Short, Short Story

Dec 05, 2007

My day is broken up into these tiny segments of time. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes, 20 minutes of distraction from the boredom that is working here. My job description is about as thrilling as a football field empty of fans or opposing teams or everything that makes a football field a football field. The football field could be legendary but if no one plays a game there, well, what’s the use. My life is much like that empty football field. I’m full of potential and lacking every opportunity to be whom and what and where I want to be.

Or am I? Am I really lacking opportunity? I mean here I am, young, 27, living in one of the largest metroplex areas in the country and I have no opportunities? How is that possible? Is it even true?

So as I said my work day is broken up into these tiny segments of time where I complete tasks and count down the hours and minutes until the day is done. This is not living, this is not even existing. This is worse because instead of merely existing I am complacent to change. Complacent to make anything different happen. Sure, I tell myself I don’t do anything to make a change because of my finances. I’m in too much debt to tour the world and do what it is that I really want to do. I tell myself that even if I had the financial freedom, would I even know what I would want to do? I tell myself that my family needs me. My boyfriend needs me. My friends... okay, so I don’t have too many of those.

When you’re a kid you dream about so many possibilities. You can become an astronaut, a ballerina, in short a star in someone’s world, if only your own. That kid in me hasn’t died. That kid in me still wants to dream and better yet realize a dream or two. That kid in me still wants to believe that anything is possible.

So what do I do now? Where do I go from here? Because I will tell you this, my life dream had nothing to do with a 9 to 5, a commute from hell and semi-satisfying relationships. I don’t have the answers because if I did, I wouldn’t be in this dilemma. I don’t have the answers except what I do know... what I have to know is that there is a place called more. There just has to be.

Very few people just hate their jobs. The hating the job is only really the symptom of a much larger problem. Redeem the time, seize the day – these are mantras that have a way of seeping into our subconscious in a way that won’t allow us to be satisfied with the 9 to 5. We are creatures of great expectation. And when great expectation becomes muddled by bills, schedules, time-off and a 401K after a while we become owned by 9 to 5 in a way that doesn’t just make us mere slaves, we become robots. Get up, go to work, go home and do it all over again is not all that we were created, fashioned formed and designed to become. Without knowing why, we all know that there not only must be more, there has to be more.

The sad part about all of this is the joy that is lost. Our lives were meant to have more meaning. We immunize ourselves to the idea that getting a degree, a job and retiring early is a feat of champions. We tell ourselves that this is enough. There are tales of great men and women that have managed to step out of the box of mediocrity and angst. Each of their lives tells a story of struggle and fortitude and the inability to quit at the desire that made them great.