The Next Big Question

     People keep saying the pandemic forced us to rethink our priorities, which is why the Great Resignation is a thing now. 

      Personally, I think that there's going to be a movement asking, "Why should I leave my house?" soon. 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 5

     I can’t keep my eyes open, but I’m so on edge I don’t want to drink any coffee. The moment I walked in the door my boss started in on me for being unable to keep up with work. I swear I finished everything yesterday, but there was so much stuff on my desk that apparently should have been done ages ago, and I honestly can’t remember if I needed to do it or not. 

     I keep trying to work, only to have numbers disappear from my mind. Is this what it feels like when you’re developing Alzheimer? Or I’m I just too tired to be here?

    I want to work. I never wanted to be one of those people who leeches off of their parents until their parents die, then pretends they aren’t dead so they can continue to collect social security. But my “I want to quit sticky not is completely filled with marks” and I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t replace it this morning, or because I just thought that a thousand times in the two hours I’ve been here. 

    If there weren’t so much work, I’d hide in a bathroom stall and cry. This is just too much for me to manage. It would have been too much two years ago, now it just feels like the world is crushing me. 

   I walk over to the water cooler. I just can’t face work right now. I pick up a cup, fill it, then just stare at the wall. Lucy walks over to me and says, “Shouldn’t you be working right now?”

    I’m not in the mood for this. “Shouldn’t you?” I growl.

    She sighs and says, “Well at least we should have more people soon.” She says.

    “Who told you that? A time share salesman?”

     “No. One of my friends in another department said that the owner is planning on making some investments that will allow the company to grow.”

    “What sort of investments?” I ask.

     “I’m not sure.” Lucy replies. “I think it was something to do with blockchains.” 

      I gulp down my water and toss my cup in the trash. I walk to my boss’ office and bang on the door. He opens it and says, “What is it, Ellen?”

   “There’s something I need to ask you.” I say.

   “Can it wait?” He says.

   I think for a bit, then I reply, “No.”

  He leads me into his office. Apparently once you’re a manager, you no longer have to stay in an enclosed room with no windows. Outside, I can see people going about their day. “What is it?” my boss asks.

     “Is it true that the owner is planning on getting involved in cryptocurrency?” I ask.

     “What does this have to do with your job?” He asks, annoyed.

     “Just tell me.” I say.

     He sighs and says, “You have to promise not to tell anyone I told you this, but yes, he is planning on branching out into investments involving the blockchain. I’m told he feels that the only way for the company to grow is if we branch out and do more in the metaverse.”

     I’m stunned. I don’t know why. Every other company on the planet is run by scum, so I don’t see why the one I’m working at would be any different. But I can’t help but feel so angry and betrayed right now. 

   I don’t even think about it, I just say, “I quit.”

   My boss looks at me in confusion, “Pardon?” He says.

  “I said I quit.” I tell him.

  He leans over and looks me in the eye, “Why? Is something the matter Ellen?”

  I want to tell him that everything is wrong. I want to tell him that I’ve wanted to quit almost since I started this job, but with the pandemic and my student loans I didn’t want to take the chance. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Not because I’m worried about being blacklisted, at the moment I don’t care, but because I know that yelling at my boss won’t change anything.

   “I’ve been debating it for some time, learning we were going to be involved in cryptocurrency was what pushed me over the edge.” I say.

   “Ellen, I’m sure you have good reasons for feeling the way you do, but right now I can’t afford to lose another employee. We’re already way behind, and if I tell my boss we’re missing this next deadline, I could lose my job. I know you’re angry, but you can’t just leave me and the rest of the team like this. We need you, Ellen. If you leave, you’re going to let us down.”

   Oh, how I wish I was in one of those movies where the protagonist can respond to his awful boss by flipping over his desk and flipping him the bird. Alas, I can’t get away with that here. If I flip out like I badly, badly want to, I will only make things worse. 

    “None of that is my concern sir. If you wanted to meet this deadline, you wouldn’t have tried to make four people do the work of twelve, or at least you would have stayed late as often as you seem to expect me to. We’ve been carrying your job for at least six months now, and at this point starvation is the only thing keeping us stuck here. I’ve had enough. All of us have had enough. I know you’re worried about your job, but if I were you, I’d accept the fact that me staying or leaving wouldn’t change the fact that you’re done.”

