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Invisible Labor and the Hidden Gold · Ryan's Journal

• 0:07
  So, like, I was literally sitting there, right?
• 0:09
  Um, thinking about, like, my neck, or, or, or my shoe, or whatever,
• 0:13
  and then, boom, it hit me.
• 0:15
  I was like, man, I handed him the gold.
• 0:17
  You, you handed who the gold, Justin?
• 0:19
  Duncan!
• 0:20
  My, my therapist, Duncan.
• 0:22
  I sat in his office the other day, and, you know, after all this,
• 0:26
  like, madness with the housing authority and getting hit with this random violation
• 0:30
  after, what, like, thirteen or fourteen years of a totally smooth ride?
• 0:35
  I handed him the gold, man.
• 0:37
  Maybe, maybe all three, like the bronze, the silver, and the gold,
• 0:40
  but definitely the gold.
• 0:42
  Wait, wait, er, what was the actual gold though?
• 0:44
  Like, was it a thought, or, or, like, an actual physical piece of paper?
• 0:48
  It was, it was this worksheet, okay?
• 0:51
  This invisible labor assessment worksheet that I created through,
• 0:54
  like, tech and research and just sitting there thinking.
• 0:58
  Because, you know, a violation happened, and instead of just,
• 1:01
  like, spiraling or going to war, it turned into invisible labor.
• 1:05
  And I handed it to Duncan, and we were just sitting there.
• 1:07
  Just two people in this office.
• 1:09
  But in my head?
• 1:10
  Man, in my heart?
• 1:11
  What was happening in your head?
• 1:13
  An auditorium.
• 1:13
  A huge auditorium, okay?
• 1:15
  Like, hundreds, if not thousands of people, all standing up and clapping.
• 1:20
  Clapping for me, and, and clapping for Duncan too!
• 1:23
  Because it was a team effort, you know?
• 1:26
  The auditorium was, like, completely absent in real life, but at the same time,
• 1:31
  it was, it was right there.
• 1:32
  Mm, yeah.
• 1:33
  That, that feels so real.
• 1:35
  Like when you do something for your health or your recovery,
• 1:38
  and nobody sees it, but internally your whole nervous system is,
• 1:41
  like, standing up and giving you a standing ovation.
• 1:44
  You feel that, like, shift inside your body chemistry.
• 1:47
  It is a profound shift, really.
• 1:50
  I think about how much of our lives we spend looking outward for someone to give us
• 1:54
  a gold star, or a, a diploma, or a pass from an institution.
• 2:00
  And when you sit in a small room with a counselor or a friend and present something
• 2:05
  raw and truthful, you realize the validation was never coming from the housing
• 2:10
  authority or the court or the school board anyway.
• 2:14
  It comes from honoring the effort you put in when no one was watching.
• 2:18
  Right!
• 2:19
  Exactly, Debbie!
• 2:20
  Because, like, for pop stars or whatever, you get the actual auditorium with real
• 2:25
  people screaming and clapping, right?
• 2:27
  But that performance stuff, man, it can be hollow if you did not do the inner work.
• 2:31
  When I gave Duncan that invisible labor worksheet, there were no stage lights,
• 2:35
  no pyrotechnics.
• 2:37
  Just pure expression.
• 2:38
  Another therapist out there who studies how to make people feel good would look at
• 2:42
  that and say, man, you just handed Duncan the gold the other day.
• 2:45
  It is like, er, shifting from external praise to, to internal integration.
• 2:51
  Like, tracking your sleep scores or your recovery, if you only do it to impress a
• 2:56
  doctor, it feels like homework.
• 2:58
  But when you track it for yourself, it becomes your personal truth,
• 3:02
  your own baseline.
• 3:04
  And it takes real vulnerability to present that kind of self assessment.
• 3:08
  Because if the institution rejects your worksheet, or if they do not care about the
• 3:13
  invisible hours you spent researching and analyzing your trauma,
• 3:16
  it hurts.
• 3:18
  But handing it over anyway is an act of quiet dignity.
• 3:21
  Yeah, yeah, it really was a beautiful moment, man.
• 3:23
  No clapping hands in the room, but my heart was clapping a lot,
• 3:27
  to be honest.
• 3:27
  It was clapping so hard.
• 3:29
  So then, so then today, right?
• 3:31
  The Norco guy comes to the house.
• 3:32
  The medical oxygen delivery guy?
• 3:35
  Yeah, the Norco oxygen tank guy!
• 3:37
  And I am watching him, okay?
• 3:39
  I am sitting there watching this guy work, and I am like, man,
• 3:42
  this dude has so much achievement right off the bat!
• 3:45
  Look at what he did in just a tiny slice of time.
• 3:48
  What did he do?
• 3:49
  Okay, first of all, he walked up!
