Back in the last millennium, I was almost sure the world would end at year 2000. Call it impressionable youth. I had already calculated it in my mind: I’d be a fresh grad from high school, finally have my own car, take advantage of my new found freedom, and, while I had nothing to hope for yet, prepare myself for Armageddon.
Obviously, nothing happened, and life went on as usual. So I found myself suddenly having to decide what to do with my life, half the time cursing the lack of an end to the world that royally screwed up my well planned, short-lived youth.
So I clung to whatever came within proximity, hoping the end that was promised me would come soon. Years passed, and I know find myself a writer, re-writing the short-lived youth with new twists and turns, but short-lived nonetheless. Their open-endedness reflected my own cluelessness about the future. I couldn't end them because I myself hadn't written my own ending either.
It’s odd that I’ve made a career out of something I just used to pass the time with. And if you look close enough, they're just as open-ended and full of possibility. And I’ve learned to look farther into the future too, with the impending possibility of death becoming less and less of a factor. But it's all claws scratching on sand.
Whether it was pessimism or cowardice back then, has turned into a faded shade of old photographs. I didn’t want to grow up. There was so much that needed to be done, so much I still had to learn, and an enthusiasm and perpetual ignorance that I wasn’t too keen on giving up.
I just didn’t want the responsibility. But the recent circumstances have provided a hefty shove. It’s the same push that keeps me at my desk, staring into a screen I used to procrastinate away from. It’s not about earning the greens. I just want to get back to that nexus, when and where everything didn’t need a choice. It just so happens that that process will require a hefty amount of those green backs.
Call me childish and I might even be flattered.
The beauty of capitalism is that, one way or another, it's going to suck you in.
4 comments:
I feel the same way as well. Not that life before was any less complicated, but rather one didn't have to worry about what the future would bring (or how you'd pay for it). - Charles
I'd like to say I enjoy the working life, but it's that constant need for more cash thrust upon you by pressures and increased needs that makes it a bitch.
Spot on, Iggy. I was looking forward to the end of the world, too, I was thinking about how lucky I was to catch it, and then the millenium came, and I went to college, and --
Holy crap, what am I doing with my life??? (panic wave)
Thank God people are finally commenting on my blog!
Thought I was writing in gibberish or something.
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