AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

19 July 2006

4:15 p.m.

Fifteen minutes to go. It's amazing how hard it is for me to do this job without an iPod. I can't even really think anymore. It's like the monotonous repetition of tasks, combined with no outside stimulus, has deadened my brain. This must be how my fellow employees became such sad sacks of nothing.

Usually this job makes me feel irritable and restless. Right now I just feel hopeless.

Always is. Always was. Always will be.
I really hope I can get this thing fixed.

No thoughts. All I can think about is that I have no thoughts. Did the fire go out? Maybe it went out long ago, and I'm only just coming to realize it, as the last heat radiates from the hearth, leaving cold stone and ash?

This is such melodramatic nonsense. I'm trying too hard to think of something clever to think about.

Three minutes to go . . . . . . . . . .
It's not that this is a bad job. It really isn't. I'm just not a good worker. I wasn't made to serve the interests of others, no matter how lofty the goal. I like what I make. I like what my company does, I just don't like doing it. So I can leave and find another job, possibly a better one, probably a worse one, or I can figure out another way.

A friend of mine recently quit her job and quit school to start a company of her own; selling her own handmade clothing. She said she had to do it because she was afraid that if she didn't she might never get to lead " an extraordinary life." She pretty much lives on beans and rice now, but I have to think it's worth it.