     I stand up and leave before he can respond. I said to much. I know that. But it still feels so good to tell him what I’ve been thinking for months now. I grab a box and start packing my things up. “What happened?” Mary Ann asks from her cubicle, “Did he fire you?”

    I can’t help but laugh. “He couldn’t fire me if I took off all of my clothes and started dancing on his desk. I quit.” 

   “Why?” Nina asks. The look on her face is one of sadness and despair.

   “I’ve wanted to for a while now. I just took the plunge.”

   “You know you could have demanded a raise.” Lucy says.

     I look over at her. “No amount of money is large enough to make up for what this job has taken from me.”

    I grab my things and walk out, filled with both joy and dread. I don’t have another job lined up. All my life my parents told me to never quit without having another job lined up. I try telling myself it’s not that bad, with so many people quitting these days I can easily find a job that will allow me to stay afloat, but in the back of my head a loud voice keeps screaming, “You’re doomed.” 

     I try not to think about anything on my way home. I walk inside and realize it’s been so long since I’ve been at home before nine at night that there isn’t any food in my apartment. Fortunately, there’s a grocery store not too far away from the house. I check my bank account to see how much food I can buy, then I realize just how big of a mistake I just made. 

    If it were just rent that I needed to worry about, I’d be fine. But there’s also my student loans, food, water payments, and other stuff I can’t remember right now. I’ve been saving all the money I can, but I still only have enough to make it maybe a month, and only if I’m very lucky. 

    I open up my laptop to look for any job I can find, and then the fatigue hits. I’ve been running on adrenaline, and without the constant worry about meeting demands at my job, I can’t keep it going. Then I start feeling sick to my stomach. I suddenly realize I’m not sure if I ate breakfast. I frequently skip it if I’m working because I eat lunch out. I need food, and more importantly, a day off.

    The stores a mile away, so I decide to walk instead of drive. I don’t want to waste money on gas until I know I have another job. Since it’s the middle of the day, the stores not very busy. I try to be careful, but between hunger and exhaustion I spend too much money on chips and soda and not enough on actual food, something I regret on my walk home. 

   I was planning on going to sleep, but with caffeine I’m awake enough to begin searching for a job. I send out thirty applications by six that night. When I’m done, I feel proud, but then an unwelcome thought enters my mind; How do I know if my new job will be any better than the one I just left?

   I try to distract myself with YouTube. I notice I’ve lost two subscribers since I checked last. I feel deflated, but since I haven’t posted anything for three months, I shouldn’t be surprised. I turn on my webcam and say, “Hey guys, sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while. Work’s been crazy. I haven’t left the office before eight since last September. I just quit this morning, so hopefully I’ll have more time to work on videos now, so that’s good. Hope you’ve been having a good time. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.”

   I click the off button. I should probably edit it, but I’m sure the video’s good enough as is. A good thing about having a single digit subscriber count is that you don’t need to care if your videos are good or bad, all that matters is that you have fun making them. One nice thing about not having a job anymore is that I can put more work into YouTube. I confess, I’ve missed it. 

   Out of curiosity I navigate to Julius Corvin’s YouTube channel. I know I’ve denounced him, but part of me still likes playing “Memories” when I feel sad about something. 

    Nothing seems to have changed since the last time I was here. There aren’t any new uploads, and the community tab is full of him bragging about how successful he is. I don’t know why I was expecting something to be different. Nobody seems to be angry at him for getting involved with NFTs. 

    I click away. I need to stop pretending he’ll change. He was once a big part of my life, but now he has well and truly lost touch with the people responsible for keeping him alive. He’s a lot like my boss. They’re both people whose existence depends on others sacrificing themselves for their benefit, but they’re unwilling to do anything to make that sacrifice worthwhile. 

    I go back to my YouTube channel. I love singing, I’ve done it in some way ever since I was in choir in middle school. When I was in high school, I dreamed of being a famous singer, before my father told me that was stupid. I still kind of want to be a famous singer, or at least to make enough money singing that I don’t have to work in an office anymore, but I will never be like Julius Corvin. I will let my moral compass guide me, not whatever makes me money. 

    Maybe I could be a famous singer. In this day and age, all it takes is a camera and a decent microphone to become famous. I have no plans; I could write all the songs I want and post them all to YouTube. Maybe somebody will notice me and make me a star. Or maybe I’ll get evicted from my apartment when I can’t pay rent. 

