Stuck
by Lori—Age 26—Seattle, WA
Right now, I’m making someone else rich. The details aren’t really all that important. I push a keyboard, hold down a desk, shuffle papers, and fake a smile when I really want to scream. Every two weeks, I get a few hundred bucks as a “thank you” for doing my part in making sure we make the bottom line, and Boss Almighty gets a bit richer.
It could be worse. I could be out of a job, or working for half of what I make now. I feel guilty complaining about my job when it keeps the lights on, the water running, and the foreclosure notices out of the mailbox. I feel guilty, but it’s hard not to be bitter when it takes only a glance out the office window at that candy apple red car—easily worth more than what I make in five years—to remind me just who’s benefiting the most off of what I do.
Is this really what I’ve been doing with my life for the last few years? Worse, is this what I’ll be doing five years from now? Am I going to retire from this place?
What kills me more than anything is knowing that, on my desk at home, a dozen novels wait to be finished. They’re all in various stages of writing: a couple of outlines, some character sketches, a handful of chapters written, one second draft and half of a third draft. They are the work I want to do. I want to finish my stories.
All I want to do is write. I need to do it. It’s like eating. Or breathing.
The irony of it is that when I get home from adding to Boss Almighty’s bottom line, my brain is fried and my body exhausted. And thus, the stories sit for another day, pacified only by the promise that I’ll work on them tomorrow, when I’m not so tired. The same promise I’ve made to them for the last three years.
Someday, they’ll be finished. Someday, they’ll be published. Sure, I’ll still be making some publishers and editors rich, but at least I’ll writing.
But for now, I’m stuck at this desk.
Making someone else rich.
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