sucks.

Man, what’s all the fuss, huh?

Oh, I get it; I see: you perversely looooovvvvveeee the drama, don’t you? Love fantasizing about stabbing your boss or living in Bali. Love pitying yourself, licking each resentment nightly. Love all the stories you can write about and talk about and tweet about and bitch about. It feels kinda goooodddd to complain, doesn’t it? Ooooooh, it does, it does…

Except that it really doesn’t. The whole thing is really sickening, especially when you keep getting those head aches and when your back is throbbing again and when you’re walking around, stewing in your anger. Sickening to feel that gnawing in the stomach. (Doctors only gave you a vague diagnosis: IBS, that black fuckin’ box.) Sickening sickening sickening to feel like a slave. Sickening to feel powerless, voiceless, cowardly.

Hand wringing!!!

You just wanna get outta this!!! Enough is enough!!! I am SO fed up with all this shit! Fuck this shit! Fuck! Fuck! And fuck that shit! You punch a pillow and yell and then punch a wall. Damn that hurt. Fuck, now my fucking hand is throbbing!!!

The self-pitying, combined with ice, now continues. You call your mom and she’s busy or only half-listening. Heard it all before, hasn’t she? You get 45 minutes with your therapist during which you rehash the same old shit.

“But I want to be doing something important with my life, and I’m wasting it!” You want to sob, but nothing’s there. Nothing’s ever there. What a mess you’ve made of your life. Fucking shit show.

Come on and settle down. Just see that it’s the see-saw, not the objects you keep getting fixated on. Take an enormous step back and look at the patterns: the ceaseless ups and downs due to the ceaseless ways in which you’ve loved job A but also hated job A, in which you’ve adored solopreneurialing B and loathed solopreneurialing B.

So simple, isn’t it? Just get off the see-saw. Stop the loves and hates.

Cuz when, if not right now, are you going to get off this see-saw? What–tomorrow? Please. Stop lying to yourself, stop wanting this to be so so hard, and just get off the see-saw.

Cuz work ain’t no thing. Just pick it up. Do it. And drop it at the drop of a hat.

Just chop wood and just carry water, right? Nothing to fuss over. Nothing it all.

And if you need, when you’ve come to genuine peace, to leave, then go on and leave. Only know this now: work–no, not of any kind of work–will not save you. Has not. Is not. Will Not. Because cannot.