On Our Monotonous Lives

In David Foster Wallace's speech at Kenyon University, he mentions the mundane nothingness that is the adult workforce, describing it as "day in, and day out" (Wallace, 234).  This brought to mind our lives as Juniors, or specifically, my life as a Junior.  It got me thinking, what do i really do, like with my precious, and very limited time.  I try to use my time wisely, but who can say how much long I stare off blankly into the luminescent screen of my phone, or just blatantly do nothing.  It's a problem that plagues the human race as a whole, it's what truly blocks us from our dreams, and prepares us for a mundane 9-5 job and a lackluster family life.

(Pictured above: hopefully not me in 10 years)

I think there's a sort of mentality that's been embedded into our minds from a very young age.  We're told to follow our dreams, that we are truly capable of anything if we just worked hard enough.  But somewhere along the line that mentality's gotten distorted, to you can do anything you want that pays over $X a year, and you can't go to music school, and you can't be a zoologist, and you can't, blah blah blah.  I was talking to a friend once, it was about what we really, actually wanted to be, not the bullshit jobs our parents wanted us to have.  We talked for maybe 15 long and thoughtful minutes, i think i finished the conversation saying something about the difficulties of being a professional musician is, and the likelihood of me living out of a box somewhere on the streets.  And he said something like, "Yeah, that's a problem with a lot of youth nowadays, people are unrealistic with their dreams and end up ruining themselves."  It's not like he was wrong, our capitalistic society is fueled by crushing the dreams of the individual, turning them into our doctors, garbage collectors, and bus boys.  But I'm not sure how far that mentality can really take you.  The pressure I think that most influences my career is my terror of dying, 72 years old, at a desk, and being bald, at a desk.      "[Taking] risks is  jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down" (Ray Bradbury)