    I open the file for “The future”, my first big hit. I just need to polish it, then it’ll be ready to release. But I don’t want it to be a small release, I want to make it clear to the world that this is the next big thing, that this will take the internet by storm the way all great music does. I know, I’ll do a stream of me performing all my songs, and at the end I’ll reveal “The Future”, it’ll be a great way to both grab attention and celebrate me quitting my job. I open my webcam again and say, “Great news guys, I’m doing a stream at the end of the month. I’ll be performing all my songs live, and at the end I’ll have a new song to show you. Hope you’re free to see it.” I stop the video and save it for later. If I’m working on revealing a legend, I want to make sure the video is properly edited this time. 

    I confess, the state of the world worries me. 

So Stands She

 Far east, where America began
Stands a woman, tall, cast in bronze,
Her image looming large among the populace.
Where she stands, there is hope, hope for a world
Free of the strife and pain of old.
So stands she, a symbol of old hope,
So stands she, a symbol of new promises. 

Across the United states, over roads
Ill kept by the masses,
People traveled, in carts and on foot,
Driven by the promise of freedom.
Back east, the cities grew,
Forests of green replaced
First with stone, then with concrete and steel.
A new promise was made,
A promise for prosperity
And wealth for all.

As a symbol of that promise
A statue was built
With a name no one remembers.
But underneath the bright exterior
Anger and disunity grew
Until a spark ignited a fire so large
Everything in its path was destroyed.

We fought,
We killed,
We tried to rebuild,
And in the end we forgot everything we had learned.

But a symbol loomed large in our consciousness,
And soon all the world was consumed
By a desire for a better life. 

The west filled up,
But people kept moving.
Driven by the old promise
That one day, one shining day,
They would have a place in this great land.
People grew up praising the flag, 
And brought their children up to do the same.
If anyone criticized their great land, 
They were told, "People in glass houses
Shouldn't throw stones."
 
And back east, where America began, she still stands
Waiting for the hope she was promised.

So stands she, an image of America
That America can't seem to live up to.
So stands she, a lie told for so long
We believe it to be real.

So stands she, a symbol of 
What makes America strong
And what will break it apart one day.
She is a promise, that we would do better,
That we wouldn't repeat our mistakes,
That we would welcome all who needed our help.
But no symbol, no matter how strong,
Can stop human cruelty and ignorance. 

  I wonder, if people could pick any world we haven't already tried, what would they pick?

   I keep thinking that we're trapped in the past. I don't think going back will fix anything, it'll only remind us why we left the past in the first place. 

 I wish I thought we could go back to normal. Any normal. But I don't, and every time I see something that reminds me of the past, I feel sad. 

The world as we know it

    When this post goes up, it will have been one week since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. 

     So many people are talking about this, but the thing I keep coming back to is how so many were horrified by the invasion in Ukraine but said nothing when Syria was invaded. I am one of those people. 

    I stopped watching mainstream news in 2016. I realized that the only time I saw black people was on the news, and that every time I saw them they were being shot by police. Concluding that this was probably making me more racist, I decided to stop the watching the news. 

    I don't really know how to feel about Ukraine. I'll be honest, when news first broke that Putin had invaded Ukraine, my main thought was "Of Course". It had been building up to it for a few days, and with how badly things had been going for some time, it seemed like it was about time for warfare to break out. Honestly, everything since 2016 has all but ruined my ability to feel sad or angry about something. 

  But since then, I've been consumed with strange, conflicting emotions. I don't have any good words for what I feel about Putin. What he did was objectively horrible, and there will never be any justification for what he did. As far as I can tell, he invaded Ukraine because he thought he could get away with it. 

    But some part of me keeps thinking about the cold war, and wondering if Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reasons Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He wants to go back, to bring Russia back to the glory days of being one of the most feared nations on earth. It's a horrible thought, nobody else in the world wants this to happen, but he wants to be remembered, and he's hoping this will let him soar in his people's minds. 

    I look at Putin invading Ukraine, and think about how Donald Trump tried to stage a coup on January 6, 2021. Up until that moment, we'd been grudgingly tolerating him, certain that the mechanisms of democracy would protect us from the worst things he might try to do. But democracy didn't save us. Right now, western democracies are trying to use the mechanisms of the global economy to starve Russia into submission. What'll happen if they don't succeed? 

  All this is making me think of how we've been transitioning to a global economy. In theory, it's amazing. We don't have to worry about famine, we can get anything we could ever want, and we can go anywhere we please in an instant. But we moved to globalization without knowing what the outcome could be, and now we're seeing the costs that come with it. 

