When staring into a Xeroxing, data-entry, dim-office-lighting abyss, it occurs to me that people live for the moments in between these many tedious ones from 9-5. They live for time spent with friends and family, out in the open air—sans cubicles (or cubes, as some people call them, which to me just makes them even sadder)—for music and running and laughing and watching Casablanca with their roommates and a bottle of wine. They live for all that, and more, and that’s what gets them through the day, knowing that eight or nine hours from now, they will be able to recharge and ready themselves for another day. But just like batteries, we wear thin as we continually recharge and recharge and recharge. Eventually someone will put us in the metaphorical rubbish bin of life.
This seems such a waste to me— I don’t want to live for the moments in between anything, let alone a job. I want to live for every moment. Having to temper my expectations, dreams, and feelings just to get myself through the day without having a mindblowing meltdown is certainly consistently challenging, but it is also sad. I hope to one day (soon!) find a career in which I can engage myself as fully as I might in my favorite new book, or at a Trivia Night, or in conversation with my friends and family. All those 9-5’s add up, it seems, to a lot of mis-appropriated time, if what you are doing isn’t deeply intertwined with your passions and aspirations.
Thoughts like this are probably what leads to my freakish, panic-induced nightmares in which I am stuck in an old office, lit only by flickering flourescent bulbs, with no windows, cubicles covering every inch of the floor, and NO. COFFEE.
