Ennui

Notable Entries

August 6
         So today I decided to start keeping a journal.  It occurred to me that memories fade rapidly, so they need to be backed up somehow.  Years from now, these words may be the only proof that I ever did anything at all.
         There's a bigger reason than that, though...a greater realization...
         I have a social security number to prove that I exist.  I have a blog to prove that I think.  I have accounts on social media to prove that I am employed and have friends.
         Who am I trying to prove all of this to?  My thoughts and actions are always twisted somehow...twisted in some misguided way to prove to others that I am normal, but unique.  Special, I suppose. 
         So this journal, which is written solely for me, is sacred.

         Let's begin, shall we?
         My name is Ed, which is short for Edward.
         I am 28 years old.
         I work a modest job at a large tech company.
         And I am very, very bored with my life.

August 8
         Fear came at an odd time.  These days, it seems natural to be disappointed, lonely, and bored out of my mind...but afraid?  What do I have to be afraid of? 
         My life is peaceful.  I have a stable job.  I have a stable income.  Stability defines everything.
         But I thought of my dad and I was afraid.
         He left me with very clear instructions before he died.
         I guess dying is the only way to become immortal.
         
         We'll sleep off the fear and hope for morning light.

August 12
         Maybe it's a triviality, but today was my 1,225th day of work. 
         I started counting when I realized that counting could be the only way to wake up.
         Count backwards from 1000.  Does it make you think about the time you're wasting?  Do you get impatient and think of all the things you could be doing?  What if days worked the same way?  What if, on the 100th day or the 200th day or the 1000th day, you woke up to life and embraced it?

         So far it hasn't worked.
         The coins clicked.
         Five...six...seven...
         The time crawled.
         Three...four...five...
         And another day died before I was even aware it had lived.

August 14
         I haven't written about routine yet, so here's routine:  I wake up early, get dressed, take a subway to work, put in a day's work of checking calculations or editing designs or whatever, take the subway home, enjoy a little free time, and then sleep early.  What do I do in my free time?  Mostly surf the web or play video games.  I try to do meaningful things, but that's what I do 90% of the time or so.
         I usually have to take work home on the weekends, so it ends up following basically the same pattern.
         Sometimes I try to read classics because they mean a lot to me, but I realized that I'm not like any of those heroes.  Winston had a sense of purpose.  Hamlet was a poet and a genius.  Even Montag was a hopeless romantic created in a time when there was still a living world left so save.
         
         Look around...
         From the 23rd floor of a corporate building, watch the leaderless crowd outside.  Hear them singing for revolution.  Do they not realize that there's no one to guide them forward?          
         Pass them by without a glance.  Check the bus times on a massive screen.
         Don't make eye contact, but memorize the faces of everyone on this train.  What are they thinking?  Do they dream, too?  Are they happy?

         In their perfect world, who am I?
         I'm an actor who forgot his lines.
         I'm J. Alfred Prufrock with hair.
         I am not central to anything that has happened or will happen.

August 24
         Our office just picked up an intern.  Her name is Rachel, and I think I immediately fell in love with her.

         Thought.  A quick Google search revealed that she's still in high school.
         Damn.  You can never tell these days.
         Maybe I'll re-watch “American Beauty” tonight and convince myself that feeling any lustful feelings for Rachel is morally wrong. 
         Everyone's full of lust.  The only thing that sets me apart from the rest is that I'll admit to my flaws.

         I'll try to get to know her, though.
         I'll try to see if I can help her in any way, knowing that she's in high school and still has things to learn.
         Maybe we'll be friends.

         Anything to break routine.

******

         This kind of thing used to take skill.  You needed to know your way around a computer.  You had to be able to look for backdoors, or cover your tracks, or write a program yourself. 
         Now it's remarkably easy.  Just buy a program that covers up your tracks for you.  Better yet, copy it from a friend.  Then, now that you're covered, all you have to do is download all the programs illegally.  They have programs that can crack passwords for you.  They have programs that can allow you to remotely access other computers.  They have programs for just about everything.  All you have to do is click a button.
         The only rationalization is that, nowadays, everyone does it.  My coworkers do it.  My friends do it.  10-year-olds do it, thinking they're clever and that they're undermining authority. 
         Okay...maybe it's not everyone.  Your average computer user doesn't do it.  And your average computer user probably thinks that it requires some sort of skill.  It used to.  Now it doesn't.
         We put our whole lives on the internet, as if transparency were the purpose of life.  We reveal our interests, our thoughts, our locations on a day-to-day basis.  So is it really so bad to dig a layer deeper?
         I tell Rachel all of this.  I tell her because we're friends, and I don't know if anyone else will teach her these things.  So I walk her through some of the techniques I picked up.
         There's a coworker a few cubicles down sitting somewhere between me and Rachel.  We don't like him.  He's rude.  He's conceited.  So I show Rachel how to break in.  We monitor his search history.  We record his keystrokes and keep his passwords in a separate file.  We pull his email conversations, poems he likes, pictures of his wife, his child, his mother...all of this between work hours and cups of coffee.
         I explain that we've projected our lives onto computers.  Breaking into a computer is the equivalent of breaking into someone's mind.  Use this power wisely, I say with a smirk.

