I kind of hate my job

You wake up one morning and realize that you are at a dead end job, thirty something, still not sure what you're supposed to be doing with your life, grasping for every semblance of happiness, however brief, fleeting, or legal it is. You look down at the gut that once was a toned stomach at some point of your youth and remember the days of youth and vitality that once were.

You went to college like you were supposed to. You found the job like you were told to. You did the things according to the cosmic plan that seemed to be set up for you since birth.

And it amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

Purpose? Meaning? These are things that you admonished long ago. You silently wish that the cosmos is playing some kind of grand joke on you because that would mean that this meaningless mediocrity of your daily existence would someday end, being replaced by a meaningful existence. But deep inside you have long realized in a world full of you's, your existence just really isn't worth the effort to play that elaborate of a joke on.

You feel infinitely trapped in what you do, unsatisfied by the mundane tasks that you set before yourself. You have been trained since birth to pursue the praise and approval of those you deem your superiors; a congratulatory pat in the butt or a shiny sticker given for a job well done. Then you realize that this recognition you desire so greatly is even more demeaning now that you are not a child.

You see your peers around you pass by benchmarks in their lives. Promotions, marriages, the birth of a child; you dismiss their accomplishments as nothing more than misguided pursuits, yet deep within a part of you envies them.

You demand that society recognize you for titles that you think you deserve. I AM AN ADULT GOD DAMMIT- you want to shout on the top of your lungs, as you sit upon your couch in your blue jeans and tee shirt, flip flops and tangled, uncombed hair, all remnants of a rebellious youth that you regret ever growing out of. Your only solace is the alcohol that you consume in copious amounts that reduces you to no more of the mental capacity of a toddler.

The tattoos are all faded as you have forgotten meaning to the permanent scars that you so eagerly subjected yourself to. The piercings all filled in, except the socially acceptable ones on your body.

You wonder of the dreams you once had- the vastness and imagination and creativity that you could conjure just as your eyelids drifted shut in deep dream filled nights. You don't remember the last peaceful night that you slept, each morning dreading the work day ahead, or one day closer to the work day to come.

You hate your job. You hate your job. You find every excuse to lengthen your commute to work each day. The last thought that reverberates in your mind as you exit your car is the anxiety you feel for the day to come or the dread you feel as a deadline approaches. Your car ride over in the morning after a hurried shower followed by an unsatisfying and tasteless breakfast is your only solace. When you finally park in the inevitability of the parking garage, your hand slightly trembles as it reaches to turn the key off. Your mind frantically thinks of other destination to drive away to; unfounded impulses that your adult mind dismisses, but your inner child once reveled in.

Why did you grow up? Why did you let fun die?

You can count the smiles and grins that your lips curled up for on one hand. Not those superficial smiles that you share with people who hide away from when you see them outside your normal social interactions, but the ones of genuine amusement and joy; the smiles that you can still see the innocence of childhood and the hope of dreams that have not yet been frozen and put into suspended animation to be revitalized when you have more time, only to be forgotten in the cold locker of opportunities past.

Dreams only fester like rotting meat now. The sooner you get rid of them, the less the stink that lies in your soul as they lay dormant.

 

Ranting and raving

I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. I mean, I have an inkling of an a fringe of a passing thought of an idea, but that's like catching a whiff of a fragrance of a passing meal and then planning and cooking dinner just off that briefest of savory sniffs. Then to add that your "life" hinges on it- perception warps the gravity of such things.

I may not know what I want to do in life, but I know what I am doing now is not it. That's all I know for certain.

And what do I have to lose? Lost income at a job that I can tolerate, but don't really like? Sometimes, I wonder why I don't take more risk. We always think we have more security than we actually do and then magnify the consequences of risk. That's why we're all such bad gamblers. We remember our losses and the sting of them, rather than the briefest moments of glory. Glory is tarnished with times. The sting of a loss is what haunts dreamless night (or at least my dreamless nights. That and sleeping on an empty stomach. Look I know I'm fat and I know I'm dieting but seriously, do you have to be showing every fast food commercial at 11:30 at night when I'm trying to go to bed? Seriously).