• 3:51
  He had the physical ability to knock on the door.
• 3:53
  He was by himself.
• 3:54
  He knew what a filter was.
• 3:55
  He knew how to do assembly with the Norco tank.
• 3:57
  He spoke English.
• 3:58
  He did math in his head!
• 4:00
  Like, think about the amount of compressed achievement that took place in just a
• 4:03
  couple minutes!
• 4:04
  Oh, totally.
• 4:05
  Like, the mechanics of spatial awareness and safety protocols for pressurized gas
• 4:11
  tanks.
• 4:11
  Like, if you take a step back and analyze what it takes for a human being to pull up
• 4:15
  in a truck, navigate a driveway, check filter mechanics, adjust the valves without
• 4:21
  causing a leak, that is massive cognitive and physical labor.
• 4:25
  And we completely take it for granted.
• 4:27
  We treat a service visit like an automated transaction.
• 4:31
  Person shows up, installs the tank, signs the clip board, leaves.
• 4:35
  But behind that routine is years of motor skill development,
• 4:39
  safety training, personal discipline, and just showing up upright on two feet.
• 4:44
  And check this out!
• 4:45
  I said to him, I was like, you get a quarter for saying the word respect,
• 4:48
  you know?
• 4:49
  And he just kinda laughed a little bit, laughed it away.
• 4:51
  But then, then we started talking, and he brought up the wildfires!
• 4:54
  The local wildfires?
• 4:56
  Yeah!
• 4:57
  He acknowledged the wildfires and related a story about them with me.
• 5:01
  And man, that small moment, that micro connection?
• 5:04
  It makes life livable and not so lonely!
• 5:07
  You could have gotten someone else who was just like, wildfires?
• 5:10
  What is that?
• 5:11
  But he connected.
• 5:13
  Norco does a tremendous service for people with breathing problems,
• 5:16
  but his human presence was the real miracle right there.
• 5:19
  That detail about loneliness is so poignant, Justin.
• 5:23
  When you are struggling with chronic health issues or stuck at home needing medical
• 5:27
  equipment, you can feel isolated from the rest of the world.
• 5:30
  Having a delivery worker take five seconds to share a grounded human moment,
• 5:34
  acknowledging a shared catastrophe like wildfires, brings you back into the
• 5:38
  community.
• 5:38
  It is like backstage crew on tour, right?
• 5:41
  People come to see the singer under the spotlight, but if the stage hand does not
• 5:46
  know how to rig the cable or check the power filter or set the microphone,
• 5:50
  the whole show goes up in flames.
• 5:52
  The stage hand does invisible labor every single night, and nobody gives them a
• 5:56
  diploma on stage.
• 5:58
  And efficiency metrics in corporate culture completely erase all of that micro
• 6:02
  skill!
• 6:04
  Like, the company tracks the technician on GPS, counting how many minutes he spends
• 6:09
  at each house.
• 6:11
  If he spends two extra minutes connecting with a patient about wildfires or checking
• 6:16
  a filter extra carefully, the software flags him as slow or inefficient.
• 6:21
  The system penalizes the exact human details that make the service valuable!
• 6:27
  It is the tragedy of modern work, really.
• 6:29
  We measure output and speed, but we ignore competence, care,
• 6:33
  and basic human presence.
• 6:34
  Right!
• 6:35
  The school does not teach that all those tiny things matter constantly.
• 6:39
  They do not teach you to respect the guy who knows how to assembly a tank and knock
• 6:43
  on a door.
• 6:43
  They just teach you exams and quizzes.
• 6:45
  That reminds me of this sociological term, er, invisible labor.
• 6:50
  It was actually coined back in nineteen eighty seven by a sociologist named Arlene
• 6:55
  Kaplan Daniels.
• 6:56
  She was looking at all the unacknowledged work women do in households and
• 7:00
  communities, but it applies everywhere, especially in schools.
• 7:04
  Yes!
• 7:04
  School!
• 7:05
  Man, I went to school K through twelve, right?
• 7:07
  Elementary, middle school, high school.
• 7:09
  And the whole report card system is totally broken!
• 7:11
  How so?
• 7:12
  Because on the report card, you have subjects, right?
• 7:15
  Math, science, reading, English, history.
• 7:19
  That takes up the whole page.
• 7:20
  And then down at the bottom, in this tiny little corner, there is a section for
• 7:25
  conduct, or speaking skills, or behavior.
• 7:29
  And what do they grade you with?
• 7:31
  S for Satisfactory, NI for Needs Improvement, and U for Unsatisfactory!
• 7:36
  Right, the S, NI, U ratings.
• 7:38
  They relegate your actual human behavior and motor skills to a tiny footnote.
• 7:43
  It gets completely overlooked!
• 7:45
  It becomes all about the textbook and the exam, rather than you!
