8.13.13 (13 13..) 5:33 a.m.

 Lucky 13 strikes twice today, and so far it's a scattered start. Where is that clarity I felt yesterday? The sense of divine inspiration and driving purpose? Well, it's still there but it got temporary muddled by distractions. 

  

  You see this, this right here, is where it all comes into practice, all this bs I blabber on about every day about mindfulness and yoga and the like.. There is absolutely nothing different about this morning in comparison to yesterday. I may not have been so eager to get out of bed, because listening to a distant storm is pretty right-on in the wee hours before one needs to drag their corpse pose out of bed. 

  But, I did it. And at the same time too. Still have time to sip tea and write (blog), still got my stuff done I needed to; it FEELS different, though. Each day has a new feel to it, a new taste and texture and this one is no different but just what that is that is so different is anyone's guess. It's subtle, I know that much. Or, it could all just be a shift in perception; doesn't matter either way because the more you try and understand it, the less you do.

   Focus. Power through the mind chaos, you'll find clarity on the other side or, if you don't, at least you didn't just let yourself get stuck there and lost in your thoughts, not knowing which way to go. And this is just how it goes, ladies and gents: some days you have the talker on, some days you don't. Daily life is ever-changing in our hearts and minds, some days just find us a little lost. 

  

  There's tools at your disposal that help one center the mind, body and spirit and concentrate it on one direction, but you can make it through just fine without it; just keep that cool and never let yourself lose that awareness, of your breath and your actions/reactions. All you need is awareness.

  If you're lost or confused this day as I am, or any other, just accept it; put on your favorite song and crank it. Just ride the wave back into shore. It'll bring you back to yourself eventually. 

  It's not all sunshine and lollipops, and that is one huge misconception of the whole practice (of yoga/meditation), largely put on by our unrealistic societal expectations in seeking that "magic bullet" that is going to solve all our problems and make us happy and light and chipper every single day for the rest of our lives. YAY! Barf.

   It's also clever marketing. But it's false, and I'm telling you here not to buy in. Some days are just fucked, and while an ancient yogi would never tell it to you like that, this is the 21st century, and it's time to get real about things. 

  On a scattered note, I need to get going or MY day is going to be fucked. 

  Have a good one, and if you're not, just make the best of it, ok? ;)

8.12.13 20:28

  Same day, same place, different times, different space; head, that is. It seems a lot of my writing recently has been in the form of blog posts or scribbled notes, but not quite as much pen to paper contact as I'd like, not much journaling, either. I'm indifferent to it at this point but after reading Walden, by Henry David Thoreau the past few days, i can't help but wonder what that great American would think of this modern day.
  I mean, I honestly feel I'm about as rooted in classical literature as one could be, living in this day and age. I really think I was born two centuries late, as I'm much more at home in the 19th than this one. But that's not to say I completely abhor the modern world: I am more attached to my cell phone than I care to be, and would be lost without my MacBook Pro I'm writing you on now combined with WiFi.. and don't even TALK about how I'd get along without internet access.
  The whole of it is very bittersweet for me, and maybe for more than just myself, however, there seems to be a noticeable gap between our beliefs and our behavior, or at least just mine. In other words, I talk a lot of shit but at the end of the day, I still go home to my first world little house on the prarie existence, enjoying the finest things life has to offer. Do I feel guilty of this? Sure. But I'm also not gonna lie that I don't enjoy it.

  My guilt and feelings of discontent are philosophical, lacking a specific texture of emotion and it feels hollow sometimes. I feel guilty but would I give it all up willingly? It's doubtful, unless it was a catastrophic world event and shit was really starting to go down; then survival instinct kicks in and you act accordingly.
  I think about Christopher McCandless often, and especially now that I'm reading Walden, one of the many books he read before taking his journey. In case you don't know who the hell I'm talking about, look up Into The Wild.
  I envy Chris for what he did, for the courage and determination it must take to be a true soul rebel and go against the whole of society, to burn it all and leave no trace of yourself. You become a ghost, you cease to exist in exchange for the ability to truly live free, the way ( I can only surmise) we used to.
  It was stupid and careless and selfish, yes. He met a lot of kindred spirits along the way but died alone with slow poison flowing through his veins. Just another stupid kid. Or was he? I think he did what we all think of doing, wish we could actually pull off and do ourselves but that idea quickly gets dashed to pieces by what we call reality: Our job, our mortgage, etc.