These are the moments that I wish I drank more. I could numb things. Not feel. Not think. Not notice. Not remember. I drink when I'm happy. To celebrate the company of friends. These are the times when I should treasure and let the memories be clear and focused, yet I let them turn into a blur of laughter and smiles and awkward flirtations with exchanged phone numbers that lead to carefully worded text messages and answers with ambiguous connotations.

Dear life. I hate text messages. I hate myself for sending them. Please shoot me. But miss, I still enjoy my life.

I forget how therapeutic writing is sometimes. It gives me a little objective distance to be bemused at how dumb some of the stuff running through my head sounds. Sadly, much of it sounds like overemotional teenage dribble, but more eloquent and thought out (and wittier) with biting sarcasm (and wit) and dash of bitterness (and wit).

As I sit here, alone, single, living in my brother's abode, under his good graces, with two lazy (but cute) dogs, I contemplate running tonight, a task that I neither look forward to, nor do I enjoy, but I know for the sake of betterment of oneself, I must. Like the 30 seconds before work where I sit at my car and let the car just run and wonder why I don't just choose to drive away and never look back.

Damn consequences. Damn fucking consequences.

I'm tired.

Tired of my life. Tired of waking every morning and seeing my reflection in the mirror. Tired of logging into my back account and seeing the same meaningless number, always lower than I thought it would be. Tired of stepping and a scale and seeing the same meaningless number, always higher than I thought it would be.

I'm tired of struggling through life. I feel directionless, rudderless, set adrift on an open sea, with no port of departure or of destination. I'm tired of being single. I'm tired of being lonely. I'm tired of having friends trying to probe into my life. No, I don't really want to talk about my feelings and such. No, I don't want to answer your irrelevant questions about my mundane life. I live it. I don't need to be reminded of its mediocrity.

I'm tired of being scared of what I don't know. I'm tired of not taking risks. I'm tired of having to take risks with the uncertainty in my life. Shouldn't I be settled down by now? Wait, what exactly does settled down entail?

I don't enjoy things like I used to. Instead of seeking happiness; I seem to be content with a numbing status quo. As long as it is not bad, it is acceptable. If it is bad, as long as it is manageable or I can ignore it, then it can be dealt with. If it painful, as long as I can forget about it eventually, that is acceptable. Just enough seems to be the goal for everything.

I suddenly understand what people mean when they speak of the vitality of youth. The other day, I had to jump off a ledge that was maybe four feet off the ground. I remember as a younger man, I would have scoffed at the height and jumped forward with reckless abandon. Now, I look down and carefully measure the distance, crouch down as low as I can go to salvage the blow that I will deal to my already complaining knees. This might be related to the ever higher irrelevant number from the scale

Trees

As I looked out the passenger side window of my friend's car, I found myself gazing at the majesty of tree lines that I pass every day, but pay no heed to.

I wondered, as I looked upon the medley of hues of greens and browns, how long I would survive if I just decided to forego what I know of my life here and just start to walk west. Just on an act of pure impulse, forget that I am Nathan Hwang, semi responsible, semi adult, tax paying citizen, who is now counted among the residents of Fairfax County in the 2010 census, and just become no one.

I'm not sure what drove that impulse. A deep seeded need for irresponsibility in my life? The last way to stick it to the man that I am not going to conform to his infinitesimally complex and minutia filled irrelevance of a system. Maybe it is my id finally rearing its head, trying to direct me to path of the greatest appreciation of what I have, because I certainly lack appreciation for it. My soul feels restless, maybe I am a wanderer by nature and I have been stuck in the same place in repetitious monotony for as long as my tolerance can take.

Maybe it is because the trees just looked really pretty and I forget to take a moment each day to admire their simple majesty. Maybe their spirits beckoned to mine for a simple communion, something that I was far more receptive to when I was a child, even just to remind me that the lives that we live are filled with cacophonous clashes of blaring horns, screaming words and sound sound sounds. I forget that the loudest of sounds are not made in loud rooms, but in quiet ones, where all are receptive to hear. Like when I was at the Kennedy center and was afraid to toot (thank you thesaurus.com) while the music was being played among the hushed gallery of collected people far more knowledgeable of classical music than I (except the couple in front of me that thought it was appropriate to nibble on each other's appendages while listening).

I need to look at trees more often.

