and I'm inspired to be cool because I'm society's fool.
Poking and prodding at my brain they are,
about what I should eat and how I look in my car.
My next new toy is just around the bend!
Clicking to pay to have them send,
it's digital "this" and technology "that"!
I'm treadmilling away while some guy's wallet gets fat?
Fly Here! Go There! Do This!
"It's a life changing experience you don't wanna miss!"
"Read it, watch it, smell it, see! This thing we're selling will set you free!"
"Keep going 'youngin', theres no time to sit,
don't worry about your freedom,
everyone's doing it!"
Sweating off days and wasting away,
just for night time financing of play.
This 700 count goose down duvet
is giving me such and enjoyable stay!
Just so I can dream of my next material sin,
as a robot in this world just short of two-thousand and ten.
-------------------------------------------------------
That is my ode to express my frustration with the world of conformism that we live in. It's my expression of self-frustration with my lack of courage to go my own way... I wrote it, tie tight around my neck, neatly pressed suit suffocating my body, on an upper floor law office in a building in Dallas... In 2001.
In 2001, I was fresh out of college... I had the world by the tail and my heart was on fire, sure that I was destined to do great things! However, there I was, doing exactly the opposite of what I always said I was going to do... That is, follow my heart.
I remember the day I got the call... I was in my office just down the hall from the studios of KWTS, 91.1 fm, the rock station managed and operated by myself and other broadcasting students at West Texas A&M University... I was a senior and had just interviewed with a company in Downtown Dallas that provided legal services to attorneys... I had no idea what they really did, I just knew I was going to make, like, a trazillion bucks a year! Actually, the starting salary was $30k, but to me, it may as well have been all the money in the world. At that point in my life, the largest number I had ever seen on my W-2 was around $6,000... Imagine a 6' 2" man in cargo shorts and a t-shirt with some cleaver saying on the front and flip-flops on his feet, jumping up and down and shreeking like a 13 1/2 year old girl that was just told by her parents that they bought her Justin Beiber concert tickets... Got the image in your head? Because that was me...
I realized very quickly that I did not want to pursue this corporate lifestyle, however, with every raise came a new toy or trip or experience that only someone that makes $35k or $42k or $55k can obtain... And with every dollar "earned" and spent, further did my dreams get pushed down the order on the life "to-do" list...
Until now.
Seventy-one days after receiving my 2010 W-2, which, by the way, had on it the largest number of any of my previous 16 W-2's, I was laid off from my job as part of a national reduction in sales employees.
Bummer, right?
Nah, not too much... They gave me a little dinero to go away... More politely referred to as a "severance package", for which I will be eternally grateful to my soon to be former employer...
So, raise your imaginary glass with me and share a toast to freedom, adventure and holding onto the shirttail of your dreams as long as your shuffling feet can keep up. Because this blogger has been given a second chance at being 17 again, and my hope is that this time I don't F**K it up.
I'll keep you posted...
-L
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