El descontento Quotes

“Hace poco descubrí que si tenías un accidente de camino al trabajo se consideraba un accidente laboral in itinere, por lo que tu sueldo no se reduce durante el tiempo de baja, y desde entonces cruzo los semáforos de manera más despreocupada, a veces incluso de forma un tanto temeraria.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Bueno, creo que si pueden empatizar con un señor sin piernas también podrán empatizar con una mujer con la regla. (El Descontento, 91)

Estar en un mando intermedio consiste en empezar las cosas, delegarlas y luego supervisarlas. (El Descontento, 162)

Quizás el problema de algunas personas, y por algunas personas me refiero a personas como yo, es que pensamos que la vida nos va a ofrecer algo asombroso en el momento menos esperado ... Quizás ese es el secreto de la felicidad: bajar las expectativas, acomodarte, jugar al pádel, hacer paella los domingos, tener un grupo de amigas, hacerte la manicura permanente cada quince días, tener hijos, reciclar, adoptar un perro, irte a vivir a las afueras, tener un jardín, casarte con Carlos (El Descontento, 170)”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“hablaba del desasosiego de la clase trabajadora, de la infelicidad constante a pesar de cumplir con las expectativas, de hacer lo que se supone que uno debe hacer y, sin embargo, no tener nunca una sensación de plenitud. Morrissey cantaba sobre la insatisfacción que provocan los trabajos de mierda y la obligación de pagar facturas, sobre la alienación que causan las horas en la oficina y el poco espacio para disfrutar de los verdaderos placeres de la vida.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Life, in the end, is a lot like a search engine: as you make decisions, your options get fewer, until you have to choose between two or three and pray you haven’t made a mistake.”
― Beatriz Serrano, Discontent

“Detesto la sensación de tener que tener que ser siempre una persona funcional cuando lo que a mí me gustaría es convertirme en despojo.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“The internet is exhausting, especially if you're a woman. ...luckily, on the internet you can always find someone who's said what you're thinking not only before you, but better than you, so you don't even have to make the effort to articulate your own thoughts.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Vacations are like putting a Band-Aid on an axe wound. You go to places where you'll never be able to live, to experience a lifestyle you can't afford, and then you come back and see on the news they're talking about 'post-vacation syndrome' when really what they should say is 'Your life is so horrible that you get depressed when you have to return after two weeks of fantasy.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I’ve been doing the same thing for eight years, and I know it doesn’t help anyone. I know the world would be a better place if jobs like mine didn’t exist. I know I take advantage of people’s insecurities and their desire to thrive in a society where no one can improve. And I know this because even I, after an eight-hour day full of elevator conversations that drive me to low-stakes suicidal ideation (like stapling my hand to get out of a meeting that makes me understand the true meaning of the word “infinite,” or pouring boiling water from the office kettle onto myself so I can spend five to ten days at home with my feet up), still believe that the solution to all my problems will be a floral Zara dress made in Bangladesh that has followed me on every website I’ve visited today, and that, in all certainty, will be worn by millions of women on the street next season. I still believe that dress will turn me into a different woman, a happy, carefree, springtime version of myself. I know that when you buy something, what you’re paying for is the promise of a better life. I know I’m also taking advantage of and accepting money from mediocre clients who think the greatest act of creativity is your smell, of leaving an impression, of not being a gray, boring person who spends two hours of their life every day getting to and from work. I sell the possibility that today, yes, today, with the help of that floral perfume, something extraordinary will happen to you. I’m not selling the umpteenth vacuum cleaner that no one needs; I’m selling the idea of having a nice, clean house, of being able to take a photo of that cute little corner you decorated Pinterest-style, uploading it on Instagram, and getting a lot of likes. Then I pitch a creative idea that’s like all the other creative ideas, the ones that came before and the ones that will come afterward. The lipstick effect. The smell of memories. Your dream house. They buy my idea, they pay us, I get congratulated, and we start all over again.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Me produce una enorme sensación de pesadumbre que mi madre pueda sentir pena por mí y pensar que, con todo lo que ella y mi padre hicieron para que mi vida fuese mejor que la suya (más intensa, más interesante, más apasionada), yo haya terminado siendo una persona con un día a día insignificante.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Pienso en que el mundo está lleno de personas trepas y repugnantes, pero, a cambio, de julio a septiembre también está lleno de higos.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“All that time I was giving to others instead of staying at home reading or drawing or simply looking at the ceiling, half naked, observing the cracks. I couldn’t stand the idea of being forced to live that office pantomime in perpetuity just to pay for things like rent or food or a book or a weekend at the beach. I broke down every morning when the alarm beeped because life, lived this way, seemed like a badly written tragedy, boring and sterile, devoid of fun and, even worse, devoid of content, and so, on my way to work, I felt like grabbing strangers by the shoulders and asking them why they weren’t feeling like me.”
― Beatriz Serrano, Discontent