• 7:48
  The center of attention is the subject, not the human being sitting in the desk.
• 7:52
  As a mother who raised three kids through that system, I cannot tell you how much
• 7:56
  that resonated with me.
• 7:57
  Think about what a child actually does just to get to seventh grade.
• 8:01
  They have to wake up early, regulate their nervous system, sit still in a wooden
• 8:04
  chair for six hours, use their neck muscles to look up at a chalkboard,
• 8:07
  hold a pencil, maintain eye contact, navigate crowded hallways,
• 8:11
  manage sensory overload.
• 8:13
  And parents are doing invisible labor behind them, buying lunch tickets,
• 8:16
  organizing clothes, managing logistics.
• 8:19
  Yes!
• 8:20
  It took preschool and kindergarten to make it to seventh grade!
• 8:23
  You do not just magically land in Mrs.
• 8:26
  Leonards' class or Roseanne Anderson's class or Craig Wicket's class!
• 8:31
  You had to do years of somatic labor!
• 8:33
  Holding a pencil, using your five senses, keeping your heart beating and your eyes
• 8:39
  blinking while your nervous system is in total chaos!
• 8:42
  The physical strain on a kid's body is crazy when you break it down.
• 8:47
  Like, motor control, neck posture, sensory regulation.
• 8:52
  If a kid has eye trouble, like needing doctor drops or wearing an eye patch,
• 8:58
  or if they have trauma, just sitting in that classroom without melting down is a
• 9:03
  massive personal achievement.
• 9:05
  But the school system looks at their Iowa Test of Basic Skills score and says,
• 9:10
  needs improvement.
• 9:12
  And if you fail to meet that standardized test threshold, the school treats you like
• 9:16
  you did nothing.
• 9:17
  They ignore the fact that your parents drove you all the way to Iowa City to get
• 9:21
  your eyes checked by specialists, or that you survived family turmoil,
• 9:26
  or that you managed to hold yourself together through physical pain.
• 9:29
  The institution demands cognitive output while completely ignoring the biological
• 9:34
  and emotional foundation that makes attendance possible in the first place.
• 9:38
  Nobody gave this kind of speech when I was in grade school or high school!
• 9:42
  Nobody stood up at assembly and said, hey Ryan, hey Justin,
• 9:46
  you are way overachieved today just by keeping your body moving and holding that
• 9:50
  pencil.
• 9:51
  Go home or go shoot baskets, you achieved enough.
• 9:54
  Nobody says that!
• 9:55
  They just demand the next quiz.
• 9:57
  It is like grading a runner only on their finish line time,
• 10:00
  without acknowledging that they ran with a broken ankle or through a rainstorm.
• 10:05
  And that brings me back to the smooth ride, man.
• 10:08
  Like, when you go thirteen or fourteen years without a violation,
• 10:11
  your brain basically gets used to a smooth ride, right?
• 10:14
  You build an expectation of safety and stability.
• 10:17
  Exactly!
• 10:18
  You think, okay, I am doing my thing, I am following the rules,
• 10:21
  everything is calm.
• 10:22
  And then suddenly, boom, the housing authority or some institution comes in with
• 10:26
  their rules and expectations and throws a violation at you.
• 10:29
  And your smooth ride gets completely interrupted.
• 10:32
  That sudden friction after years of stability creates this acute cognitive burnout.
• 10:37
  Because your nervous system was attuned to a certain level of peace,
• 10:40
  and when administrative pressure hits, your body reacts like it is under physical
• 10:44
  threat.
• 10:45
  It is terrifying how quickly bureaucratic paperwork can unravel a person's peace of
• 10:49
  mind.
• 10:50
  When an institution demands instant proof, forms, compliance,
• 10:55
  assessments, for things you have been quietly managing on your own for a decade,
• 10:59
  it triggers deep exhaustion.
• 11:02
  You start asking yourself, am I stupid, or am I just tired?
• 11:05
  Or is it both?
• 11:06
  It is both!
• 11:07
  I said that to Duncan!
• 11:08
  Is it how tired I am, or how intelligent I am?
• 11:11
  It is both, man!
• 11:12
  Your brain gets exhausted from the sheer routine of overachieving in a system that
• 11:17
  never gives you credit for surviving.
• 11:18
  Do you think institutional systems are designed to ignore human effort on purpose to
• 11:23
  maximize efficiency, or are they just structurally incapable of seeing qualitative
• 11:28
  struggle?
• 11:29
  I think it is a structural blindness.
• 11:31
  Large institutions, whether public housing authorities or school districts or
• 11:36
  corporate employers, rely on standardized metrics because metrics are cheap and easy
• 11:41
  to track.
• 11:42
  They can measure a late payment, a missing form, or a low math score in two seconds.
