COVID-19 Diary: Not Working


This edition of my COVID-19 Diaries features a two-part
anecdotal poem on ‘not working’, combining fragments of conversations and dialogues collected over the past three weeks.

 

1st July 2020 – PART ONE

“I hate work.”

“I love working.”

“I love work but it’s killing me.”

“I hate work but it’s saving me.”

My friend is 30 and being awarded her ‘Ten Years of Servitude’ new year from the bread company she works for. “I don’t know what it means”, she said.

servitude /ˈsəːvɪtjuːd/ Learn to pronounce

noun
noun: servitude

1. the state of being a slave or completely subject to someone more powerful.
“you’ve got thousands of years of peasant servitude to make up for”

The Freelancer is receiving ‘Ten Years of Serfdom!’ from Fiverr. A special badge, shaped like a gold star and bursting with shards, that they can put on their platform portfolio to make it “really stand out”. For ten days it will appear as the top search result. After that, it’s back to the whim of the algorithm.

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