     But we can't go back. Even if we all wanted to turn our back on each other, we know that sharing what we have brings great rewards. That's why we built society to begin with. People want a freer, more globalized world. But if we want that, we have to abandon the old model of society. It's no longer a home for us, it's a prison all of us are trapped in, no matter how free we appear to be. 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 4

    The apartments a mess. I keep meaning to clean it, but between work and family obligations, I can never find the time to do so. I try to focus on work, but I keep being distracted by a pile of old CDs in the corner.

    The CDs are from when I was younger. My parents were old fashioned, so when I asked for music for my birthdays, they’d always give it to me on a CD. That way, I’d always have it even if my computer broke, they said. They gave me all sorts of CDs, mostly from bands I wasn’t really interested in. They could never remember what was hip, they said. Eventually, I just told them to give me iTunes money.

    Strange, the one on top has a picture of Julius Corvin on it. I don’t remember owning any of his CDs, I’m pretty sure I was buying my own music by that point. I reach over and pick it up to see if I can figure out when it was made. On the front is the title “Life’s a journey”, on the back is a bunch of songs with titles like, “Old friends”, “Trouble at the office”, and “The Future”. Wait, those aren’t Julius Corvin’s songs.

    Those are my songs.

    “I must say, you are a truly wonderful songwriter. Never has there been music I was more eager to steal.”

    I leap up and look around, then see him standing next to me. A man, about as tall as I am, with a cold, calculating grin. “You’re Julius Corvin!” I say.

   He looks at me like I’m a three-year-old learning the names of colors for the first time. “Why thank you for noticing. It’s not everyday I come over to the common part of the world to meet one of my devoted fans you know.”

    “Who let you in here? How did you get here? Why are you in my house?”

    He brushes me off. “Irrelevant.” He says. He walks around the room, checking it out thoroughly, with a look on his face that suggest he’s just entered a slum. “This place,” He says derisively, “This, room, if that’s what you want to call it, is truly the worst place I’ve ever been in in my entire life.”

     “It’s called living within your means. I don’t make millions off my music like you do, I can’t even get any adds, and thanks to you,” I say, waving the CD case in his face, “I will never be able to make any money-making music. Then again, I’ll never make money selling people the belief that they own things they don’t actually own in such a way that it sets the world on fire, so maybe that’s a good thing.”

    He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Is that meant to be an insult?” He asks.

   I pause to think up a decent response. He continues, “A woman living in a trashy studio apartment with furniture so old it would be in a museum if it was anything anybody wanted to see thinks she can insult a man with a fanbase stretching across the globe. Do you really think I care if you don’t think my actions make me a good person? Goodness is never worthy of respect. Goodness makes you give up everything you have, so nobody can say you have more than your fair share. Goodness made you decide that it was worth spending money you would never have to go to a college you didn’t want to go to so you could waste your life at a job that makes you miserable.” He shakes his head sadly, “When I look at you, the very essence of purity and goodness, the compassionate person who would do anything if it made people happy, I don’t feel anything but pity for the circumstances that made you who you are. Just think of how much better it would have been if your parents had encouraged your bad tendencies.”

     I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Are you actually Julius Corvin, or are you the devil?” I ask.

     That’s when I look up and notice the blood red sky, with mountains around us and people screaming in the distance. “Oh god.” I scream.

    “Why are you invoking his name?” Julius asks me. “You don’t believe in Him. Neither did your parents. For you there is no god, nobody to look after you in your time of need, only people who want the world from you but never seem to give back.”

    I shout angrily, “My boss may be awful, but my coworkers are nice. My parents may ask a lot from me, but they give a lot in return. Janine’s amazing, she’s going to change our world one day, and Lisa, well, she’ll figure out who she is eventually, and when she does, she’ll amaze us all.”

    Julius looks at me with one eyebrow raise. He says, “Your boss is awful. You admit as much. Yet your coworkers don’t seem to be able to stand up to him and tell him enough is enough. You’ve seen what happens when people quit their jobs. All it would take would be for you to walk away and convince your coworkers to do the same. Then your boss would have to change he ways.”

    He starts pacing back and forth. I swear I see steam rising from his footsteps. “Then there’s your parents. You say they give you a lot, yet they didn’t even give you a present for Christmas last year.”

    “I’m an adult.” I retort, “And I read online that expecting adults to give presents to each other is stupid.”