  He took soul searching to the extreme, and I respect him for that but there is always a better way, and maybe not an easier way but a more practical one.

  Dislike it as I may, the real world is what we're stuck in, and it's what we have to deal with and make the best of. We do it every day, and maybe do not give ourselves enough credit. Some go home to escape it through their favorite tv show, some through drink or drugs, some through sweat and some through the mind. Whatever the means, the end is all the same, so, I guess that it once again all comes down to balance; that's all it ever is, a delicate balance and a power play between our hearts and our minds, our hopes and our fears and our setbacks and aspirations.
 
  The way out is through. Winston Churchill said "If you're going through hell, keep going", and that's about the long and short of it. What else can we do? I think a part of us all wants to return to a more natural state, my part wanting to have that homestead outside of the reach of humanity and its eternal ignorance and technology, let come what may and if I die, at least I first lived. But I'm not there, nor am I ready to be, and it's just not practical at this point. It is not impossible though; nothing is, and one day I hope that we all get to taste our own little slice of heaven on this mortal soil but until then, I guess you're stuck reading the words that I type and I'm stuck typing them, wishing for paper.

8.12.13 5:45 a.m.

  A morning spent with all the usual drudgery: alarm at 4:30, waking to turn that off, grabbing my phone and laying back down after I set the timer for 15 minutes, then awakening again to re-set it. It goes on like this all morning, usually until around 5:30, when I finally roll out of bed. Most mornings it works for me, others I can never seem to get ahead.
  I'm really not a morning person, suspect I never will be but I think it has to do more with the fact that my body is just not always ready to wake up so early; I make it wake up that early, so that I can do what I want and need to do in the mornings before work. Then, waking up early leads to the inevitable afternoon crash, which leads sometimes to a nap which leads to not being tired at the designated bed-time. It's a vicious cycle. Couple that with my insane desire to practice yoga this early and you have a recipe for failure, or at least grumpiness.
 
  But grumpiness is not what yoga is about; it's really counter-productive, actually. So now I'm starting to ease up off myself a little for not being totally ok with killing myself to get up super early and practice pre-sunrise yoga like all the sages of yesteryear. Maybe it just doesn't work for me. This morning gave me some insight into all this:  I woke the same as I always do, at 4:30. Proceeded with the alarm symphony but only set one this time, and woke up, for good, at quarter to five, nearly 45 minutes ahead of schedule.
  I got up, sat there for a bit and did some neck rolls, got my lungs used to me controlling their breathing patterns again and did some other stretches that felt necessary. Tied my hair back, cleaned the sleep from my eyes and went to the kitchen for the rest of my routine: hot water pot set to boil, let the pup out, get lunch and breakfast ready, feed the pup, make tea, shower, leave.
  Well, I had 15 extra minutes doing all this, so I decided to write. This might not seem like a big deal but it is immense, believe me. The morning is my favorite and most reflective time, and just being awake in it, alone, with only my thoughts and stillness, it is the perfect atmosphere for meditation, be it formal or informal. This morning I chose the informal route, and just considered the peace I felt within me and the rest of the slumbering world around me and soaked all that up. This is what it's all about, really. Postures, breathing, all that is just a means to an end. I got right to the core of it this morning, and I didn't even try to, and that's the key.
  The practice isn't lost on me, though; I'll come home and do my practice as usual but these 15 minutes I took to go into myself will set the tone and carry with me throughout the day today. I feel refreshed, and awake. I feel alive. Time to join the rest of humanity.

  Good Morning.

cookie.

