A harsh title I think, but one I realized this afternoon.
I did my usual routine, getting up late for work because
I’m not a fan of the rat race, so any time I can keep away
from it the better.
I got the bus, drank my coffee, watched the people on my bus, and half listened to their conversations
(Don’t judge me, it’s what writers do)
Got to work, did my thing, dealt with stupidity, and silently shook my head while crying inside.
While all this goes on, my mantra echoes in the back of my mind.
“get out of this prison, get on with your writing, get out of this prison, and grow some balls”
I hear it everyday, from the moment I wake up to the moment I pass out (Drooling according to my girlfriend)
The one thing, that I do, aside from sitting at my desk at night and tinkering with my writing is that one thing I think many of us do.
Find reasons to put off taking that step, that push into the great unknown.
It scares the majority of us, at least for me, it scares the ever loving shit out of me….I have that “What if everyone thinks I’m crap?” mentality, so I slow down.
I still write, but I find reasons to put things off until the next day, or the next week….hell even a month if I can get away with it.
Yet today gave me a slap in the face, with the cold fish of reality.
I did my routine, worked, fixed stuffs, emailed vendors, and set up the coming holiday season for all the work I have to do while everyone else is away.
I left work…..did my usual walk to the bus stop.
It’s a mundane routine, that these days I don’t even realize I’m doing….leave work then BAM!! I’m at the bus stop, and don’t even remember getting there.
It happens to drivers as well, before I came to America, and drove on a regular basis, it was the same thing.
Yet today became different……
A fire truck was across the street, an ambulance sat just in front of it, lights flashing sending out that inaudible signal to rubber neckers that they must come and sit with phones at the ready in the sad pathetic hope they could record something and go viral on youtube = instant celebrity it seems these days, foe doing nothng more than pointing your phone at another persons misery…
People hovered, I ignored it, waiting for my bus to arrive and get me out of the city that loves to think it’s weird, when sadly it’s just becoming kinda gross (That can be a rant for another day)
So minutes before my bus was to turn up, the doors crashed open, people shouting, gurney wheels screamed apon the cold hard cement pavement, a fire fighter was beating on a woman’s chest balancing with such precise knowledge it was beyond amazing, he took the curves, the bumps, then the ramp without a hint of fear from falling off.
All the while concentrating on this dead woman, and trying to bring life back into her…..
They got her to the street, still pushing the air bag, still pounding on her chest, the ambulance man at the back was struggling with the weight, he was on his own to get her up and into the vehicle…..I watched him grit his teeth, and pick up the gurney, then push it into the back, all the while the fire fighter was still beating on her chest.
The doors closed, my bus arrived and I got on…I went the very back, and sat in the corner facing the ambulance, they wrapped up, and without a moments hesitation hit the sirens, and sped away taking a hard left……and they were gone.
I sat, and watched as the fire fighters shook their heads in what I personally assumed as a sign she was not going to make it, I hope I am wrong, but from what I saw…..I would have to agree…
The bus pulled away with a sickening lurch I had become accustomed to, but today it felt different…..sadder….as we drove down the road, I understood…..several things really.
I’ve seen death a few times in my life, I was once a maintenance guy in the apartment business, and well you know….people die….I wrote a poem about one lady I had come to like a lot, I might post it sometime soon, I found her after 3 weeks of her passing, but I was younger, I saw it for what it was at the time….death….now, working in the city sitting in this rat race, I see life as a cage, and death is either a release, or a pathetic epitaph to your passing.
We constantly put off our writing till tomorrow, or next week…month…sometimes even a year, never once thinking that we could be that woman laying in the gurney, waiting for Christmas break? for next summer vacation? retirement?
Any of you that read any of my work, and the random bullshit babble, take at least this, do not put off your passion, the time is now, not next week or next month, it is now……because you never know.
You could be laying on a gurney in the street as rubber neckers watch you die.
Your dreams never reached because they were put off, of left to rot due to fear…
Harsh?
Yeah, but true, we never know when it’s our time.
and I’ll be damned if I end up on my back in a cubicle gasping for breath while some cheap shitty drawn poster tells me next Friday is Casual Friday…..my last views of the world……casual Friday….pardon my French, but fuck that….my life is worth more!! I have stories to tell, not papers to push….
This is my God damn life, Corporation free, casual Friday free, no cubicles like an anchor around my heart crushing it till it pops.
Leaving me to become just another pavement conversation, quickly forgotten.
Write.
While you’re still alive.
CD