It is 4:07. I get off at 5. Or at least some arbitrary limit for which I am "required" to stare at my laptop is reached at 5. My work provides me ability to purchase food, but takes away the time which the food gives me energy to enjoy or so I tell myself.
I'm lost. I wander. Not physically. I wish I could. I probably can, but I am stuck. Sitting inside and comparing myself to those around me. Not people who I know, but some I wish I did and others who I spectate to make myself feel better for my lack of happiness.
My colleagues are chatbots with voices and free will. Sometimes they turn their cameras on. Thirty minutes of communication under an umbrella of a career I am not convinced anyone is enjoying. My life is in my hands, but unconvincingly so.
Inaction has rendered epiphanies useless.
A comedy enjoyer who forgot the purpose of a joke is laughter and not an admittance of understanding said joke.
A mathematician who revels in others' failure to solve a problem for which he read the solution in a forum.
A lonesome cynic thinking attention will turn him to a renowned critic.
I "collect" books, records, movies, art, toys, and things. They collect dust and I stare at them blankly waiting for a reason to pick them up and enjoy them. I preach endlessly on how to be happy to those too scared to admit I am the one needing the advice the most.
My philosophy is built on the outcome of hard work. Hard work put in by others who I expect to pick me up, announce my success, and declare that I am just like them. Realistically to an empty crowd in which my throne is not the shoulders of greatness before me but a broken man in a dark room shriveled to a dehydrated carcass of self-defeating prophecies.
Aware that suicide would be an outcome of fear, but living a life in which natural death will be reached delicately as I tip toe through a promising future avoiding any chance at excitement because anything less would be the worst.
"Art classes taught me the benefit of working through failure" I tell myself, but much like everything I learn I fabricate it as accomplishment and find the next thing in hopes one day a crowd stops to stare and shout to those walking past that "this is the kid who learned something new".
You think you are a loser until you start winning, and I am losing less than others, but believing I am not last is enough to keep me from actually trying to win. I think acknowledgment of my depression is heroic, I think my suffering is a choice, I think that I am doing exactly what needs to be done to pursue happiness.
I was told once to question whether my productivity is a masquerade. I hold it as some of the best advice shared personally. But now this essay concludes and you realize what it really is, why it was written, and you bookmark the tab to wipe your feet on after a day of accomplishing something I am too scared to try.