“If everyone realized how unimportant they actually were and how easily they could be replaced, they might be a bit nicer to each other.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Life, death, and everything in between are not matters we can afford to spend much time lingering on.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I think about all the times we feel lonely until someone shows up, when you least expect it, to make you feel like part of something.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I guess that's what friendship is, the other person knowing exactly where all your things are, and how to solve the problems that arise without asking questions.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I know that when you buy something, what you're paying for is the promise of a better life.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“What neither that doctor nor the therapist understood was that the stress was caused not by what I did at my job but, as I’d tried to explain to him, by having to go to work. Spending eight hours from Monday to Friday on alienating and unsatisfying tasks, surrounded by people with whom I was forced to have futile and boring conversations full of absurd platitudes about mortgages or parking spaces or the words their children said wrong or the last series they’d watched on Netflix. All that time I was giving to others instead of staying at home reading or drawing or simply looking at the ceiling, half naked, observing the cracks. I couldn’t stand the idea of being forced to live that office pantomime in perpetuity just to pay for things like rent or food or a book or a weekend at the beach. I broke down every morning when the alarm beeped because life, lived this way, seemed like a badly written tragedy, boring and sterile, devoid of fun and, even worse, devoid of content, and so, on my way to work, I felt like grabbing strangers by the shoulders and asking them why they weren’t feeling like me. What was their secret, how did they manage to maintain their composure, why didn’t they cry every time their alarms beeped?”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I feel that today I can adopt that personality. Be the shark, the winner; take on the personality of women who’ve turned work into some sort of sacred virtue, the way motherhood used to be, and who hang up photos in their offices with the hashtag #GirlBoss. I’ll turn into capitalism’s idea of a feminist for the next eight hours. An überwoman who can handle everything. The kind who has routines from five to nine and then from nine to five. Some sort of cyborg promoted by business schools, with all the positive qualities associated with women but without any of the bad ones: the disciples of Sheryl Sandberg who want to break the glass ceiling with their stiletto heels and leave the broken glass on the floor for the South American cleaning lady to deal with, and whose idea of equality is having a parking spot in the fancy area reserved for the executive board.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“I don’t know where they get all that rage, that competitiveness, that way of seeing and dividing the world into winners and losers. I find it strange how some men use war and sports terminology when they’ve never been in a war and haven’t kicked a ball since high school. Preparing for battle, winning the war, destroying the enemy. How can they see themselves as soldiers and warriors when they’re inside apartments filled with gray IKEA furniture with greasy paper bags from Just Eat piling up in their dirty kitchens? How are they capable of dissociating between the little men they are and the great men they were promised they would become? I think about whether they’re loved by someone, who that could be, and in what way. Who would be the woman—because they’re always women—to make herself smaller so that a man can continue seeing himself as big? Big like Alexander the Great, like Julius Caesar, like Christopher Columbus. Big like all those glorious epics they’ve been imbibing since their earliest infancy. I think about how those men are capable of fooling themselves, but, most of all, how they manage to get the world to sustain that deception. I think about whether at night, right before going to sleep, they feel like impostors or if they’ve swallowed their own lie and sleep like babies. No one talks back to them, no one contradicts them, no one tells them to shut up. No one says that “step up or step aside” is a total crock of shit. And so, it’s almost normal that those men think of themselves as warriors, because by molding the world to their delusions of grandeur, they’ve already won their own battle.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Or maybe I’m not a monster at all; maybe I’m just the result of a life of work, another human being maintaining the status quo out of pure laziness, and now I appropriate other people’s ideas the way older people used to appropriate mine. Maybe I’m just another stagnant adult who’s lost the energy to change things. Something that, come to think of it, might make me the worst sort of monster.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“...the constant unhappiness despite meeting expectations; it was about doing what you think you should be doing and yet never feeling fulfilled.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Después, se inicia otro ciclo: la mamá vuelve a la oficina y la alegría se va disipando. Si no rinde lo suficiente, se le llama la atención, como si nadie fuera consciente del cambio que ha sufrido su vida y quisieran que fuera cuanto antes la mujer que solía ser. Si pide reducción de jornada supone un problema para los demás. Si se queja demasiado es que quizás no valía para eso. Si no se queja nada es una rara que jamás habla de su hijo. En una oficina, ser madre es un arma de doble filo. Un niño siempre es una alegría, pero una madre es una pieza del sistema que empieza a oxidarse.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Jugar a las oficinas es fácil si sabes cómo. El trabajo es solamente un papel que hay que interpretar. He aprendido a dominarlo a la perfección: sé los chascarrillos que siempre funcionan para romper el hielo. Sé lo que tengo que preguntar para parecer atenta e interesada. Y sé lo que tengo que decir para que el tiempo fluya más rápido sin hacer realmente nada hasta las seis de la tarde.
[...]
Lo cierto es que no sé hacer nada en particular y no sé cómo he llegado aquí. Intuyo que perfeccionando el juego de las oficinas hasta que los demás se han ido creyendo que soy una gran profesional.
[...]
El juego de las oficinitas consiste en saber expresarse cuando toca. En decir «preparar un Excel» o «hacer una presentación» como si estuvieras hablando de una operación a corazón abierto o en alargar excesivamente una explicación, llena de detalles aburridos, para que la gente pierda el hilo de lo que estás contando y no te pregunte nada al terminar.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Rebusco a ciegas en mi bolso y me meto otro Orfidal bajo la lengua. No entiendo por qué mis compañeros están emocionados, si es que todo ese aluvión de emojis y signos de exclamación significa de verdad un aluvión de emociones y no que alguno de ellos, al otro lado del teclado, está sufriendo un derrame cerebral. No comprendo que deseen pasar más tiempo con otros compañeros de trabajo antes que con sus familias, sus amigos, sus ligues o consigo mismos. Quizás les aterra demasiado esta última opción. O tal vez ellos también estén fingiendo, quién sabe por qué. Por la posibilidad de un ascenso o por la cálida sensación de esa palmadita en la espalda o por la expectativa de acercarse a un pez gordo de la compañía y demostrar, por fin, el valor que creen tener dentro de la empresa.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“everyone realized how unimportant they actually were and how easily they could be replaced, they might be a bit nicer to each other.”
― Beatriz Serrano, Discontent