  You want to be something you’re not. There’s always more you can do, a look you could pull off better if only you worked a little harder and spent a little more money on this or that; then you’d be complete.

  Reality tells you that some people just have good genetics. It also tells you most others have no life outside of the gym and have to count calories every single second of the day, to fit into their designer clothes and earn a paycheck. Reality goes even further to say that your time of external beauty is finite, and the window is shrinking every day.

  I don’t know when I started easing up on the reins a little bit but I’m pretty sure it was around the time that I started practicing yoga. Don’t worry, this isn’t a ‘this is why you should practice yoga’ thing, there’s already plenty of them and better written ones to get you on your way if that’s what you so desire; I’m simply relating a story. When I say you I mean I, but you may be able to relate.

So I like to run now. I picked up this habit trying to kick cigarettes, and it was effective. In many ways, I went from one addiction to another. I never knew I loved running and the freedom it gives one, not to mention the personal sense of accomplishment upon completing races.

  Two years ago, I started with a mile or two now I’m doing a race nearly every month, with two half-marathons and two Spartan races on deck, a Tough Mudder, five trail runs of varying lengths but none below 7 miles and I can’t believe this is still the same person who used to enjoy Chicken McNuggets and appeared to be allergic to anything green.

  By all outward appearances, one would think that I’m pretty healthy, pretty accomplished and driven. All of these are true but I still have some nasty habits I’m trying to kick. Like my ego and trying to control everything. You research prana and pranayama extensively and you work on your control issues by controlling your breathing. It’s funny, you can laugh. No one can say anything to me I haven’t already thought myself, and I’m painfully aware of my own contradictions so take your best shot. I probably still won’t be mad. Impressed, rather, for you noticing something I overlooked.

  Before I got on the yoga tip, I did what many other spiritually and philosophically-attuned young individuals do and I experimented with psychedelics; Mushrooms, to be exact. I’m not here to go over the finer points of their usefulness or go off the deep end of drugged out euphoria though, so let me just say that they made me aware of certain things.It might be more accurate to say it allowed me to become aware of certain things, like my own negative aspects i.e. the things you really don’t like about yourself and try to cover up or control through some other means or validation. Me? I’m a little obsessive about my health so even when I did smoke, I still exercised regular and ate whole foods.

  It’s a little humorous, in a darkly kind of cynical way, that I never saw the forest for the trees. All these healthy things I was doing for myself just became an addiction of their own. When does health food become unhealthy? When you begin to stress yourself out over whether or not you should eat something and you begin to dread eating because you’re so confused as to what’s even good for you anymore.

  You take other people’s opinions in account over your own. Your opinions are now a reflection of their own and you don’t know who you are or what you even believe in.

I think this is a common problem, especially among the more neurotic of us, the chronic worry-warts and do-goods. It’s ok. What is not, however, is letting our own bad behaviors keep beating ourselves over the head. Awareness is the start but to really start feeling a difference you need to lighten up a little. Know and accept that there’s a lot of f’d up things in the world that you won’t be able to do much about.

  People suck most days. Again, can’t change this but we can learn to live with it better when we let ourselves realize that maybe the whole world is just having a bad day and how does that affect us? There are obvious exceptions; I mean, I don’t know how calm the Buddha would be if he were actively taking a nose dive in a plane about to kiss the ground at terminal velocity but supposedly he would be ok with it. I’m not there yet, nor do I think 90% of us ever will be, realistically speaking.

  For now, let’s just start with accepting the little things about us we may not like but are a part of us, regardless and see where it goes from there. The note in my fortune cookie reads: “You cannot run away from yourself, you’re always right behind you.”

  That’s one smart cookie.

What's it all about?

  So if you've been following me or my blog, you've no doubt heard me throw the word yoga and meditation around a lot, maybe even spiritual or spirituality. What, though, do these words mean? 