• 11:49
  But measuring the invisible labor it took a person with chronic illness or trauma
• 11:53
  just to keep their apartment clean or show up to work?
• 11:57
  You cannot put that on a spreadsheet easily.
• 12:00
  And then when your nervous system is in chaos, nobody spots it!
• 12:03
  Mr.
• 12:04
  Burks does not spot it, Mrs.
• 12:06
  Leonards does not spot it, Mrs.
• 12:07
  Nelson does not spot it, Craig Wicket does not spot it!
• 12:10
  You are sitting there in physical education class or basketball class,
• 12:14
  trying to meet expectations while your whole flesh chemistry and brain chemistry are
• 12:19
  screaming, and the teacher just looks at whether you hit the basket!
• 12:22
  That internal chaos becomes individualized trauma.
• 12:26
  And because no one around you is trained to recognize nervous system distress,
• 12:31
  you end up having to become your own teacher, your own master.
• 12:34
  That is a heavy realization, but an empowering one.
• 12:38
  When you realize the institution is blind, you stop expecting it to see you.
• 12:43
  You take control of your own narrative.
• 12:45
  Man, I almost went up in flames, literally!
• 12:47
  Like, Susan was driving me to the lawyer office, right?
• 12:50
  Real life Susan, not media people on TV like Tucker Carlson.
• 12:54
  And she had to dodge an accident on the road with oxygen containers in the car.
• 12:58
  If a spark hit those tanks, gossip says oxygen can shoot off like a rocket!
• 13:02
  We could have gone up in a fireball!
• 13:04
  Wait, oxygen tanks in a car crash scenario?
• 13:07
  Yes!
• 13:07
  A stranger from Uber told me those tanks can go off like a rocket.
• 13:11
  And when I got home from that horrifying, stressful day, you know what band I
• 13:15
  listened to on repeat to cope with the trauma?
• 13:18
  What band?
• 13:19
  Love and Rockets!
• 13:20
  Isn't that wild?!
• 13:21
  Love and Rockets!
• 13:23
  I came home alive after almost exploding with an oxygen rocket,
• 13:27
  and I played Love and Rockets at four thirty-five in the morning on Friday,
• 13:32
  August twenty-first!
• 13:33
  That music helped me survive the night.
• 13:35
  That is why I say, on graduation day, forget the diploma, man!
• 13:38
  Forget the diploma?
• 13:40
  When you walk up on stage after thirteen years of school, instead of accepting that
• 13:44
  rolled up piece of paper, that diploma that only has two pages inside when you open
• 13:48
  it, you should hold up a twenty-four count box of Crayola crayons!
• 13:52
  A box of crayons, er, why crayons?
• 13:54
  Because the box of crayons tells the actual story!
• 13:57
  It has a dozen or twenty-four different colors in there.
• 14:00
  It shows where you started in kindergarten, all the lines you drew,
• 14:04
  all the mess you made, all the physical work it took to get through thirteen years!
• 14:08
  The diploma is just cold parchment from an institution.
• 14:12
  The crayons represent your actual human journey.
• 14:14
  That image is going to stay with me for a long time.
• 14:17
  A box of crayons as a symbol of lived, colorful, messy human persistence over a
• 14:23
  standardized white piece of paper.
• 14:26
  It shifts the metric entirely from what the school says you achieved to what you
• 14:31
  actually experienced and survived.
• 14:33
  So how do we practically bring that mindset into our daily lives?
• 14:36
  How do we replace institutional report cards with self authored assessments?
• 14:40
  You gotta start counting your own miracles, man!
• 14:43
  Like, every heartbeat, every breath, every time your chest moves up and down,
• 14:47
  every time your eyes blink, that is a miracle!
• 14:51
  If the school wants to discuss your comprehension level on the state exam,
• 14:55
  you say no, let us discuss my miracle level!
• 14:58
  Let us discuss my invisible labor level and my invisible achievement level!
• 15:02
  It comes back to what Ricky Nelson sang, doesn't it?
• 15:04
  You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself.
• 15:08
  If the world and the housing authority and the school board will not acknowledge
• 15:12
  your invisible labor, you have to speak your own truth.
• 15:16
  You tell yourself about your own miracles.
• 15:18
  And taking care of your body chemistry, like learning to sleep on your side,
• 15:22
  or managing panic without destroying your sleep architecture,
• 15:26
  those micro decisions are acts of profound self care and invisible achievement.
• 15:31
  We survived the day, man.
• 15:33
  We did not go up in flames.
• 15:34
  We handed Duncan the gold, we listened to Love and Rockets,
• 15:37
  and the internal auditorium is still standing up and clapping for us.
• 15:41
  And that is more than enough.
• 15:42
  Good night, everyone.
• 15:43
  Peace out, talk soon.