Gore, and I was a toddler when the twin towers fell and the iPod launched. I came into the world in the year of Y2K and Bush v. I’m a member of Generation Z, the cohort of young adults born between 19. But I was nagged by the idea that even as the world was shut down, I should be working harder and longer, being more productive. During that downtime, I went on walks with my roommate, thought about graduation and what would come next. My world shrunk to an 11-by-10-foot apartment, and the newspaper work slowed. What work consumed above all else was time. Work was the centre of my life, and everything else too often slipped into a distant orbit: friends, family, a love life, hobbies, health. “Work was the centre of my life, and everything else too often slipped into a distant orbit: friends, family, a love life, hobbies, health.” (Photograph by Ebti Nabag) Sometimes I would cry for hours sometimes I felt too immobilized to cry at all. I knew there was more to do, but it was impossible to muster the energy to put my brain and body back into action. I’d lie under the covers, unable to move. Once the buzz wore off, the feeling of hollow exhaustion crept back in. I would lie down on her bed and tell her I was on my sixth cup of black tea, or that after I finished a newspaper assignment at 10 p.m., I had another to write until 3 a.m., then an in-person class at 8 a.m. My roommate got used to seeing me emerge from my room at odd hours in a long white robe, hair swept into a bun, laptop in hand. I would spend days barely sleeping, hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline. I’d work for days on end, throwing myself into classes, clubs and writing for the university newspaper, where I was also a managing online editor. My university years, from 2018 to 2022, were illuminated by the glow of my desk lamp. Looking to my One Direction poster for strength, I gulped down a few big breaths, dug my nails into my palm and kept studying late into the night. But first I needed to know the difference between Augustus Caesar and Marcus Aurelius, who was not Mark Antony, who was related to Julius Caesar, but not to Marc Jacobs. Then I’d have better job prospects-provided I completed enough internships, participated in extracurricular activities and networked. That could mean a higher GPA, boosting my chances of getting into a great university. If I did well, I could be enrolled in honours classes in high school. I was certain that the consequences of success or failure would reverberate far into my future. My hands trembled and my heart flopped in my throat as I tried to steady myself. The night before a Grade 7 history test, I sat hyperventilating on my bedroom floor, my looseleaf notes on the Roman Empire fanned around me.
I’ve always tried to follow his example-and in trying, I had my first anxiety attack in middle school. Work hard.” That maxim catapulted him to a successful IT career, in Canada and in the American financial services industry. His life advice has always been simple: “Don’t be stupid. There he is in our living room, where I’m lying on the couch as he paces with a book in hand, mumbling new English words to himself. There he is, hunched in a chair at the Chapters bookstore near our home, poring over volumes about computer coding. There he is, waiting at a bus stop in suburban Toronto, starting his 90-minute commute to an IT job downtown.
#Empire z workforce movie#
It was the engine that propelled my family from China to Canada in 1998, two years before I was born, and tales of my father’s heroic work ethic and self-sacrifice have played for years like a movie montage in my mind. Without exception, my response is the same: every time I’m asked to describe my life, I describe my job. I scramble for an answer and wonder if there’s anything interesting to say at all. Whenever I hear those four words, my brain flatlines.
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