Utahn #10: Nostalgia

Prior to being a right-wing security guard in Utah, I was a anarchist film student in Canada. Being kind of an insomniac tonight, I watched my old works from high school and college and just like clockwork I had the pining for the days of class, a digital camcorder and the ability to use countless amounts of fades and cheap editing tricks to make things look cool. Hell, after a day like today (a less than stellar collection of lateness and assholes), high school insecurity and college aloneness seemed positively blissful.

Alas, as much as I would just love to be an awkward introvert with the online personality of an American Pie character, I can't. Physically, mentally, emotionally, scientifically, it's just impossible. I've got a wife. I've got a career path. I've got responsibilities and bank accounts and loans and co-workers and in-laws. For all the platinum in T-Pain's mouth, I couldn't go back without reverting to someone I detested then and detested now. Back then, I hid in imaginary worlds of revolution and touchless romance. I was one of the millions of precursors to the tween MySpace generation. I refused responsibility because it seemed so easy to deny. Today, I can hardly work a day without having to make sure people much older than me do shit that toddlers can understand ("No, blasting through a stop sign and nearly hitting the security gate is NOT okay!")

I work around people for which 90% of them will never be happy. They, for some reason, took it upon themselves to remove the responsibility we all have to ourselves; that is, to better our individual lives. Day in, day out, I hear bitching, moaning, anger and lament. They don't say it, most of them, but they are the defeated. They have that look that says. "This it it". The worst are those who actually know they're doing it and don't care; willing to stay low to stay lazy.

There are the 10% who do enjoy their work and who advance up the food chain. These are the people I enjoy working around. They don't come in bitching about lack of sleep, lack of cash, the family or whatever. They talk about the past. Cool shit they DID. Cool shit they REMEMBER. Fun they don't have NOW. Happiness they lost and blame on the job.

We all know these zombies, these minions of lethargy and despair. They bring down the office, the site, the factory. etc. They bring dark to light, clouds to the sun, Madonna to a beauty pageant. They suck the life out of you so you can be exactly like them: lost.