These past 9 months of my life have been spent in a cubicle. I took off from school, I didn't go back after a semester like I had intended to and I remained a full-time employee for a wholesale travel company down the street taking calls and selling travel packages to snobby, lazy travel agents. About 2 months ago I was given the opportunity to change positions to be a part of the "custom" desk where, along with one other very seasoned individual, I would be getting quotes from our suppliers for items that were not already in our system. My daily tasks involve emails and that's pretty much it. I answer an email, forward it to a supplier, receive the quote after a day or two (or a week) and then I mark up the quote and give it to our agents to offer back to the travel agent. Yesterday I sent out a mere 7 emails, one of which was one word, and sat at my desk for 8 long hours. I applied for jobs, learned some HTML, fiddled with my wordpress website, edited some articles of mine and researched many many things on google such as anterior pelvic tilt and 100 best companies to work for in 2011.

Today I had the day off to see a chiropractor since my neck was tweaked at training and I needed some treatment so that I could properly check blind spots to the right of me again while driving. After, I figured I'd try to sit at a starbucks in order to tune out and finally get some work done on my zine. As I sat there, an old man came to sit near me on an opposite couch. He was quite aged with a near bare head decorated with dwindling white twines. His hands were shaky, and without a cap on his cup he spilled some of his drink on the floor without even noticing. As he sat down on the seat he seemed to have a little trouble and as his hand neared towards the coffee table holding my phone I was only worried about some more of his drink spilling onto my beloved possession. He finally got to his destination, bum firmly resting on its leather abode, and he looked peaceful. He had nowhere to be, or so it seemed. I stared at him wondering if he knew that in a matter of some odd years, he'd be dead. Maybe he stared at my feet just looking at my tattoos or maybe he was really pondering my young soul and how far he was from my stage in life. It was in that moment that I felt bad for him. Did he know? Did he realize that everything he had wanted to do in life had to have mostly been done already? I wanted to tell him, "hey, if you ever wanted to go skydiving, you better have done it already because there's no way in hell you'd be lively enough to accomplish that now!" Of course skydiving is just an adrenaline rush that most people consider a notch off their fun list but more to consider would be whether he had kids, got married, accomplished all his goals whatever they might be, became the man he had once aimed to be, surpassed the assholes he met that he never wanted to be. His time was running out.

My post isn't about this old man. This post is about the past year of my life and how much, at this very moment, I feel like that elder fellow coffee drinker. Given that I was working part time, or working elsewhere with better hours or had managed my money better, doesn't mean that I'd have published a book already, moved to Paris and found my soulmate. But I know that I would have gotten my zines done. Gotten my website well on its way. Competed more, traveled more, found more enjoyment in my life. Instead, I have damned myself to a hell full of middle aged fat people who have no dreams that exist beyond their monthly sales goals. Where the topic of conversation is their children. Where the excitement of their day is held in the hands of the rare nice travel agent who happened to make them laugh. I am not one of them. And it's not to say I am better or I am in the position to shit on their life but by all means, I will be better. I refuse to settle.

So I plan on quitting that job within the next two weeks and finding a retail or mindless part time job somewhere I don't feel stuck or sucked in. I start school next week and have never been so excited to start my life of improvement back up. I can't ever take back that year of my life. I now know what it feels like to have wasted time in a place where I don't belong that is truly bringing me down, telling me I can't. When I started working there I decorated my cubicle with some ripped out ad pages from a GracieMag and two of my medals to try and remind myself why I am there. When I moved cubicles to the department I'm in now, I added a photo of myself from Pan Ams and the brochure I received the day I walked into Cobrinha's academy but it does not do justice to remind me of my life outside of that restricted environment. In fact, the only thing it earns me is coworkers starting conversations regarding their 7 year old in tae kwon do and non-funny "jokes" involving me being a bodyguard if one should ever need it. The sooner I leave, the sooner I can regain my mojo.

I hope no one should ever feel that their work is unfinished. Death will come to us all and the feeling of a time bomb or an hour glass on its final ounce of grains should not be involved when it does. Whatever you're putting off, I hope you do it soon. Whatever I am fit to be, I hope I figure it out soon and run towards it full force. It really is the only way to live.