Today I saw something on twitter about “apps for productivity”. Actually it was a book about apps for productivity—you know, a guide to help you get the most out of your apps that help you get the most out of your workday. It had a really nice retro-chic cover and I’m sure a lovely, intuitive, well-branded website to go with it.

The idea of an app for productivity strikes me as gross and smells like that feeling I used to get sitting in the office with my two computer screens in front of me, my mind churning, clicking about, opening spreadsheets, considering my career, my company’s trajectory, feeling into the internet and the thousands of people online all developing their brand or whatever, getting juiced and drinking coffee and feeling, briefly, like I was really getting something done. I remember, too how I felt at 4pm with an hour or two to go in the office, my body tired and my mind fried and wishing like hell I could go home, knowing that I’d squeezed from my self every last bit of creative juice and I wasn’t going to get a darn thing done for the rest of the day.

Today I sat and listened to a mockingbird and I noticed that the mockingbird was singing to the neighbor’s trees that had throughout the day been harshly cut back by chainsaws even though all their new branches had already begun to bud. The mockingbird was singing to the tree earnestly and with utter dedication, and he wasn’t concerned about keeping track of what he was doing or whether or not he was noticed. He was moving from branch to branch, landing on the sawed-off stubs of the tree and telling the tree that it still was beautiful to him and that everything was going to be OK.

There’s an inertia to the internet and to making money through the internet and it involves spreadsheets and apple computers and “apps for productivity”, and it also involves a whole lot of bullshit. Even “breaking away” from it all and “going freelance” means “branding yourself” and logo design and choosing the perfect URL and marketing and networking and connecting and SEO and three-part workshops. And it’s still all about showing up every day no matter what and “doing work”, and you’d better find your market and set some goals and work hard because how else are you going to get anywhere? (or, more specifically, how else are you going to make enough money to live in a cool apartment?)

Working for yourself can be just as soul-crushing as working for somebody else if you’re trying to make money, and if you take it up with the same slavish, grind-it-out American way. I’ve been “working for myself” for some time and I’m starting to realize how easily I begin to treat this work that I love like work that I’d rather not do, and how I judge myself according to how productive I’ve been. I remember days when I worked in an office and how once in awhile I’d take an emotional health day and I’d wake up with a feeling of giddiness at the thought of an entire day to do whatever I wanted. Every day can be like that (yes it can, I promise you, dear hard-working skeptic that the world will go on and society will not crumble and people will not all get fat and sit in front of the TV all day, and if that’s what they really want to do then fine more room for the rest of us and less traffic on the road).

The internet and its incredible potential for allowing one to find one’s audience has become a big ol’ trap that can suck your soul and force you into an easily digestible and describable and manageable box (somebody’s #1 rule of becoming an online superstar is probably to “find your niche”).

The idea of an app for productivity is disgusting. The idea that people are spending hours MAKING apps for productivity is even worse—tinkering away at tools that bind people more tightly to their tasks and help them feel better about spending hours glued to a computer screen or checking boxes off of lists instead of snapping and throwing their computers out the window and running screaming to the beach or the woods or the river.

I can hear mother culture saying, “Dear slave: sure, you’re welcome to step out of the corporate box. Congratulations! Step right this way now and look here we’ve prepared this lovely “freelance” box for you and it involves more craft coffee and time sitting at cafes and you get a slimmer laptop and a spiffy set of business cards”. But you’re still in a box and you’re still eagerly trading your life force for green squares of paper and you can still only shine as brightly as the specific industry leader that you’re looking up to and you’re still not noticing the bird singing to the tree.

Like Monet, I want to paint like a bird sings; I want to do everything with open-hearted abandon and love and passion, and I want to do work because it is my work and nobody else can do it. That mockingbird was working as well as anybody I’ve ever seen, and he wasn’t doing it for money, and he certainly didn’t seem interested in an app for productivity.