I think this not only because today I brought my belongings over to my new apartment.

I think this because as I was driving down my much hated 101 freeway, the same freeway I drive on every morning for at least 1 hour with the sun in my eyes, I felt the haze in my brain clear out.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon and the sun was shining behind me. I was alone in my mom's SUV, with the boxes I packed, moving to an apartment where I hold the lease.

As I passed through Calabasas I looked to my right at the hills green from the rain and all the trees that I never have time or enthusiam or patience to look at. The freeway looked not like the rat-race track I frequent 5 days weekly but an actual road that PEOPLE use to get places that they actually WANT to go, rather than EMPLOYEES commuting to their OFFICES. I became extremely aware of myslf "smelling the roses."

I used to beleive that I was a person who would always "smell the roses" and who would never sucumb to the work week, time standards, traffic, compulsive record keeping and anything else that I know spend at least 50-55 hours per week doing. I am surprised now to find myself at 23 a workaholic made up of fear.

Lauren and I used to play a game with the kids in our neighborhood called "last piece of meat in the world." The game involved viciously clawing away at one another in the name of gaining control of a raft or something other floating toy. It was an every man for himself kind of thing otherwise we would have called in "king of the mountain."

These days we refer to our states of employment as "the meat." We worry constantly that soon our "meat" will be taken from us. We deny any human emotion we have in us for fear that it will interfere with the status of our "meat."

Of course we are not the only ones. Most people are the same way, I know this because I see them on the freeway next to me at 8 o'clock in the morning, fighting through 40 miles of cement and machinery to spend their 8 hours.

And though I would obviously prefer not to have to do to work, I deeply wonder what I would do instead.

My "free" time now is decided by my paid time and in that "free" I deliberately do every I am discouraged from doing during my paid time, in some passive-agressive act of rebellion. I nearly refuse to shower on the weekends, I definately will not lift a finger around the house, I WILL drink too much alcohol, I won't go to sleep until I nearly pass out from exhaustion. In short I am deliberatly unproductive.

And that is why I wonder what I would do if I spent my time not working at a job that I NEED, not worrying about money and making it, and just did whatever I wanted.

Even with this new apartment that will eliminate my commute I am thinking this extra free time will be my renaissance.

Who knows what could happen next...I really think that today was the first day of the rest of my life.

11 January 2003 - 7:52 PM

previous * next