It could have been a brilliant career
The work at work has tapered off. My supervisor called an impromptu meeting with me one day last week. “Listen,” she said in the sotto voce of worldly wisdom, “The workload is running low, so take your time, slow it down a little.” Okay, I thought, I can do that. She then leaned in and imparted the nugget of wisdom only heard only in dreams and small corners of the eastern bloc: “Take a couple of days off if you want to.” There followed a succession of days off from work, fruitlessly sauntering around my apartment in a state of nervous agitation, unable to accomplish anything other than short treks to the grocery store, where once inside I would contemplate the nature of the human beings contained therein. This was a healthy diversion for sixty minutes a day, fixating on a new individual each time. I would construct a whole outline for said person before I got back to my house: where they lived, what their life was like, and if I had imagined they owned a pet, I would try and specify what breed it was, as per related by their persona—information quickly deduced from my trips through their checkout line. When this activity was complete, I would then pace some more and maybe watch a movie. Any number of days passed like this, one by one, until it seemed logical to go back to work. My job, at least, offered the welcome respite from a life gone out of control. There, at least, I could distract myself by clacking meaningless names and digits, information which corresponded to nothing in particular from my vantage point, the tiny pixels of my monitor emanating out, transcending my implacable skull, and neutralizing the contents contained therein. I would find myself in such a state that I had passed the outer-bounds of consciousness, and may have forgotten that I was a human being at all. This was a pleasant way to pass the time, and I reveled in a life with the complications sucked out. But now the work has run low again, and it’s all coming back to me full force, cruelly thrust from the vacuum. The contents of my life have been illuminated in lieu of the absence of the brain neutralization process provided by my job, the events hurtling through the atmosphere like particles of dust in a black-lit environ. The house I am living in has been sold, and my only acquaintance in life, a girl from the video store, has stopped talking to me days earlier, as per the derangement of my movie rental selections. When you objectively examined the facts, it seemed difficult to deny the fact that even my retarded neighbor had turned against me. Two weeks would no doubt find me sauntering around the dog park, with the bourgeois park dwellers and their dogs looking on in horror as I howled at the moon. And the worst part is, my whole employment situation is tenuous-looking, at best. Here’s my office director now, peeking over my shoulder. I had better get back to work before I get fired. It’s not much, I know. But really: it’s all that I’ve got.