Around here we mark the seasons with Pot Lucks, costume contests, small parties to celebrate whatever someone chooses to celebrate. We mark the days with little stories from the emails that hit our inboxes. This is our life and we live it one email at a time.
There are worse lives than the life of an office worker. When I kick back in my chair I think of that frequently.
I could retire here. I could live this routine, day in and day out until I retire or croak (whichever comes first).
Yet this place has shown me the definition of “quiet desperation.”
Everyone has their fixation. There’s the girl who cooks a quick breakfast in the kitchen each morning. The girl who “isn’t human” until she walks to the coffeeshop down the street and purchases her high-octane brew of choice. There are the trip planners, the ones who live for their next escape in the form of a vacation. They pinch pennies, work second jobs – they do whatever it takes to take that trip, and the next, and the next.
And then there is me.
I caught myself sharing a story that I’ve shared several times before. As I looked into my coworker’s eyes I realized that I’ve become that Old Woman who has nothing but the past.
I realized that I, too, feel that desperation, that sensation of ennui and pointlessness of the world we live in.
Wash, rinse, repeat. I could take any day at this job and swap it out with another day and be unable to tell the difference.
Is this what Life is about? I asked myself after I forced myself to not share that same story that I’ve already shared. Is this what we do? We grow old and live in the Past when Life was scary but fun?
This is not living.
I understand now how I ended up at this particular place. I needed this place to regroup and recharge so that I could see what I had been missing.
There is a reason why so many spend their days working and their evenings online or parked in front of a television.
They lack the energy for anything else.
Manual labor exhausts the body. When you’re done at the end of your shift, there’s nothing left but you still have to feed the family, clean the house, and mow the lawn. There’s nothing left but that aching sensation of something that’s missing. You try to fill the hole with a patch wrapped in an Amazon box but the patch never lasts so you do it again. And again. Until you’re broke.
When you work in an office they try to distract you with little parties and celebrations. Sometimes there are even get-togethers after work. Dress to impress!
One exhausts your physical energy. The other exhausts the mental. In the end, the result is the same: you end up empty inside, desperately seeking to patch the hole through which your soul is draining with whatever catches your attention.
This is not the Life I am destined to lead, even if I had to end up here to gain the physical energy to understand that.
This is not the Life I am destined to lead. This is the reason the words have withered on my mental vine.
I refuse to die here, to spend the rest of my days reliving the past because I have no future to look forward to. I am not designed for the status quo.
I don’t know where I’m going but I can’t stay here. I’ve began to thin down in earnest, shedding the material things that hold me in this lifestyle.
“We gotta make a decision. Leave tonight or live and die this way.” – Fast Car, Tracy Chapman
Do you feel as if you are leading a life of quiet desperation?
6 responses to “Living a Life of Quiet Desperation”
I used to live like that until I retired. Now every day is mine to do or not do whatever I want. Selfishly I hope that perhaps you will write another book or few. Not how many times I’ve reread your books and always find some new lesson. All the best to you in your next phase of life.
While I am unable to predict the future, I would like to write again as well. My attempts are pure garbage and have been for years.
But I’ve a feeling….
I get it, while I have not written as many books as you have I also question if I will end up writing any more books. It is not that I don’t want to but that I need a good ideas that I’m passionate that other people connect with to be able to write a book worth publishing.
I feel this so hard. I refuse to publish if I don’t feel that what I’ve written is of true value, so I have tossed countless manuscripts in the trash over the years.
There is so much garbage being marketed as having value already…but I cannot be that person. As someone said to me once “if you are writing for the money, you’re doing it wrong. When you write out of passion, without care for making a single penny if that’s not in the cards…*that* is when you know that you should be writing.”
That said, I miss writing. I miss going to a coffeeshop or a resturant or a park, watching the people, and writing.
It’s time I repositioned my life to start doing that. I don’t care if I never publish another thing, I just want to feel that joy again.
Personally I feel I have a fairly healthy work to live, not live to work mentality as a whole. Personally I find being very involved in my church community to be helpful when it comes to having meaningful interactions and activity with people outside of work. I’d add that having at least one active passion side project also helps add more meaning and purpose. Beyond that I’d say that falling into the mentality where one mainly lives for vacations is a major red flag that something in your life needs to change.
This society does seem to be placing the importance of actual, physical relationships on the back burner, doesn’t it?