During my years as a marketing translator I've probably translated the phrase 'in today's fast-paced business environment' or some variations thereof hundreds of times. These words raise my heart rate when I read them, and I eventually had to give up marketing translation as I wasn't capable of normalizing living in a fast-paced environment.

I'm not even sure who created this fast-paced environment, and is now expecting me, a tiny human, to keep up with it. Forces me to rush my children into it too, prepared to get prepared for the modern life, clad in ever freshly-washed garments and with their faces washed, and shoes tied well, early in the morning. Become a productive citizen, now!

And it gets worse - to keep up with the rush I'm offered products. Machines, more machines, so I can do everything fast enough for the fast-paced environment. All while the real, actual, living environment goes down the drain, also ever more quickly. Nobody gets to rest in this fast-paced environment, we are all constantly running. From what?

In the same vein I'm encouraged to make my free time worthwhile - why not monetize it somehow? Do what I always wanted: become a writer, a video artist! So I pull my brains, quickly. Put something out there, make it bright, make a lot (with the convenient tools offered us so we can keep up with the rush) because otherwise it will drown in all the other content out there.

Then the tiredness creeps in, endless content scrolling by, and we all get more tired by consuming/producing/consuming/producing mile by mile of this ludicrous mixture of bright content and dystopian news, and the fast-paced environment getting faster. Who are we anymore? For some reason, we cannot exist in the fast-paced environment. It must be us, maybe it's a mental illness?

If we forced an animal to run in a fast-paced threadmill all day, what would happen? What if we forced the animal to run a little more, by withholding food or threatening to do so? How many hours more could the animal run, for how long, before breakdown? Or would someone step in and stop whoever does shit like this to an animal?

The tiredness is telling us to rest, like the tired animals we are, and slow down the consuming, and producing, of things without substance and nutritious value.