lawyerville...

is where I'm heading with this work schedule. 13 hours today, 8am-9pm, with no lunch and no breaks, save one cigarette break i deemed necessary for sanity after the shit hit my face. or was that the fan?

this is exactly why i didn't go to law school - didn't want to spend my late 20's working long hours hunched over a computer. sometimes i think i should've taken that road to riches and soul-lessness; what do i have to show for not, really?

have i adventured overseas? nope.

traipsed around europe, central america, anywhere? uh-uh.

just business tripped across the states to places like Marble Falls, Texas, and Joplin, Mississippi, and taken small vacations home, and camping, and to hawaii a few times before i had killed my hawaiian's love for me, before i had slain it, and her, and myself with loving indifference, with constance and poverty.

and now my corner cubicle, with its vast beautiful view of sun and trees and parking lots isn't a view but a reflection - at 9pm the darkness outside is overpowered by the fake light of flourescence inside and I find myself staring out into myself.

and what a pathetically trite metaphor that is, for what's become of my life, my soul, my fate - fake light inside, darkness outside and when i try to see the world beyond my limits, i see only myself.

i went to a bluegrass festival this weekend and found myself wishing for a simple life of music, and merriment, and friends, and shared love. i think we laugh at these people, at these hippies and hillbillies, at the "flaky" lifestyle and "aimless" existence because deep down, we envy it. i know i do.

i know people think i've got my life on track - a good career, a great girl, a college degree, a busy existence - and sometimes i even do myself. but sometimes i think they're wrong, i think the busyness is just a facade for the hollowness of existence that seems to be my life.

when i was a kid, i wanted to fly planes, i think. i never really had just one dream of what i wanted to do, but if there was just one, i think that would be it. i sometimes tell myself that if i had no other options, no job opportunities and nowhere to go, i'd do that, now, i'd join up and become a pilot.

i know i always wanted to travel, and i always thought i'd end up in europe working somewhere, maybe drifting from job to wondrous menial job and soaking up life's mysteries and wonders like a sponge that never gets soggy.

now i just feel like a rock, dry, hard, cold, and dead.

but that's just tonight, just today, just now and just me. just the rantings of an overworked, overpriveleged male WASP without the ambition or the courage to suck the marrow out of life and follow his half-remembered dreams.


-tn

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