i wanna dance a little longer

21st Jul, 2025

i think I came to terms with the fact that i'll never work a full time job a long time ago.

i don't think I ever had the little piece of code in my brain that I'm meant to have, the one thats says "be afraid of breaking the rules".

pretty sure these are related facts.

- - - - -

When I was 15, I had my first job.

It was just a casual thing, doing hospo a few nights a week after school. it was often pretty late, cause we catered for parties and weddings and then had to pack up after. That suited me, cause ive never liked mornings and i don't get tired unless im bored.

but I didn't really understand the rules, back then.

I took my union-mandated¹ breaks, because I was told to. But I didn't like them very much; going from 110% focus while working, down to idle stance for 20 minutes, and then back to 110% afterwards was very unenjoyable for my brain.

So I'd do stupid shit like dance in the breakroom, or lay on the grass outside and look at the stars. Occasionally my coworkers would see this and make confused comments about it, but... it's my break. I'm not working. I can just exist if I want to.

hah.

eventually I stopped getting shifts. I've figured out why by now.

but I like dancing. I like looking at the stars.

- - - - -

I apprenticed with my grandfather as a mechanic for a year after dropping out of school. this was really cool, and I enjoyed it, and I loved learning about engines and the routine of restocking shelves and the satisfaction of fixing things.

also, waking up at 8am and getting home at 7pm, 6 days a week, without any say in the matter? it made me incredibly fucking depressed. I longed to be able to go fuck around for a day every once in a while.

eventually my grandpa stopped dragging me out of bed in the mornings. I wasn't pulling my weight in the workshop anymore regardless.

- - - - -

I had a conversation with a friend about 6 months ago. I don't remember the precise details, but the gist of it started with;

"am I a bad person for not wanting to work a 9-5 job like everyone else?"

I elaborated a bit. The thing is, I know I could go out and get one, if I put in the effort to do it. I've worked hospo, retail, mechanics. I have most of the skills you need for entry level tech, and more than enough common sense to figure out the rest. I do know how to say the right things, if I rehearse a little.

I see the people around me doing it, and on a bunch of levels I envy them. i'm tempted to go and do the same.

but they said nah. you're not a bad person. you're making a valid choice.

- - - - -

I've had vaguely three other jobs.

one at another hospo place; i got fired after a month for being late all the time.

one running a pinball arcade; i held that for a while but eventually got fired for being late all the time.

the most recent one was in a food truck, and that lasted on and off for about three years. I quit because I kept having anxiety attacks before my shifts. also, they weirdly never seemed to mind, but i was late all the time².

- - - - -

when certain people ask, I tell them I can't work a full time job. I use all the labels I don't like very much as a shield; chronic depression and/or fatigue, disability (autism), sleeping disorders and such. whatever gets me through the dialogue tree as fast as possible.

to other people, I'm willing to admit the truth: I'm fully fucking capable of it

but probably only if I want to undergo total personality death in the process.

and y'know... the thing about working is that it requires motivation, and the thing about motivation is that it requires a personality. you have to be a person. of some kind or another.

right now, I'm a person, and I could work a full time job if I really wanted to.

I just don't know how long that would actually stay true.

- - - - -

society expects a lot.

go to school; perform well. go to university; study something employable. get a job; desire a career. develop your career; repeat this step.

occasionally these days I have conversations with people about what I'm studying right now. They'll say something like "game development is sorta part of the tech industry; there's money in that, right?", or "if you do really well maybe you can join a big studio and make some money, right?", or "so, you're gonna try and start your own studio? do you think you can make money that way?"

I've started just cutting them off before they can finish the sentence and/or question.

no. i am under no illusion that this is about money. if you're approaching our conversation with that in mind, you have entirely misunderstood my intentions.

i wanna make games because i can be a person that way. i don't actually want to sell games.

- - - - -

i remember that day that I realised other people are scared of breaking the rules.

i am scared of consequences. sometimes, breaking the rules and getting caught having done so has consequences.

but I never got the memo that says "you should feel bad about breaking the rules."

this happened at the end of grade 7. i was talking to some friends; one of them had what I now know to be an eating disorder. they needed safe food. they didnt have any. the school didn't have any. I offered to escort them across the road to the supermarket to find something they could eat.

the group looked at me in horror. someone said something that felt incredibly inane to me: "but that's against the rules!"

I said yeah. but [___] needs something to eat. we won't get caught; i'm good at not getting caught.

they stuttered for a moment, and then repeated themselves. "that's against the rules."

i didn't understand. the priorities were so clear to me; we weren't going to get caught, and even if we did, it didn't matter. there was something much more important at stake that an afternoon of detention.

this was when I realised it wasn't about priorities, or consequences. most people just learned to be afraid of not following the rules.

i think this makes me a little broken, for better or worse.

after all, one of society's biggest rules is "get a job".

- - - - -

i acknowledge that i have a lot of goddamn priviledge.

I've spent the last... 4(?) years living almost entirely off of government money. I am lucky to live in a country where this even exists; I am lucky that I figured out early how to play the system and jump through all of the hoops; I am lucky that I don't have any major expenses or health problems or the million other things that would make living off of $450 a week unfeasable.

it's not a super comfortable lifestyle. I am lucky; I can afford my bare human rights of food, shelter, generally most of the medicine I need, and a decent double handful of luxuries like electronics and games and internet.

but there's plenty of more major purchases that I have never quite been able to manage: all of my clothes are old and kind falling apart; I can't get the couple of major medical operations I would like; i own a vehicle because it was gifted to me, but i can't afford to actually keep it running; the idea of leaving the state is a sorta unreachable dream, even if I talk like it's not.

but I choose it for myself. I have the freedom to do whatever I like with most of my weekdays. I'm accountable to very few people. it's rare that I can't wake up on a given day and decide to go fuck around.

like I said. I have a lot of goddamn priviledge.

and the only cost is feeling constantly like a little bit of a failure; being afraid to admit to people that I don't have a 'real income'; always dreading the occasions when someone asks what I'm doing with my life, hoping that "oh, I study full time" is still a viable answer in my mid-twenties.

- - - - -

if this post has a thesis... well, no. I don't think it does. But i do hope it makes you think, at least a little. not necessarily that you change anything, but at least think.

society is a fuckin construct, and we built it pretty badly somewhere along the way. I can't believe that this is how we were meant to live, any of us; indebted to a system we barely care about 5 days a week, undergoing personality death or else perhaps never having a personality to begin with.

on the surface I feel a lot of shame for my choices. I feel like a deadweight and a lazy asshole every time I hear my friends talk about work, how much its worth to them and also how much its killing them.

but underneath that, for as long as I can get away with it, this is my little resistance: we weren't meant to do this. you weren't meant to do this.

maybe i am a bad person after all. but i wanna fuck around for a bit longer.

i think i was made to dance and look at the stars.

- - - - -