  I'd wager that most everyone's initial thoughts are some skinny Indian dude contorted like a pretzel with weird paint on his head, or a Buddhist monk sitting in lotus position chanting OM. Well, you pretty much nailed it but most times that's where our western understanding of these esoteric practices end. When you begin to dig deeper, you begin to realize that you know nothing at all about it. The purpose of this post is not to delve into the rich history of the practice but instead just clear the air on why one might choose to practice, so as to shake off that "cultish" vibe it's seemed to acquire over the years.

  I got into the game late; just less than three years ago but yoga had caught my attention and curiosity long before that. Like most, I thought it was weird and cult-like and I didn't really understand it - but I've always had a penchant for pursuing a level of understanding in that which I do not. So, I waited and watched, and one day it seemed right to pick up a mat and some videos and give it a try. 

  At that point in my life, I was fresh off quitting smoking and looking to get my body back in peak physical condition, so it started as exercise, and nothing more. I didn't like or fully understand the chanting and prayer and to this day still find it slightly distasteful (I mean, I wasn't born in India and I can't read Sanskrit, much less pronunciate it properly so it seems a bit contrived to me) but I would still put my hands in prayer and just bow to that silence and inner peace I was filled with; It's a very rare thing. For anyone, I imagine.

  

  I continued in this way, following the same Shiva Rea video for months, just getting the basics down, as well as the P90x yoga video, which I was drawn to for it's intense level of athleticism and strength. Shiva is great but I'm a bit too dark and moody to stomach all her flowery prose all the time; it got a little cloying. However, she is a marvelous teacher with a deep knowledge and understanding of the subject and so I respect her for that. 

  This eventually led me to find my one true love: Ashtanga. One thing you do need to know about yoga is it doesn't matter what school of thought or "style" you practice, the end goal or result is always the same: enlightenment, a complete union of mind, body and soul and all that snazzy shit. Yeah, it gets pretty deep, and I know that's why so many either don't know where to start or just get overwhelmed and do more mental harm than good to themselves. One thing is for sure though, whether you believe in the mumbo jumbo or not: it's a very powerful practice, and if you're just doing it for the physical aspect, then you will see gains in every part of your life, not just muscle tone-wise.

  It doesn't matter that I'm diving deeper into the classic texts, trying to get a handle on my understanding of it, it doesn't matter how much anyone knows or who has on the hottest new yoga pants because when we come to the mat, were all equal. We're all dirty and ugly and flawed inside but we go there because we want to cleanse ourselves, purify ourselves. We want to try and be ok with ourselves, and it won't always be easy but it will always be good, even if it doesn't seem so right away. 

  Don't let the charlatans and snake oil peddlers fool or sell you, because chances are they know less about it than you do. The practice is not equatable to status in life; it gives you no advantage over anyone else whatsoever. It does, however, give you a greater understanding of yourself and so this affects the way in which you interact with the world in many different subtle or not-so-subtle ways. It's not just postures, it's practicing to be a better person, a better human being. Most importantly, it's for all of us, regardless of race or creed.

  So my friends, I invite you to indulge your curiosity, if there is such a curiosity, and pick up a mat or don't, and try some yoga. Try different things until you find a style or teacher or method that resonates with you and begin your own practice of being a better person; just be patient with yourself because nothing happens overnight and there's a lot of material out there to sift through.

  Go out and dig deep my friends, find the hidden gems that others missed; give your own meaning to your yoga practice, or, just practice being a better person without the contortions.

An Office Worker pt.2

6. 

Slave or not isn’t really relevant anyway. THEY always find a way to get to you in the end, THEY being the little voice(s) inside your own head…

There was only ever one voice I heard tell me that I'm not good enough, and it was my own. No one ever told me not to reach for the stars, to find my own happiness or live this life the way I truly need to to let me be me; if they did, I never heard a word of it because I was too busy listening to my own self tell me these things. 

To some, I imagine this may seem a bit woe-is-me; that's fine. You can think that if you want, I don't blame you. If I didn't know me I might think the same. But I do know me very well, so if that is how it sounds then thats just how it sounds, but to me it's very different. 

