*

   Sometimes survival over-takes us. The daily life becomes such a struggle but then you have everyone telling you that at least you're lucky: at least you have a job, even though the wage is not livable and you work unpaid overtime. Somehow I have gotten used to the heaps of work. After all our generation knew since before adulthood that we were losing ground. We watched our parents getting laid off and despairing over making ends meet and got used to the idea of never owning anything apart from what might trickle down if they're not sacrificed to necessity. 

  Still, it's getting more and more difficult by day to accept this reality. That this is all there is, the struggle for survival, the slow dissipation of the bonds between us. What helps me stay afloat is community, wherever I find it and as much as I have the energy to participate in it. It's the one thing that keeps me going. That somehow in spite of all the shit, we manage to try and stick together as much as we can.

  Is this alone enough to save us? I do not know. I am struggling to find the point in the continuous struggle when my mind hardly has any time to recover. I speak of the mind because the body has by now accepted the weight of working for 10 or 12 or 14 hours per day over time. I try to nourish it as a way of saying thanks, of trying to ensure that the machine will keep working.

  Most of all I can not stand the noise of this life. And yet, again, I am one of the lucky, the privileged ones. I am often isolated, sometimes I seek that out out of need. I have to choose: the recovery in silence or the community? And when presented with this choice, sooner or later the community dissipates.

  What am I rambling about? I do not know. I wish being tired and dissatisfied didn't make us sound egotistic and self-centered.