Tales From The Other Side

Mar 20, 2010 10:37

It's not like i haven't had a job for the last three years already, but I use that word, "job," in the loosest sense of the word. I'm not an employee there, I have co-workers that I've never seen, and sometimes I feel like I should have a license or something for doing what I do.

I've mentioned this to people before, but spoken about vaguely like that, it sounds likely that I'm an escort or something. One of those well-paid, work for a few hours and have rent, monthly STD checks type of escorts. Glorified prostitution.

That's not it, obviously, but it's never felt like much of a job. I kept my college tassel hanging from my rearview mirror ever since I graduated. Kept it there when I was in grad school, kept it there when I interned places, kept it there when I landed my glorified prostitution gig. I told myself I'd take it down and throw it in this secret chest of special shit (TM) when I got a "real" job. I'm a little torn on whether or not the new thing I've been doing really is a "real" job. I've felt very sure that a real job involved these things: 1) SECURITY, 2) BENEFITS, 3) ENOUGH MONEY TO HAVE A "REAL" LIFE. This new job, if it came along with Real Job Rule #1, would provide rules #2 and #3, but it doesn't. Temporary, six months, and it's not terrible and I don't hate it, but fuck. So the tassel remains.

I want to know, really want to know if this is what it feels like to grow up for real. If it means having to feel tired all the time, having to feel like any amount of time I spend trying to relax or have fun is wasted time. Time I could be sleeping or being productive (reading, writing). Everything feels like a chore, like something that must be done. When did life start feeling this way? When did everything, all at once, stop becoming fun? Is that what growing up does to you? I don't mean putting away childish things and all that shit. I played four hours straight of video games yesterday. I think about writing fanfic every spare minute of the day (and what a fucking curse it is, ideas with no inspiration, knowing I need to do something and feeling it like a fucking death sentence). I lie in bed and think of Axel's face and see the lines of him and think about how it feels to write about how he looks. I do... childish things. I don't know what I'm trying to say other than it's not like I'm reading the fucking Wall Street Journal and mainlining coffee while staring at CNN and going to office mixers to chat and brag amiably about my stupid, sterile existence. I do the same shit I've always done, but now everything means NOTHING. I need this job, need it, but is this the price that I have to pay? Whine whine whine whine whine. I'd rather fucking kill myself than feel this disgusted about existing. If this is all there is to look forward to? The slow and steady decline of what it means to give a fuck, to live hard and love hard. Putting me in a fucking cubicle is putting a candle under a jar. I'm not bright and shining or resplendent or whimsical or anything romantic and cute, but if you put me under a fucking jar, I'm going to go out. You don't need to be dead to be gone, don't need to be in the ground or ashes to be no one, care about nothing. Rant rant rant rant rant.

Usually when I sit here and type all this empty bullshit, my heart constricts and feels very smothered in my chest. But do you know what I feel now? Nothing. I feel nothing. Just words that are the illusion of what I feel. At least there used to be some sort of correlation, but now there is nothing. Desiccated.

Anyway, the part that anyone gives a fuck about: I wrote and finished Hibari/Ryohei for kokanshu, but it was actual shit, so I started over. Everything I write now sounds like soulless bullshit, so it's best if I wait it out or find some drugs to smoke, because that's the only way I foresee any of this changing. Luckily, drugs will be ingested next weekend, and hopefully I'll fuck up my brain chemistry enough to see some real results on the page. You think I'm kidding, but where the fuck do you think any of this comes from? You think it comes from staying home every night and reading? Go out, fuck a stranger. See how much better your writing gets.

Words of wisdom, kids. Stay in school. Never try to work two jobs unless you have a death wish.
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