Perhaps you don't have this problem and were blessed with high self-esteem and decisiveness, perhaps you're not so introverted and neurotic as to fly into a wild sort of thought paralysis over very simple things. 

These tangents I go off on mean nothing, but I feel them so viscerally; I feel the anguish, the emotional turmoil I create in myself over what? Speculation, on my part. I can't say with any certainty that anyone in my life would react to the news of me leaving with shame or disgust the way I envision it. I am my own worst enemy, truly, and it's this constant inertia that contributes to my intense melancholia. Each day I'm becoming more of what I hate about the world. I’m a job with benefits, financial security but none of it means a damn thing. I'm ungrateful in my first world kind of way.

I am, however, not as selfish as I once thought. I hurt so because every day I give more of myself away; to my parents, to my friends, to the people I work with and for. I kill a little bit more of myself by modeling myself to the image I think they desire. It's not me. It never was. This is not something you can hide, deny or run from for any length of time. You can't run away from yourself; you're always right behind you. 

So this is me now, and I'm learning this, but nothing ever gets any easier; not that I want it to, though. I just want the peace of mind and trust of my own heart so that I can live guilt-free in my own image. 

7.

  My own image consists of sexual tension and intelligent emotional reserve. Cougars like me. I like me too, what a pity. It looks so easy in the movies, with the partner of choice already on their back, legs spread, anticipating. It takes a lot of work to get to that point, work I am not as good at as I would like. Saves on trips to the clinic, however. 

  It’s not all that bad being sexually frustrated; some esoteric practices will even tell you how abstaining from releasing the sexual current will do all sorts of nifty and beneficial things for you. I believe most of them but they’re really just full of shit and need to get laid themselves. Too many headstands leech all that semen into the brain…

Watching porn on my phone just to stay awake.. Nodding.. Feeling the flow of currents I’ve been instructed to suppress. Time for a headstand.

  Ineffective technique results in an awkward boner while inverted. ‘This is therapeutic’, I think.. 

  This is what happens when you realize you will never live up to your ideals. Options present themselves and avenues open up, almost magically. Try door number 2.. Oops! Just excuse her, she’s breast-feeding. But she’s.. Doing… a….. Headstand? America’s got talent, sure enough; if you need more proof, there’s a television show, must be true then.

8.  

Is any of it supposed to make sense? Who came along and decided to start making things orderly anyhow.. These fucking fascists are trying to kill my creativity, leaving me late and locked in back here with a dangerously flatulent mentally ill man. Nudity is the least of anyone’s concerns.

Normally I carry around my fancy little notebook but this creature is different; it prefers chaos to order, pocket-mangled pieces of printer paper to 90g Clairefontaine, gel to fountain pens. It’s raw, there’s something even slightly devious in it, like lusting someone hard imagination-style when you’re sitting right next to them in a crowded room. It’s ok, we all do it; consider it a compliment. You know what they say, great minds fuck each other. Or if they don’t, they really should.

Boredom. Lability. 

I can’t even sit down right, I’m so loaded with bullshit ideas filling this drunk head of mine, even though I haven’t had a drink in days. I’m afraid my spine might break under the pressure, snapped clean in twice or thrice by the weight of ideas sloshing around up there, best to remain standing and at full attention. 

I’m asexual now, that tends to happen over long periods of not getting it on. It’ll pass. 

Finally the ideas let me rest my ass for a little and I sink back in my chair, smoking a mental cigarette. Great minds fuck each other..

9.

 Lunch is over now, so it’s time to drag my carcass all the way back across the hall, resemble someone who is actually doing something other than nothing. I don’t know if anything ever gets done, really; it just seems that way, playing a part in some grand conspiracy straight out of the X-Files. 

“The case of the disappearing work”. 

 -Did you do it? I did it. No you didn’t. I did it. Where is it? It’s right.. Shit. You didn’t do it. I     didn’t do it. 

-If you didn’t do it, someone else must have done it. Nah, just let it for tomorrow. I might be dead tomorrow. You’re dead today so what does it matter? I’ll let it for tomorrow.

