I am officially wearing the hat of a twenty-somethings yuppie who drags herself to office, a hellish place where gold digging activities are held in exchange of youthful soul. Proof? I just don’t care anymore — apathy has taken hold of my soul.
Warning: existential crisis ahead
“Were you here at 10 today?”
I’m not comprehending my supervisor’s e-mails anymore. I came to work technically late today because I was not conscious that my work schedule had changed. It was like coming to work late because you weren’t aware about daylight savings. I know, pretty stupid.
Forever Snoozing
Today I tried to set an alarm two hours earlier than usual. You know, for yoga and stuff. I ended up waking like I usually do — borderline late.
Watching paint dry on a wall
Go figure.
It’s not the easiest, not the most pleasurable, to describe how apathy or how the void feels like. The will to explain or express is overwritten by a sense of apathy in the first place. Why bother? Perhaps the reason why I’m typing these words — a handful of why’s that “make” me a writer — is from an alternate world that I try to bring together, where apathy does not exist.
It’s my way of escaping the dungeon that’s my work station. By frittering away extra time by hitting these keys, I claim my time and space which have been loaned to my employer at a rate of $4 per hour.
In staring at a monitor screen where words of my own are displayed, I find agency. When there’s nothing but pending tasks, customers’ accounts, my supervisor’s assignments, and my work reports on a screen, it feels like I’m existing solely as a cog in the big machinery that’s this corporate business. I feel as inanimate as my desktop.
Creativity as living spirit
What’s been taken away from us * — from me — * is creative spirit, the kind that you associate with the humanities.
Earlier this week I received an e-mail from an art foundation that published one of my essays back in 2015. They’re re-publishing it in an online platform, and I was asked for permission and a brief bio. I replied with slight enthusiasm, under a mild anxiety that I was a person who left a small trail in the art world, full of potential, but ended up in a corporate prison cell.
These days I’m preoccupied with feelings of wanting breaking out, imagining myself leaving my 9 to 5 (which is in fact, 11 to 8) to write essays all day, all night. Maybe read books and throw in some visual design here and there. Start a small business. Do yoga (which I haven’t done in weeks) and actually pursue a life of passion — not some apathetic urban gold-digging routine.
Starving artist
For now, I can’t be a starving artist (unlike my brother) because I need to save bucks and support my family and self. I have some form of writing practice though — this blog is one — and been getting writing jobs here and there. Considering all, there isn’t much to complain about, especially when I reckon the soft pretzels that I have for breakfast nearly everyday.
What I am though these past few weeks is an artist in starving, craving to find art, wanting to write, desperately searching for a light that I can only find in stolen moments where I can put some words together and call it a humbly written piece.
#bleak
