Working Classy

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Work, And Thoughts About Work

Back in March, I was lucky to land a pitch for Vulture: a recap of the first two seasons of Atlanta before the long-awaited season three kicked off. If you didn’t already click on that link, well, here’s the same one, only bigger:

That’s right, I even linked the picture.

Since this newsletter is directed towards people who enjoy my writing, it probably makes sense that I direct people who receive this newsletter to things I have written. So I’m going to do that more often.

Writing a recap about Atlanta’s first two seasons was easy because I love all of those episodes. Regardless of how exciting the more experimental episodes are, like the one with Teddy Perkins or the one with a Black Justin Bieber, it’s the small moments that really speak to me, like Darius asking Alfred what he’s named his gun.

Atlanta is not only groundbreaking television, it’s also a workplace comedy, and Season 3 doesn’t let us forget it. I don’t need to get too deep on spoilers for all the Rip Van Winkles out there (although it’s your fault for sleeping on it), but the core of the third season keeps hammering in on Earn’s non-stop hustle to, well, earn his keep as Paper Boi’s manager.

The “hustle mentality” is one that plagues the Internet with no remorse.

Honest to God, fuck that.

Every dipshit burning the candle at both ends to pursue some sort of scammy Web3 goldmine makes the world a stupider, meaner place. It’s an unrepentant attitude towards work and against work/life balance that creates absolutely dogshit working environments for everyone just trying to get by who are employed by assholes like this.

But even against the extremes, we see the toll that hustle culture takes on Earn throughout Season 3 of Atlanta as he tries to prove himself Alfred, Van, Darius, and even himself.

And yet…

Sharing this article I wrote freelance in the off-time from my full-time job, and linking to it from my newsletter that I also write in my free time as an outlet to promote my brand as a writer just plays into these never ending cycles of bootstrapping your own future under a system of capitalism.

Bootstrapping is a funny word, right? It comes from the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” which implies that one should be able to grab ahold of the straps used to pull a boot onto the foot and then lift themselves up off the ground. Which is physically impossible.

The hustle mindset is so engrained in even the early American bourgeoisie that they took a physics joke from a textbook and slapped it onto the foreheads of every downtrodden worker in their factories as an aspirational ideal.

But I digress. I am not working in a textile factory in North Carolina in 1913. I wrote an article about a funny TV show that I really like for a quality publication, and was paid for my efforts to do so.

The other day I found myself riding my bike to the local library to pick up a book I needed to read for research so I could interview a comedian I really like for an upcoming piece, and the whole situation felt like it was yanked straight out of my 15 year-old dreams of what a fantasy life could be like. I just don’t think 15 year-old me imagined that I would be frantically unlocking my bike in my backyard and pedaling as hard as I could at 5:40pm on a Wednesday so I could get to the library before it closed, since I had to finish my day-job work before I was able to take steps towards the extra work I was taking on.

Although I know other people my age who work fairly normal office jobs for a high salary and great benefits, most of my friends who are also Millennials have had to try and forge out careers in non-traditional environments, roping together a few opportunities in unique ways to pay the bills because none of us are ever going to get that Golden Parachute.

And in this way, it’s easy to identify with Earn in Season 3. Asserting yourself as your mildly estranged cousin’s rap manager is the most Millennial job prospect I could ever imagine. So good on Earn, I suppose, for going after it. And Godspeed, Earn, on finding out news ways of keeping at it.

Me? Well, I suppose I’ll keep at it as well. As children, us Millennials were told to chase our dreams to find fulfilling futures. As adults, all my friends are chasing their dreams because it might pay an extra $200 a month to do dream-work on the side. And whether or not that is as fulfilling as we were told it was going to be, at least we can always turn on an episdoe of Atlanta at the end of the day and laugh, and laugh, and laugh…

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.