Tomorrow: “Fuckin bastards always leave this shit piled up here for me. Sick of it!”

  Another day of more of the same: dodging authority, escaping responsibility. It’s not that I’m opposed to any of these things, it’s just that I don’t give two shits enough to go out of my way to do it for a system that doesn’t give two shits for me. Unfortunately, most people have adopted this mindset and so no one wants to give a shit about the no shit-givers. The beatings will continue until morale improves, a sign once said. When you put it like that, the beatings will never stop.

10.

  Finally made it through the day and out the door. It’s good to see everyone else sharing the same enthusiasm as me for leaving. Some stay and slowly commit themselves for eight more hours at a time, securing their failing health and mental status. It’s pretty bad when you have to go to work to escape your home life. Just saying. I really do feel bad.

  Me, I just go from one plane of tedium to another, different one. Most people do, I guess. Sure, there’s lots of motion and goings on but for the most part it’s just the second wave of animated boredom. It only really hits you when you stop to think about it but it’s not so bad, at least there’s more enjoyable sources of entertainment at home; we can console or kill ourselves in any manner or speed with many methods available and easy payment options, to boot. It’s win-win.

 Me, I choose to drive myself slowly insane by degrees of creativity. Sometimes I listen to angry music and give myself miniature concussions by chronic head-banging, sometimes I listen to nothing but the rats gnawing away at my own grey/gray matter. Most times, though, it’s a combination of the two. 

 I’m allergic to television, seem to have picked up the condition sometime during young adulthood, though watching other people travel enthralls me. I like to fill my head with knowledge of places I’ll probably never see anyway, but that’s depressing. I don’t really need to go there anyway because my heart and mind have been there, tasted the food and the culture; a part of me is there already. To travel in the physical sense seems a tad redundant, not that redundancy has ever stopped me from doing anything.

  After feeding my travel tapeworm, I lock myself away in my room and thoughts for a few hours before bed; reading, writing, recounting, discounting. 

 Things start shutting down, gears grinding to a halt..

  I fill my lungs with some form of contentment and let my dreams sort out the rest. 

Goodnight.

An Office Worker pt. 1

1. 

  By the time my alarm screeched, my uncle was dead. Well, he wasn’t really dead, I found out later, but it sure seemed that way; I’ve always had strange dreams, so to call them weird is redundant. What else is new? Mornings have never been a favorite, and there's always a bit of grumbling and a lot of negative internal monologue on the drive in to work. “What grand conspiracy is this, and whose ingeniously devious idea is it?” I wonder; it's disappointing I hadn’t thought of it myself.

2. 

  The phone rings, something about the tone on the other end of the line makes me want to curl up and die but it's probably just the fact that it's a Monday and I'm not sleeping in bed. I think of Office Space. I think of Fight Club. Then I stop thinking. This, I feel, is a sorely overlooked talent in people, that by all outward appearances you can have a conversation with someone but they’re not hearing a word of it; they’re off snowboarding and probably having sex or whatever it is that goes on inside a person’s head when they space out but it’s usually better to remain in the dark about such things. You can read subtle body language and recognize cues in the voice, seemingly placed there purposely so that the other person can feel validated that their words are being followed and assimilated. A primate could do it. That’s where I come in.

  With the aid of my opposable thumbs, I place the receiver back on its base, record and report the information given me and proceed back to my corner to hide; or think I can, anyhow. It gets me through the day to imagine a cloaking device shielding my work area, keeping me safe from prying eyes. I think of Predator. 

  How come we don’t have cloaking technology yet? Or do we? I’m sure it’s confidential. I don’t work for the government, though: I work for the crazies. The patients are here, too. I know it’s not PC to say such things but whatever appropriate catch phrase they’re using these days escapes me at the moment. Mentally ill seems accurate, or handicapped; that’s how I feel walking out of here so I’ll go with that.

