Rat Races & Hamster Wheels

What makes me so arrogant to think that this life that I'm living isn't worthy of being wanted? Who am I to believe that a 9-to-5 job and a steady paycheck are beneath me? Why do I get to cheat the system and why do I get to wander around the world while the rest of everyone living has to have a job to survive? Why do I get to be reckless? Why do I get to throw my life to danger whenever I want, when everyone else plays it safe?

I ask myself this question daily when I sit at a desk from 8:30 AM to 5 PM and on the drive to and from and to and from. And no matter how many times I asked myself this question I always come to the same conclusion: I don't give a shit. If I want to throw my life away and galavant all across the country, all across other countries that don't belong to me but that I want to belong to me, then why does that make me such a terrible person? Why can't I pack up my stuff in my car and keep driving and never look back? Why do I have to settle for everybody else's life when what I want is my life? Why do I have to feel so obligated to take care of myself when what I want is to not take care of myself for the sake of living a life that I can look back on when I finally get to  my deathbed and think, “Yeah, fuck yeah. I did it, I was who I wanted to be.” Why is that so bad? Why do people make me feel like I'm crazy for wanting to live a better story and for wanting to see places that nobody else gets to see because they just don't want to make the effort or take the risk?

And then I feel like I'm arrogant again. I feel like the world operates in a certain way and I have always operated against it and it's hard to operate against what's already there. Why can't I just be content with being ordinary? Why can't I live the easy life of following the rules? And I cry out to the universe saying, “Why did you make me this way? Why did you make me into a hippie that can't be satisfied with what everybody else is satisfied by?”

Why do I dream of weekend trips to Alabama and day trips to San Francisco? Why do I dream of quitting my job that's so easy and so good for summers in Ireland where I do nothing but take pictures and meet new people? Why is it so easy to dream but so hard to actually step into those dreams? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm gonna answer for you right now: Because I have people telling me that it's good for me to have this job.

“Congratulations, you've made it. You're an adult. Congratulations you don't get to leave whenever you want, congratulations you don't get to vacation whenever you want, congratulations you can't see the people you love whenever you want. Congratulations you're stuck.”

And I'm angry I guess that I chose this life, that I gave in because I didn't have to give in. I had a plan to travel, to starve, to see new things, to sleep in my car. I have a map set out with a road trip across the United States of America to see people that I haven't seen in a while, to love people that I haven't loved in a while. And I got scared and I gave in to a life of adulthood and of coming home too tired to write and of going out too tired to live.

And this is why people are depressed: not because of the food we eat and not because of the smog in the air, but because we've been told that the capitalist dream and the American dream is a 9-to-5 job that sucks the soul right out of you. This life that I'm living is supposed to be the best goddamn life anyone in the world can hope for, and it's not enough for me. But it has to be enough for me, that's what everyone says. Because I'm gonna want to get married one day and I'm gonna want to have kids one day and they need stability. The human race never survived on stability but let’s forget that for a second because now we survive on the stability of the rat race and hamster wheels.

So what's the solution here, do I stay in, do I stay here, or do I throw it all away and just go away like I've always wanted? Send answers, send help because I think I'm dying. I think the indecision is killing me.