    He looks at me. I sigh and say, “Also, I couldn’t afford to give them anything, so I told them to put the money they were going to spend into Lisa’s college fund.”

    “The fund they are managing with utmost care, letting it grow into an amount that, when the time comes, will let her attend Harvard if that’s what she chooses?”

   “Lisa doesn’t want to go to Harvard.” I say, then backpedal, “At least, I don’t think she does.”

   “Whether that’s what she wants or not is irrelevant. If your parents have the money and think she can get in, they’ll make her apply whether or not she wants to go, and if Harvard accepts, she’ll have to go even if that’s not what she wants. That’s what they made you and Janine do, wasn’t it?”

    He’s not wrong. I may be the only person who cheered when she found out Harvard rejected her. “Well, even if my sister is a complete airhead, she still deserves the best chance she can get to have a happy life, and if mom and dad have the money to make it happen, they should try.”

    “Indeed, they should try if they have the money. But, I fear, they don’t have the money to make it happen.”

   I leap up, “You don’t know that.”

   He looks at me the way a parent looks at a child who’s pet rat has just died, “You remember what your professor said when you were learning about finance. Don’t trust investment advisors who say they can do better than the stock market. You told your father that when he was looking to grow his retirement account. Yet your father went with him anyway. You keep telling yourself that it was just a harmless mistake, that your father would never let himself get hoodwinked, yet here he is, convinced that not only is his youngest daughter a genius worthy of getting into an Ivy league school, but that he’s so good with money he can make the same mistakes everyone else makes and suffer none of the consequences. Is it not possible that he’s doing this because he knows it will devastate you to learn that you sacrificed everything for your sister to be successful, only to then have to help pay for her college anyway? Could it be that he’s waiting for the day to show you just how little he actually cares about you?”

    “You don’t know my dad! He’d never do something like this! He worked as hard as he could to make sure we had a nice house to live in and could join all the clubs we wanted to. He was there when I couldn’t pass algebra and needed a tutor. He was so proud when Janine got into law school, and I got my degree in business. He’s not evil, if I need anything, he’ll be there for me.”

   In response, Julius points to my left. I turn an old lady, withered and frail, with baggy, wrinkled skin, and snow-white hair. I gasp, and see her mouth open too. I reach up to touch her, certain she needs help, then I realize.

   It’s a mirror.

  It’s me I’m seeing.

  I smash it. Glass goes flying. “I see you can’t handle the truth.” Julius says. He comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Your job has aged you. You are no longer young, or pretty. Anyone who looks at you sees somebody so ugly they wish they could erase them from their mind. Yet you say that your parents would be there if they needed you. I don’t think they could be less present if they lived across the ocean.”

   I want to clap back. I want to say that there’s no way it could be this bad. I want to say that even if I aged one hundred years since this pandemic started, my parents would still love me. But he’s right. As soon as they could convince themselves it was safe, they started pushing me to come over for dinner. Even when I had work, they made me come over for my sister’s birthday. Even though I told dad time and again to check his financial statements, he told me I knew nothing about a subject I had to study to get my degree. I know they love me, but at the moment I’m not sure they care about me anymore than my idiot boss does.

    Julius laughs. “You finally get it. You finally understand that parents who push their daughter to go to law school could never be good people.”

   “Not all lawyers are bad.” I say.

   “True.” Julius says, “Just enough to taint the whole lot of them. Like how all singers aren’t evil, just the ones you like to listen to.”

   The he laughs. And doesn’t stop laughing. The ground beneath me begins to shake, then open up. I fall in, screaming for help, then land. I look around and see the metal bars surrounding me and the ceiling made of stone. I’m in a cell. I scream and bang in the bars. Then Julius comes up and grabs my wrist.

   “Don’t bother screaming. Nobody will hear you, and even if they did, I doubt they would care. You’re trapped here, just like your trapped in your putrid job and your awful family. You will never escape, things will never get better, you will always be a prisoner.”

    I pull my arm free and scream at him, “I am nobody’s prisoner. I won’t let you destroy me. I will break free from this cell and my miserable life, and I will be successful.”

     All he says is, “Be grateful I stole your music. It’s the only way anyone will care about what you have to say. Too bad they’ll never know you said it.”