  The thing about working in a psychiatric facility is that the lines of sanity blur and soon enough, you're milling around rather dumbly in another world that doesn't exist outside of your own mind. There's a good chance you have a touch of it already, for even considering working in such a place. It goes to say that the staff is more looped than the patients but this creates an interesting dynamic; It’s funny, but it hurts to keep laughing at it. Would it kill a person to just act fucking normal for once? Normal. Right. Whatever that is. 

  My name is not an incredibly important fact; I exist, like everyone else, even if I do try to deny this fact most days. You can only rationalize denial for so long; after that, you can't help but notice it gets a little ridiculous (not that I haven't tried, though). I am employee #676433, for short; aka Shane. Lol. Jk. It's a very abbreviated society we live in, there's never enough time to form even words anymore, and that makes me feel rather indifferent. Whatever is going on out there affects me in only an abstract way and in a detached manner; it seems irrelevant, certainly doesn't seem real. People give such strange looks when you inform them  of your unwillingness to stay up on current events, like you're some kind of fucking alien or ignoramus. Well, I'm not but reserve the right to think this of you by your desire to "stay in the loop", and if in doing so it doesn't leave you bitter or filled with hatred, I commend you. 

3.

  It's necessary to live two lives; one for business and one for everything else. People need their vices, please don't take it away from them; office life is bad enough, they shouldn't have to be subjected to dealing with shit without the help of some kind of slow poison. 

  You're stuck in a cage with the best and worst in people for eight hours a day, five days a week and sometimes on weekends. You have no say. 

  You have even less to say due to the knowledge of its uselessness; to call it desperation is an understatement. 

  Some days you just want to hurt people, but you don't. And you won't, though some do and you always seem appalled at learning of workplace violence, as if you're somehow above it. Fantasy can be its own slow poison. Whatever gets you through the day without a body count and/or criminal charges. 

4.

  There's a fire in your belly; don't just do something, stand there. It's ok, someone else will know what to do so you rely on that faint glimmer of hope to carry you through all this. Another day, dripping with hope and reeking of aspirations to reach the stars, crushed yet again under the oppressive foot of the demigod you call your boss. And it's never just one, is it? There seems to be an endless line of command, people controlling the people in control. Everybody's looking for something but there's nothing to be found; not where they're looking, anyhow. 

  Authority only makes you look silly. It means nothing. Treat me like a human being and you will have my respect, despite our differences. The best one in power is the one who doesn't have the power, at all. You're swimming with sharks every day, and there's blood in the water. Your blood. Swim faster. Better yet, stop moving and let your self sink to the bottom, this way you're forgotten and excused from daily living. 

5.

  So you're wondering, "if you hate your job so much, then quit. get a new one.". I don't hate it, quite the contrary. I hate the realization of the futility of my existence that it imposes on me every day, and that's just not something you can escape. It's all made up like bad fiction, this work "ethic". Sure, I have morals too. And responsibilities and obligations and everything else we made up and strapped to ourselves as some unquestionable law, but the whole thing is just funny to me. It seems more like voluntary slavery. Worse, obligatory. And this is our life.

  It's expected of us to show up and possess superhuman abilities to summon smiles and ooze jolliness through our pores like some bloated toad. This all seems real, but every once in a while we're faced with something that slaps us square in the mouth with a glove and challenges us to a duel: to look inside ourselves and find the missing link, to understand that this is not all that there is, that there is something out there and within us that makes sense, and that is what we must do. But then comfort sets in, and suddenly, slowly, the image gets further out of reach and then you're 72 and your health is failing because you ate shitty food and drank shitty drinks and were just not nice to yourself. When you retire, all the ones who don't care about you, never did, and some who really do will come congratulate you and wish you well on your way. On the drive home you have a massive heart attack and the car you're not capable of steering anymore causes an accident, permanently disfiguring someone else you never even met, whose life you also just ruined and inherited all your bad karma. It's fucked up the way things happen.

  It's a job, it's not your life; it's not even real, no matter how long you hold your breath or cross your fingers. Somewhere, someone is creating their life right now; drafting their own great spiritual architecture in their own image. They're not a slave and neither are you.