         It's been months and I still feel like using the present tense.  I'll stop.
         We never seemed to run out of things to talk about.  We were worlds apart, but the similarities were there.  She said her parents were immigrants, originally from Asia.  She worked hard in school to make them proud, but she also needed money and work experience to support them.  She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do with her life, but whatever it was didn't matter...her family would choose her life for her.  And she seemed to accept it.
         Long, dark brown hair.  A somewhat round face.  Medium height.  A well-built, slender body.  A voice that was full of sound.  I savored every detail because she was one of the most real people I had ever met.  She said what she felt.  She didn't hide behind a mask or a computer screen.
         I still remember a conversation we had had.
         “I know this may sound out of the blue,” she had asked, “but are you happy with your job?”
         My response was slow and hesitant.  “I mean...it's the best thing out there for me.  To pay the bills and my student loan.”
         “To pay the bills and your student loan?  What would you rather be doing?”
         I could tell by the way she asked it that she was genuinely curious and not trying to lead me to her own conclusion.  “I don't know,” I said.  “I guess I was just born for a different time.  When I was young, people still used to talk about things...the way we're talking about things right now.  We had an ambitious drive.  Everyone thought they could do anything—change the world.  But now that ambition is gone.  Everyone is asleep, it seems, and they're dreaming of somewhere else.”
         She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them.  “I think there are still people like that,” she said.  “There are plenty of people in my classes who want to change the world.  They've moved pretty far in their studies.  Do you think we all have that ambition, but lose it?”
         “I don't know,” I said.  Then I checked the time and realized our lunch break was over. 

******

         For most of the time I knew Rachel, I never broke into her life.  I looked her up but she kept a low profile...she was smart.  And I tried learning her life the traditional way...asking questions and having conversations.  That's the only reason our friendship was meaningful and I wanted to keep it that way.
         But one day she stopped coming to work...just like that.  And I was possessed by a burning curiosity.
         And one night, when I was alone, I got a little drunk (we're different people when we're drunk, so we can't be held accountable for our actions) and I finally did what I had been wanting to do:  I broke through the virtual walls of her life.  I went through her emails, her web history, and then stumbled on her medical records.
         Her life and her secrets.  Secrets that were meant to be kept from everyone.  She had been...           
         ...Treated for beatings, self-inflicted wounds...and a near drug-overdose. 
         This was the world she was in, and it's the world that tore me away from her.
         Now that I thought about it, she had always kept her workplace neat at the office...obsessively neat.  She placed everything so carefully and almost symmetrically.  Now I could see her in my mind's eye, so young and beautiful and innocent.  There she was, humming, as the light poured in.  Washing the dishes.  Scrubbing floors.  Vacuuming rugs and living in some fake sense of perfection.  And then, between chores, swallowing pills.  Between meals, drinking alcohol.  Between studies, cutting slashes. 
         If only she were still with me...I could have helped her.
         But a few nights later, while I was caught up in my own thoughts, she was the one who came to me.

         She rings my apartment and I, surprised, let her in.  I can tell right away that she's drunk.  It's 1 in the morning but all I can think about is keeping her safe.  So I guide her through the doorway that leads to my world.
         She tells me that she was at a party and got wasted.  Her parents can't see her like this, so she came here.  I ask how she knew where I lived.
         “I used a computer,” she says.
         I guide her to my couch and let her lay down, lay her perfect body down in the place I sometimes sleep in.  I tell her to relax, tell her I'll take care of everything.  I remember that I'm a little drunk myself.  Our eyes meet, intoxicated eyes to intoxicated eyes, and then she closes hers.  Now she's barely conscious. 
         And now, at this single moment, I do what I've been wanting to do for such a long time.
         I try to help her.
         