                                                                                      ***

    I wake with a lurch. Thank God it was just a dream. Wait, if it was a dream, then why didn’t I take the chance to punch his stupid face when I still had it? I know I’m not good at lucid dreaming, but surely when I saw that the man who used to be my favorite musician was in my apartment gloating about how he stole my music, I should have known it was a dream. Who would even publish music on CDs anyway unless they were planning on selling it at a crafts fair?

    Looking back, it feels laughable to think that Julius Corvin would even be able to find my music, let alone want to steal it. I have five subscribers, so there’s no way he’d find it unless he knew my name, and I’m not even anywhere on his forums. Even if he saw it, I doubt it’s original or witty enough that he would want to steal it. In a way, I almost wish I thought he would. Then I would know that not only am I able to write amazing music, but I’d also have the satisfaction of suing him. Granted, it would be horrifically expensive from my perspective and nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him, but sometimes us little folk have to take what we can get.

    Imagine what it would be like to sue him. I’d call Janine first and tell her everything, then send her a big box of evidence that I’d meticulously collected. Then I’d set up a crowd funding page and tell Lisa to tell all of her followers on social media about it. I’d then post a video talking about how much I loved him as a teen, how he remained a source of inspiration throughout my college years, and how when I was an adult plugging away at work, he was the only thing that kept me sane, but then he got involved in the shadiest scam and man can attempt to pull on those who value him, and I saw him for the man he truly was, the devil in human form, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to steal from someone, but I had no clue it would be me. Unlike all my other videos, this would spread far and wide, as everyone seeing it would be moved by a sense of justice, and I would get all the money I needed to prove I’d been wronged. After I won the case, I would have a massive following, moved by my lovely music that perfectly encapsulated what it felt like to live in the 2020’s.

    That would be amazing. Too bad that won’t happen.

    The rest of the dream though. I know he spent a lot of time badmouthing me and my parents, but I don’t remember what he said. I wish I did, so I could prove just how much of a liar he really is. I think most of it was about how my parents don’t really care about me, they just pretend they do. Well, that’s easy enough to disprove, just look at all the photos they hang up on the walls of me and my sisters. I don’t think the dream was really saying anything about how I think my parents don’t like me much, it’s just me being stressed about work.

    I’m about to settle in to go back to sleep, then I pick up my cell phone to check how long before my alarm rings. It’s 5:15 now. My alarm’s set for six. I moan. I know I could technically go back to sleep, but I know I won’t be able to, so I may as well get up. I throw off the covers, and then I just weep. I’m so tired of work. I’m tired of never getting a good night’s sleep. I’m tired of watching the world collapse around me.

   It’s not just that we can’t get any more employees at work. It’s going through the grocery store and seeing all the empty shelves. It’s reading articles about how many school districts can’t find teachers and many hospitals can’t find doctors and nurses. It’s seeing people online complain about the proliferation of NFTs and seeing many wealthy elites buy into them anyway and watching them push us to buy them as well. It’s knowing that the world sucks, has always sucked, and there isn’t a thing I can do that will change it.

     I don’t just want to quit my job right now. I want to quit life. I want to just hole up in my house and weep for everything I’ve lost, not just since the pandemic, but since 2016, that sense of hope that things would always get better and I would never, in my life, feel like I was at risk of never having enough. But I can’t do that. No matter how bad I feel, I can’t stop going out and doing my part, even if doing so leaves me feeling so empty inside. I wish so badly my parents were part of the ultra-wealthy, the people who don’t even notice we’re struggling. Then I wouldn’t be trapped in my life, and I could live it like I always had. I know that makes me a bad person, but right at the moment I don’t care.

    I look at my phone again and see a notification that Lisa’s posted. It’s probably from yesterday, but she could be getting ready for class. I remember her complaining about how horrible school’s been lately. If she’s up this early, she might have a point. I can’t help but feel sorry for her, it’s one thing for an adult to worry about the world, it’s another thing for someone who isn’t even out of high school yet.

    I get out of bed and wander to my bathroom. I look into the mirror and notice the bags under my eyes. I don’t know that my job has aged me, but it certainly has drained my spirit.

    Whatever. Nobody in the world has ever wanted to do their part, but we keep doing it anyway because our friends and family needs us. I could give up, but that would only make me a bad person, the kind who lives with their parents until their forty because the don’t want to admit they’re losers.

    So it’s time to get ready. No matter how tired I am, no matter how much I want to just leave, I have to keep working. It’s the only thing that reminds me that I’m still a good person.

 Our world isn't real.