Here I am.

Recently, I have found myself with a full-time job. Perhaps even more than full-time. 7:30-5:00 doesn’t really sound like a 9-5 does it? But what is the point? At least I don’t have to sit in an office writing reports for some agenda that I could care less about.

What has really been the struggle, the point of contention, one might say, is the coming to the realization that I am simply done for this year. Of course, things might change. But the activity that I pursue with all my effort no longer leads to the next and the next. It is rather an activity that fulfills itself each day in completion of my serving a role in society.

When I have spent my whole life chasing the end of something, and the start of another, it seems strange that in the final moment of calm, that I am anything but calm. So, the chase continues, for a month, and then in a year, hopefully, the rest of my life.

When I graduated high school, I was asked to describe where I expected to be in 20 years. Full of melancholy and lessons learned from first-world problems, I wrote: “In 20 years Jacob will be content.” I was wrong. I will never be content. This year is the only time I have to be content. I will never retire, I will never stop. There is no foreseeable end to what I wish to do. However small it may seem to others, I know my place, and its goal will outlive me.

In college, I worked in an art museum. I had the luck to acquaint myself with the work of Michael Rakowitz’s Nimrud project. Very candidly, he admits that the project will outlive him. He cannot expect to recreate a palace alone, and even with help, he cannot expect to complete it within his life.

And so he set forth a goal for future generations to stride forth in, with the desperate belief it is all worth it, that he has found some truth, some beauty, some happiness, that he can spread. I hope to do the same. And I hope that those dead who have inspired me would, if they could, smile down upon my continuation of their earthly missions.

It is thus, that labor humanizes me. Labor connects me to the world, to the future, to the past, to history.

Defiantly, I assert that we are nowhere near utopia, and in whatever teleology you attach yourself to, there is work to be done.

So here I am, working.