When Hourly Wage Work is Available All the Time, All of Life's Other Joys Get Questioned

If you knew that the time you spent browsing the news, playing games, and indeed writing this blog post could instead be put toward doing some tasks that earn you a healthy hourly wage, would you get on those tasks? As my side gigs in AI annotation take off and pile up, it is a question that I cannot help but keep asking myself. Any time spent not doing work becomes a money-losing proposition, as foregone wages become quantified in the mind every minute that ticks by. The value of the day is subconsciously measured in the number of billable hours.

They say freelancers are lucky to get steady work. But when it rains, it pours. Meetings, writing, research, and reviewing all come in short spurts, somehow lumped together as if these disparate clients coordinate their schedules and needs. Preposterous as it may be, they are together seeking to guilt-trip me to remember that for those not bound by the 9-to-5 and the physical confines of the office, downtime, even if in front of the same screen used for work, is a sign of laziness. When work does not come, the time is best used for finding more work.

That mentality is starting to get to me. Heading into bed early should be sacred for someone who is determined to get up 7am everyday, rain or shine, day in and day out. But when I knew that these hours of shut-eyes could be used to earn a few more dollars instead, I could not sleep. I don't necessarily need those few extra dollars to scrape by, but the value of money, combined with the gamification of whittling down little of the available tasks toward zero, makes it too exciting to ignore. So I find myself hunched over the screen till past midnight.

Like a failed alcoholic who swears never to drink again after every blackout, I wake up tired from the unplanned late-night tasking the day before. More work awaits, but gradually the body seems not to be keeping up. A mild nausea accompanies the first sip of the morning tea, as I find myself in trouble just swallowing the breakfast toast. With meetings coming up, I cannot afford to stay hungry. But wolfing down the toast does not make the mild feeling of illness go away. I haven't been eating anything exotic, or, more honestly, different. It must be the exhaustion. 

But it is not just food. Nausea permeates daily life. Days of grinding away in front of the screen, punctuated only by quick runs to the bathroom, shower, and the fridge, left almost a mild allergy to the outside world. Walking outside the house for the first time after days, the summer sun felt more piercingly burning on the skin, the pupils unable to dilate properly to handle the brightness. The water of the sea felt extra and uncomfortably cold to the skin, and a ride on the bus was accompanied by an uncharacteristic motion sickness.

Now I feel I understand a bit more what recluses feel. People say that their fear of social interactions kept them locked away. But perhaps the adaptation to the world they no longer know is not just with respect to other people, but also to the natural environment. They don't need to speak to a single person on the street, but every element of the street, from the light to the smell to the sounds, is foreign enough to induce that mild nausea. The only way to feel better is to get away, back to that personal sanctuary of screens and work.

It is funnily ironic, though, that some of the downtime I still cannot get away from is watching short videos of travelers braving the elements. I still imagine tracing their footsteps, soaking in the sights they saw, and savoring the same dishes that they loved. But increasingly I wonder if I have the physical and mental capacity to do so. Nauseated with just my morning toast, can I stomach anything more exotic? Sick with just a bus ride, can I take planes? And most of all, while I am traveling, who is taking the tasks that I should be paid for?

Living life to the fullest takes on a streak of fear and anxiety. If the fullest is accompanied by predictable health scares and mental stress, then is it the fullest, or just the mind forcefully convincing the body that it is? And if the body doesn't find the whole experience agreeable, then should we even feel guilty about being reclusive? As these conflicting thoughts swirl and battle in the mind, the nagging feeling of foregone wages does not fade away. Everything is a trade-off, but the trade-off process is too painful in itself.