Hamster Sex and the Illuminati

I have a day job. I guess most writers do. But the thing about my day job is that in general I really like it. It’s analytical and challenging. I like the people I work with, and in general I think they respect me. Here’s the thing: lately I can’t shake this feeling that everything we all do at our day jobs is pointless and designed only to make us have somewhere to go during the day so we feel productive.

So like one day the Illuminati or whoever looked up and saw all the people fucking around doing nothing all day. Some of them slept and some played games while others got food and fought off invaders. The hunters and fighters were so much happier than the fuckers who did nothing that they decided to create other jobs. They said something like, “If we make it so people want STUFF, then we can make them do shit to get it. Not only that but making STUFF and moving the STUFF and fixing STUFF and getting better STUFF will create lots of useless activity that will make the lazy people feel productive.”

SO that’s how I became one of the fuckers who moves STUFF. But what does any of the STUFF and STUFF WE DO really amount to? I think I would have been happier killing things to eat or invaders. Maybe. But the sad reality is that I am nothing more than a blind hamster running on a dirty wheel all night long, dreaming that I am moving far away down some road to a place where I can feel the sun on my face and soft grass under my tiny paws. A place where I can sip water from flower pedals and make love to some other lucky hamster. After a long night of running toward this dream, I wake up, step off the wheel and stumble into the same wooden house I was escaping from last night. I am of course shocked every time it happens, and all I can do is collapse in a heap and sleep off my grief, so that I can awaken and jump on that wheel of hope all over again the next night.

What does this have to do with writing you ask? Well, think of writing as the artistic equivalent of killing things. It feels like it has more of a purpose than the other shit I do that feels like running on the hamster wheel. Instead of buying into the lie, I’m scratching and clawing at the bottom of the plastic cage. And maybe I will claw and scratch all night long every night for the rest of my life until my nails fall off, and all I will have to show for it is a piece of scratched up plastic, but maybe I will bust a hole right through that pink plastic and if I am very very luck or blessed by the Illuminati, the hole will lead to grass and sunlight and blissful sex rather than another level of the same fucking cage.