I’m 30. I’ve worked in a corporate setting for almost a decade now, playing politics and trying so hard to move up and get ahead and there’s never an endpoint. It’s always grinding to the bone for nothing.
When I was younger, I wrote. I wrote poems and stories and essays. I won second place in two poetry contests in school, my fifth grade teacher kept a “book” I wrote for over a decade so he could show me one day when I was published. Professors tried to push me into grad school for writing.
I played music. I briefly majored in music. My professor who died a few years back told me I had the ability to be a prodigy. I practiced hard. I had passion. I was told it wasn’t a career and I needed to find something else that would make me money.
I did. I got a corporate job. I sat at a gray cubicle for years. I was passive aggressively told how stupid I am because of my age. I worked from morning to night and I can’t get those hours back.
I stopped writing. I stopped playing music. I’ve become a corporate drone, grasping at straws to survive. I have a wonderful daughter now. She’s so full of light and I can’t help but feel anger and sadness because they’ll try to take it from her too.
Keep fighting. We aren’t meant to live like this. Don’t give up what you love for them. That’s what they want. They want more worker bees.
I wish I wasn’t entwined in the hive anymore. But I have to survive. And surviving means staring at a white screen at numbers that make someone very rich.