Rant

Being self-employed is infinitely more fulfilling than working full-time at a well-paid office in an industrial park, sitting in a dusty cubicle, silently wasting the precious moments of what should be my life, as I was doing just over a year ago.



It was just before I quit that job that I wrote this:

I am so bored. There is nothing on TV. Violence is not the answer but it is definitely part of the equation. Sometimes having nothing to be legitimately angry about is itself enough to incite anger in an entire generation of restless youth. The kids today have no Great War, no oppression in this country. We want for nothing, and our only desire is for desire itself. We are numbed by over-stimulation and unforgiving of our undeserved good fortune. So we lash out. We are often aimless, irritable, self-righteous. We are desperate for a reason to paint ugly words on signs to be broadcast on the evening news, to stand up for something we believe in. But we believe in nothing. We are beyond Atheism. It’s not that God is dead, it’s just that we believe that WE no longer mean anything. Perhaps the human race is an abandoned experiment. We want to stand out but we are beige people living in a gray world. There is nothing to clash with. The Establishment no longer pushes back. The Man is no longer a separate entity. It’s way past 1984. We are walking on clouds. We are free. Yet we still long to rage and break away and be the New and Improved generation. To know more, see more, be more. So it infuriates us to realize that posterity will not remember this, our time, as a time of change to greatness. We have no heroes because heroism is irrelevant. Expectations have been lowered. The lights have been dimmed to save energy. Blending in, keeping quiet, working hard – this does not mean conforming, which is no longer even an option. It just is. We want so badly to have our fifteen minutes, to prove ourselves worthy. We whine about self esteem. We are a youth who have still to grow up, but we refuse to until we have experienced our deserved cathartic tantrums, our rebellions, until we can light a fire that will keep us warm well into old age. If we are not given the opportunity, we will start a war to get it. I wish I had been born a hundred years ago. Give me darkness, give me hunger, give me fear and uncertainty. I need something to hold onto. Something real.

I am so glad to be free of the treadmill of corporate nothingness that depressed the hell out of me. I may not be rolling in the dip, but I now have purposeful work to do that motivates me to strive for what seem to be endless possibilities in my career. Without being stuck in a dead-end job, and being independent, and free of the daily bombardment of advertisements, I feel optimistic about the chance to pursue things I wouldn't have even considered last year. Plus I get the benefit of tax write-offs.