The perception of fear

It's getting harder to just say fuck it.

I used to say it all the time. Brush my teeth before bed? Fuck it, just didn't feel like it. Wipe my feet before I entered the house? Fuck it, it's only mud. Have homework due tomorrow? Fuck it, I'll turn it in late. Teacher doesn't take late assignments? Fuck it, was going to happen anyways. Didn't feel like going to class? Fuck it.

Fuck it, that's what tomorrow is for.

I wanted to seize life by the reins and enjoy what I had for the moment. Responsibilities were reminders of what tomorrow might and tomorrow's concerns were none of mine. I thought of myself as young, unafraid, fearless to how many tomorrow I had left.

Yet, when I think about the fearless bravado that I painted for myself; I'm realizing more and more that it was just bravado. False pretenses. Assumptions. Yeah, the words fuck it frequently left my mouth, but they weren't typically in some form of rebellion and carpe diem flourish of transcendentalism. They were said out of convenience in response to peer pressure. Or out of laziness because I didn't want to put an effort forth. Or out of fear of what the outcome might be.

I want to imagine myself as fearless, rebellious child that acted out, instead of a selfish, imprudent person that I've become. I want to think I failed in school out of defiance against some system, defiance for the pressures that my parents put on me academically, defiance against a major that I chose and stubbornly chose to stay in. I want to. But I can't. I failed in school because I didn't do work. I didn't go to class. It is always infinitely easier to be content with what you have and do nothing, than it is to want and strive for something that you may or may not achieve.

And one of the first lessons in life that I learned, is no matter how much you want or dream of it, you cannot simple achieve everything you put your mind to. If that were the case, there would be far more millionaires and far fewer fat people. (myself included, of course)

As I stare listlessly at this blinking cursor, I wonder if this is all for naught; my desire to be a writer is nothing more than just false bravado, a fake march against paper walls. Or worse, I am just unwilling to put forth the effort to give myself a chance of success. Regardless, I find myself full of insecurity and apprehension fueled by self doubt.

So what do you do when you no longer find comfort or security in doing nothing? What do you do when it is no longer easy to not act?

30 something

Is it called maturity when life grants you a new perspective on the world around you? Or is it maturity when you are still receptive from this new vantage point? Seemingly, my methodology in life has yet to bear any fruit. Success eludes me at every turn, nook and cranny. Happiness seems fleeting at best, and slowly, but surely, contentment seems to be the reasonable goal. My aspiration to write; it seems more a farce now than even a dream. A line I tell myself so ease the disappointment of inaction and failure.

Sometimes I feel like I get so caught up in the minutia of work, that I cage my aspirations and dreams and settle for the artificial walls around me. Success is easily defined by what perspective that you look at it. When I was younger, it was easier, because everything was defined on a sliding scale of A's,B's,C's,D's, and F's.

I think I finally figured out why they never had E's. E's are too easy to turn into B's. This coming from someone who knew a thing or two about changing grades on report cards.

As the grading scale has faded away, like the memories (and horror) of high school, I find myself wonder how to define myself, how to define my life, as a failure or a success.

I'm staying with my friend Jay, while I am here in LA. Of all my friends from high school, he is easily the most financially successful. It's so strange to think how divergent our paths are since we were together in school. Part of me has accepted the fact that most of my friends make significantly more money than I do. Part of me wonders if the choices that I made were the right ones and if it is too late to change.

Just hanging around Jay for a few days, I can see the difference in his life and mine. What he values, how he values things and how I value things. In the past, I looked down at his thriftiness. Now, as I see where he gotten to in life and where I am, it seems hypocritical for me to judge. I need the immediacy of purchasing things today; he practices patience in finding things on his terms at the price he wants. I live at the absolute threshold of my financial means; he lives well underneath his. When I look around his apartment, I think to myself, if I made the kind of money he did, I would have this, this, and this. But he doesn't. He could, but chooses not to.

For me it's like me learning to put back the pint of ice cream back in the freezer with some left, instead of finishing the whole thing.

Then, in turn, it comes back to how I define success and what I truly want with my life. Even though a part of me is envious of the success that my friends have, I don't want their lives. I want to be happy with mine. I want to be successful on my own terms.