Woke up at 4:30am.  Made coffee.  Straightened up the living room.

Last night, although my heart was terribly heavy, was also full.  Of memories and magic.  My guy, in the kitchen crafting and curating an orchestra of flavors on a pork butt.  Me, on the couch, serendaded by jazz music as I rumaged through a few pages of Bird by Bird.  I stopped to take these moments in, and pushed aside the panic and dread I felt in my chest about the weight of my current job.  When I go a few weeks without travel, I find I fall into a corporate haze.  The Rat Race.  Suits.  Chains.  Beholden to the Almighty 9-5.  In my desk most days, I sit in my cubicle, watching the minutes sludge along as I eagerly anticipate my release into freedom.  Locked in a brightly halogen-lit mecca box of clacking & typing, muffled sounds of meetings, & wafts of smells from office food that have an eerily recognasance of my elementary school cafeteria.  It’s pleasant by some standards.  But for me, this big open metal and concrete box housing hundreds of cubicle spaces leaves me feeling hopeless.  Ahhhh, but home.  Home I get a few hours of untethered freedom during my week.  I can read, write, dance, create, have sex, drink, eat glorious meals.  I can engage in rich conversations on the phone with family and friends or in person with my beloved, enjoy art on my walls and the vintage outdoor lights that lazily drape the edges of our patio, hung on squirly, skinny, tall trees that sway slightly beneath their weight.  Home, where I have puppy kisses & art projects begging to be touched like needly, whiney, wonderful children.  Lamps illuminate the corners of our home, created by my love, that by their very presence seem to have a way of delclaring his ingenuitive engingeering and artistic brilliance.  Books scattered across every flat surface of worlds, ideas and lessons to learn and partake in.  This is my mecca of wonder.  My brick haven full of possibility, creativity and connection.  And this morning, as I recall the wonders of just a few simple hours last night, I am left facing the day.  Back to the box.  Back to the halogen mecca of suffocation, wrought with corporate rituals & rigid behaviors, unnecessary presentations and painfully forced enthusiastic conversations lacking authenticity.  Interactions with money grubbling zombies who have sold their beautiful lives as slaves to status, reputation & growth of this product that won’t be remembered in 100 years’ time.  So, off I go.  Preparing my body for the ritual.  First the shower, then the dress, paint my face and product in my hair, atuning to every detail ensuring my preparedness will communicate a false sense of care and engagement to this empty corporate mission.

Today.  Today I’ll seek little flecks of truth & authenticity.  Today I’ll do my part to bring a hint of it with me.  Today I’ll press on and challenge my own viewpoint of this place.  Today I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt & hope for something greater.  And yet, the question always lingers and hisses in the back of my mind, like a gnat buzzing near your ear: Am I selling out?

“Don’t sell out,” I tell myself.  Live out loud.  Protect your freedoms.  I recognize that many don’t hold this view, and instead worship the 9-5, raising it 40 more hours and seeking to win the hand.  But inside, I have to keep fighting to preserve my life outstide of this box. The game is rigged I have learned.  And no one wins.