WHO AM I, AND WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

I have looked into the abyss, and the abyss has looked into me. Neither liked what we saw. - Brother Theodore

As I sit in my cubicle, staring at my monitor, hot cup of coffee in hand, looking up the latest business news on Bloomberg, a routine I’ve become accustomed to every working day for some time now, but one I still approach with daily lethargy, my buttoned up collar tightly caressing my neck as though, I’m primed for the hangman. There’s an opaque blandness to all of it and it’s a feeling I am yet to become accustomed to. I feel bereft of purpose here, daily pangs of emptiness plague me, I yearn for more, to feed a passion, to matter, to truly contribute, I yearn…for fulfillment. I should not be here, I don’t belong here, I feel stifled and that neck tie becomes tighter by the minute, I’m a square peg in a round hole.

Like most of my peers I work at a white collar job, earn a decent pay slip  and with some dedication, commitment and a dash of sycophancy  could embrace this humdrum existence and live out a comfortable and good life, but then again,  what is a comfortable and good life? As opposed to an exciting and great one.

Life is relative in every way and a ‘comfortable’ life for me could very much be exciting for another, we’re all wired differently; each with our idiosyncrasies and interests. I learned a long time ago that you could work, train or study as much as others but only true passion sustains…without it, the combined tides of time and apathy will topple you.

Most people get jobs to fulfill the needs of now, desperate to make ends meet or not having any real ideas of what they really want to do, either from a lack of imagination or a lack of opportunity (or both). We are sometimes shoe horned into careers, disciplines etc. by society, environment, family and ultimately ourselves, justifying our choices with half-hearted phrases like ‘At least it's better than nothing’, ‘Half bread is better than none’etc., rarely asking why we can’t have a whole loaf?

For some who need to be pushed, this turns out to be a revelation as they are ultimately nudged into fields and lives best suited for them while for others…it’s less than satisfying. It’s easy to blame parents and society for where I’ve found myself but that blame game has been over flogged, I could have said No!, But it was easier to be obedient and succumb to my parents' life plans for me, and honestly I really didn’t have a clue about what I really wanted to become. Now I am confined to the drone life, repeating mundane tasks almost as efficiently as CP30 but far less excitingly, I find myself simply counting the days till the next pay check comes in to give some respite.

I’m dead! I must be, because if living is the opposite of death I most certainly am not doing the former, and until I find a real thing to do and stop pretending to do something, living, true living will evade me, it is harder to commit where there is no passion; to a career, a project, a relationship…without it, without passion to reinforce your desires you would be as a piece of paper on a windy day, without roots and thrown wherever fate desires.

I feel a lot like Jim Bennett from The Gambler, there’s all this potential but there is no real outlet for it, this is captured oh so perfectly in Mark Wahlberg’s minute long rant to Brie Larsson;

‘The only thing worth doing is the impossible. Everything else is gray. You're born... as a man... with the nerves of a soldier, the apprehension of an angel, to lift a phrase, but there is no use for it. Here? Where's the use for it? You're set up to be a philosopher or a king or Shakespeare, and this is all they give you? This? Twenty- odd years of school which is all instruction in how to be ordinary... or they'll fucking kill you, they fucking will, and then it's a career, which is not the same thing as existence... I want unlimited things. I want everything. A real love. A real house. A real thing to do... every day. I'd rather die if I don't get it. Did I just say that out loud?’

I look forward to the day I’d be having fucking great days at ‘work’, but it won’t come from where I am now, No, for that, I'd have to go beyond comfortable and good, taking a leap of faith to finding myself and being where I want to be.

 ‘To be creative, go beyond what everyone else says is crazy. And to be crazy, go beyond what everyone else says is creative. You're crazy and you're lost in the woods. But if you aren't creative, you're stuck in traffic with everybody else – James Altucher