Trials of a Creative in Corporate

A brief blog about my painful forays into the corporate world of 9-5 Office Space tedium, as a creative, introverted INFP who embraces constant melancholy and maladjustment to this society. ***I recommend starting at the bottom and reading upwards.

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Fluorescent lighting

Why must the world embrace fluorescent lighting so? Surrounding me like an over-illuminating teargas, a force field of grey-green shadowless light that curses everything it falls upon with dull, flickering, over-detailed stillness. Fluorescent objects lag when you set your eyes upon them. Speckled with minutia, everything is dirty. Subtlety is lost under the white lights - romance, earthiness. Things are cold and sterile and empty. Colours all the same flat opaque, every reflection a piercing, tinny shout. 

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Free

I wish not to suppress my spirit’s restlessness but to indulge it.

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Rush hour

Being herded through the morning rush makes me feel like cattle. The dead eyes feel more robotic than human, but a robot could never simulate that look of desperate resignation that glimmers in the gaze of every passing face.

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Seneca

“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.” Reading Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” when trapped in an office for 8 hours a day is my own form of self-harm, I think. 

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Office Space

Hibernate my happiness

Justify spending days like this

For now, my life is Office Space

The misery’s infectious in this place

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The End

Try to leave that empty life behind you, try forget that it exists. It holds nothing for you and it’s not where you belong. Now you know your enemy.

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Dear Homeless Man,

You sit on the floor of the subway halls, wishing every passerby a good evening.

How do you feel, are you ok?

I know things are tough, that much is clear. But do you ever feel happy?

These people you see walking through here - I don’t think they’re happy. Maybe they don’t feel the pain that you have felt - but I don’t think they feel much at all. I think they are numb for most of their lives. I think they wish most of their minutes away.

Do you think about things a lot? I used to, when I was free. But now I’m one of these people. My basic needs are met, I’m never cold or hungry. But my soul is screaming and I refuse to go numb so I cannot have peace. I can’t truly smile or rest in my day. I smile when alone, when the day is done, when the memory of this empty reality fades.

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Swimming in the shallow end

I believe that the universe is endless, infinite. By that same token I believe our mind echoes this quality. I feel as if I have been far into the depths of this mental infinity. Too far for comfort. 

The state of my waking life determines the depths of my dreams - my internal travels, ventures into my own consciousness. It also determines the depth at which I am comfortable freefalling into.

Right now, I am pond scum. I float on the surface, I am an eyesore. The sun ferments me, makes me thicker. Nothing penetrates.

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The Positivity Movement

Dead men cannot feel happiness. A soul cannot sing if it doesn't exist. I can move the muscles of a smile but my eyes cannot glow. I can wear a disguise but I will not bear the scent of authenticity, I will be exposed as an impostor. No wolf can truly get past the instincts of the herd.

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Turbulence - the price of Freedom

Am I the one with the rosy tint, the haze? Am I a ghost, drowned in the concrete on which they stand? Houses built upon this block while I live inside a tumbleweed. 

They look through their windows at me tumbling by, not a strand of their hair displaced by the breeze. 

But out here I roll where I please, soon off the edge of the Earth, I’ll be free.

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I’m not entitled. I’m frustrated. That everyone is so ok with the way things are being run. Life is so obfuscated by society. No one thinks, questions or cares. No one worries about their happiness. They have themselves convinced of false happiness. They refuse to see the truth of our beautiful existence. They can’t imagine the incredible places their minds could go, if only they were unburdened by all of this superficiality.

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Free coffee

Yeah, I drink the free, piss coffee at work. Why would I pay money - Money, the only reason I’m here right now, doing this shitty job - for a drink containing a substance that stimulates the brain. I don’t need to make myself more aware of the dull reality of how deadening and uninspiring this job is. What I need is a sedative, not a stimulant.

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The weight of expectation

, it crushes the soul of anyone who chooses to embrace it. Only those who shake it off and choose to flow organically will capture me. Stop trying to be. Being should require no effort. Just be, and be next to me. We can “be” together, alongside each other. No expectations, no trying. Just being. But there is so much bullshit. So much wanting. So much ego, confidence, lack of it, fear, rejection, inadequacy, superiority, inferiority, perceived slights, endless perception.

Shed yours and you’ll attract others who have shed theirs too.

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A hopeless day

Why, today, do you feel guilt and shame? Why today can’t you philosophize your way out of your troubles? Does today carry more clarity, or less?

Is the haze that surrounds your head less pink today, or is it not there at all?

Did it dissipate in the fire of your actions, a fire whose heat rose to a point no clouds could withstand? 

The smoke of that fire will soon suffocate the memory of ever a rosy haze.

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What do I value?

Authenticity, simplicity, honesty

an unassuming nature. 

Open mindedness, Acceptance

tolerance

embracing what is different and unknown. 

The rejection of expectation, comparison and tradition.

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Mutiny of the soul

Inspired by this fantastic article http://realitysandwich.com/1535/mutiny_soul/ Resolve strengthened by the world’s constant insistence that I am wrong. Always fighting with my mind yet complying with my actions. A silent rebellion and a constant internal battle. I now realize my long-standing refusal to be complicit in a world with which I do not agree, nor do I support.

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Erosion of the Soul

As in introvert, being around people all day is exhausting. This is nothing new, I’m not the first to say it, it’s quite well established these days that introverts tire from long periods of social interaction. 

So what does this mean for people who work in, say, and office? Forced to have constant superficial encounters with people for hours on end? 

I liken in to the erosion of enamel on your teeth. I read an article about the effects of what you eat on the acid-alkaline balance in your mouth. Every time you eat something, this pH balance changes. This is part of the role that saliva has in your mouth, to restore this balance. 

If you were to eat an entire bag of gummy bears, you would be ok. This is an assault your teeth can recover from. However, the results of eating 1 gummy bear ever 15 minutes over the course of several hours, would be quite devastating to the strength of your teeth and your enamel. 

Such is the effect, I propose, on the mind and mood of an introvert, from the constant bombardment of personalities, moods, words and actions by the people we encounter throughout the day. There is never a chance to recharge, to equalize, to remineralize and balance the enamel of the soul.