         I bring a few blankets from my closet and lay them on top of her.  I pull her cell phone from her pocket and listen to her voicemail.  There are a series of messages from her mom, pleading with her to come home.  I link the cell phone to my computer and hook an audio voice changer to my microphone, setting it to Rachel's approximate frequency.  I call her mother and tell her not to worry, that I'm at a friend's house because we just realized an important project is due at 8 AM (when school starts) the next morning.  She doesn't seem to believe me, so I quickly write up a fake assignment sheet, email a screenshot on my computer, and say that there are just lots of random deadlines in this day and age.  Maybe that's not the way Rachel talks, but her mother reluctantly accepts the story.  She seems to just want to sleep.
         I check on Rachel through the night, making sure she's okay.  I wake her up at 7 AM, telling her everything and asking her to do some stretches to ensure she's sobered up.  She's...still not completely there, but definitely better than she was before.  I make some breakfast for her.  She doesn't talk much.
         I drive her to her house by 7:30 with the help of her phone's GPS.  I make sure to let her off about a block or two from where she lives, so it can look like she walked home.
         I say goodbye to her, one last time.  And she says goodbye to me, one last time.

******

         I saw her again just a week ago, at the park.  We talked for a long time.  She told me everything was good now, that she was so thankful I covered for her that one night.  She told me about her college plans and a summer job she found making coffee.  She told me about a scholarship she had won and how everything was looking like it would be better.
         I was relieved to hear it.  I had made it a point to never break into her life again, or anyone's.  But I had wished she would call, or email me, or something. 
         Still, I didn't blame her then and I'm not going to blame her now.

         With her gone, work moved on at an even slower pace.  My boss, who I hate, called me in a few weeks ago and put me on a big project.
         “As you know,” he said, making sure to use the pre-written lines from our company mission statement, “the purpose of this company is to provide safe, portable chip implants to ease the lives of everyone.  But some have reported that a few faulty chips have malfunctioned, causing obvious health concerns.  As one of my most trustworthy engineers, I am putting you on a team whose purpose is to ensure that our current design is as safe as possible.”
         He's not an idealist.  He's part of management.  But I went along with it and these past few days I have been doing nothing but work.
         In case you're wondering, our company produces a small computer chip no larger than the head of a pin that can be implanted in people (usually on the forearm).  It was originally just used for purchases and quick identification, but they've come up with all kinds of creative applications for it.  For example, there's a pair of glasses you can use that connects to the chip via bluetooth and then works like the screen of a smart phone. 
         I didn't understand before why so many people hated the idea.  Why were they complaining?  They allowed us to build cell phones everywhere, knowing that the waves they transmit can cause cancer.  They allowed us to sell computers everywhere, knowing that those computers often had build-in technology that made tracking people possible.  So what was wrong with this?

         Now, as I walk through the green tress in this endless forest, I think I understand.
         No, I didn't quit.  I took a few sick days to go on this excursion.  I usually waste my sick days anyway, and they don't carry from year to year.  So I'm out here, reflecting on my life.
         I mean, I'm bound to that company.  I've been bound since I accepted that student loan, but when I'm done I'll be free.  It won't be too long.
         I remember how disappointed I was the week I graduated from high school...the week I realized I didn't win the full scholarship to college.  My dad wasn't mad, but I was in tears.  All the freedom, all the limitless possibilities were instantly limited.  But you know what?  On graduation day everything was perfect.  Because my dad, for the one time in my life, complimented me.  He said that he was proud.  He said that he loved me and was glad I was his son.  He said that he had been hard on me only because he wanted me to reach my full potential, and now that I had we could enjoy living our lives together.
         Too late, Dad.  He died of a car crash not long after.

         Now the sun is setting...
         See how perfect the sky is?  See how perfect everything in this world is? 
         Rachel wasn't the first person I wrongly believed I was in love with.  There was a woman before, a romantic.  And I think that she, like me, was alive in the wrong time.  I tried to explain to her that all the romantics were dead, that this world couldn't handle her because art was dead.  I was always a downer to her...that's probably why she left me.
         But damn...that woman could write.  She could write from a thousand points of view and she could depict everything in life and nature perfectly, in ways I couldn't even imagine.  She could turn words into anything she asked them to be.
         Too late, Ed...I think I understand where she was coming from.  In a day I'll be back to my boring job and my boring work and my boring life, but until then let's just try to take in this perfect moment and live.