Pesky Boxes

There’s a line from a techno song stuck in my head … “stuck inside a box, you gotta get out…” – a verse that reflects so many of our truths and paradoxes. Everything we’re ‘supposed’ to do is technically a box – the job, house, car, credit – all interlinked and part of the bigger system. I feel like Jim Carey in the movie “23”, only instead of numbers I see boxes everywhere. My job is a box: it’s suffocating my creativity, draining my energy to the point of stupidity, and paying very little in exchange for what I’m giving up. Yet to get out this box, I have to contend with another one. The economy is crap, everyone is getting laid off, and I need a new job – not exactly an ideal mix. If I stay I go crazy, become someone I’d never want to be, and resent and hate everybody – all in conflict with my happy hippie nature. If I go, assuming there’s somewhere to go, there’s the challenge of juggling the bills during transition (I can juggle in real life but not very well) and dealing with the box of credit debt. It’s only a number just like money is only green paper; it’s also your identity (and mine) and a judgment whether it’s fair or not. So it’s all a big f*#king box. We care or don’t care, fight it or go along, give in, give up, or cope. I haven’t decided which path to take yet. I’m against coping for the simple fact that it means being unhappy and living with it. “To thine own self be true.” For a guy whose been dead for nearly 400 years (392 at present), Shakespeare had it right.

For me, as of now, all these boxes have rolled into one challenge – to find a new happy place (of work) until Honey’s photography takes off, at which point I can retire to a privileged life of shining light and rubbing oil on beautiful models. I can already feel the envy.