Here I go.

I haven't been well, physically. Every morning as my consciousness bludgeons my cells into a waking state, my body pleads: don't go to work today. Please do not make me spend another day in close contact with a computer, sitting at a desk, forcing all my thoughts through a corporate funnel. The desk, the lights, the sound, the smells, the pain in my arms and wrists, my hips and neck, my guts. My eyesight, my vision. My imagination, my well being, my health. I'm used up. 

I'm not going to try to tell you it's as bad as working on an oil rig or a garbage truck; that would be absurd, and stupid. You can make a joke about a tiny violin, and I can tell you to go fuck yourself. Millions of people in this country and around the world work in environments like mine, which are essentially human holding pens, the homo sapien equivalent of rows upon rows of chickens and turkeys in cages, beaks removed, shut away from sunlight and fresh air, force fed toxic shit until they no longer have any vitality, and are consumed. 

I'm tired of telling myself or being told to be grateful, that it's really a good job, that it affords me all sorts of flexibility and benefits, it pays the bills, yadda blah blah. That's all true, but it doesn't matter, when the real bottom line is that there are not enough hours in a day for me to make up for what I lose each day I go to work. I'm tired of hearing myself or someone else tell me that if I don't like it, I should just change it, as if it's just that easy to come up with a whole new occupation of your own volition, or build an entirely new career in your mid-40s, on your own. Yes, this is my fault, for not knowing better, for not finishing college, for not being more ambitious and smart and creative, for not being braver, for not choosing something better for myself, and I can't deny that I am almost entirely responsible for the circumstances I now find myself in. I can and do accept that and I am living with it, every day. But just barely.

Ironically, the song stuck in my head this morning goes something like "every morning there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's four-post bed"...Argh, thanks alot, sub-consciousness! That's really cute. And yeah, I still have a few fragments of hope and some ideas left, some of which I am developing. Attitude adjustment in progress...