“I hate having to be a functional person when I just want to collapse like a rag doll.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Now that I had a salary, I decided to stay a little longer. But because everyone was still traumatized after the 2008 crisis, I kept hearing how lucky I was to have a job, and I suppose we were all afraid to quit and pursue our dreams and, in my case, the advertising world seemed safer and more reliable than the hypothetical and increasingly distant world of art. I guess I made the wrong decision. Or maybe, between the possibility of being happier and buying more things, I chose to buy more things.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“A todas esas notas tomadas en reuniones, a todas esas fechas de entrega y plazos. A todos esos proyectos que empezó y terminó para luego tener que empezar y terminar otros, como en el mito de Sísifo. Sus días, en el fondo, tan parecidos a los míos... Su descontento y el mío, tan similares, tan permanentes, tan mortales... Un día que lleva a otro. Un fin de semana. Luego otra semana entera. Seguir y seguir, hasta no reconocerse.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Tu incompetencia no es mi urgencia en letra Comic Sans.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento

“Pese a mi rechazo absoluto a un lugar como instagram, hay días en los que siento que yo también necesito habitarlo de alguna forma. Es como un recuerdo propio lanzado a una red de millones de recuerdos para recordarle al resto, y a mi misma, que yo también existo, que yo también estoy.”
― Beatriz Serrano, El descontento