THE NINE-TO-FIVER SYNDROME

By Greg Evans

That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia, you are thrust back in to the reality of your life.

The practice of overeating, overspending, poor theater etiquette, living without a sense of humor, throwing tomatoes at the neighborhood children, internet chatrooms, and driving ten miles over the speed limit as if your going through a sexless mid-life crisis boils down to only a few things. The most likely crack in your armor is that you aren't getting laid nearly enough or maybe you hate your job, hate your wife, your kids hate you and you'd rather be in Sarasota, Florida instead of Grundy, but that's life. You get what you put into it as far as I'm concerned and the luck factor. Well some are and some simply ain't. As you well know driving ten miles over the speed limit faster, you really aren't going to get where you are going that much sooner Johnson. You only raise the likely hood of wrapping yourself around a telephone pole, running over an innocent child on a bicycle, flattening some poor animal's brains out and there is a good chance that you are either talking or texting while driving only increasing the risk factor. Now texting and driving is a whole new can of worms that we will delve into one day and I am filled with opinions and solutions to derail the teeny-bop fad. And then the speeders will drive behind me in the slow lane and tail gate me while steering with their thighs and staring into the palm of their hands typing a thousand letters a second. It's asinine. There should be a device put into the car that won't allow the car to move until the phone is plugged to it whereby rendering the phone useless until the car is again turned off. And that is not a violation of privacy by any stretch of the imagination. Instead it is ensuring thousands of people the right to breath because those who would have been struck down by the careless would be able to live. But in our society that would be too costly and an inconvenience for the schmucks screaming about their rights to drive with a cell phone in their possession. The governments of the states would rather spend the money on Jacuzzi meetings in Vegas casino resorts or on 50" flat screen televisions for the penitentiaries so the poor downtrodden convicts can watch their reality TV. Another day I will get into all my peeves regarding all the damn convicts and criminals out there. Be glad I'm not President because that problem would be solved.

If I was a cop I'd give out an estimated 500 speeding tickets a day! I wouldn't feel bad for all you lead-footed ninnies. Did you ever stop to think that maybe those speed limits on the roads were derived from some complex algorithm that took into account the weather conditions of the area, the curvature of the road, the slope etc. No of course not, you figured it was the last traffic cop who wrote you that $150 ticket with a smile who came up with the speed limits so to hell with them! Petal to the medal. Now don't misinterpret me when I talk about cracking down on speed limit regulation. I am actually opposed to many, many, many regulations that this country and numerous other countries around the world unnecessarily impose upon the people for example, gun restrictions. I don't believe in gun laws, just like I don't believe in minimum wage outside the market value and I don't believe in welfare, and numerous other things. We need to be a society that is able to live and function based on common sense and understanding the common courtesies. You may say to yourself that that is preposterous and that no society can function without heavy regulation and police presence. That is not true. I know well of at least two societies that have very little regulation, almost zero crime, high employment and almost no visible police presence. I am not going to share those places with anybody because I don't want it to get out there that they exist and then the idiots who wrecked this society to go there and ruin those.

Did you know that the fastest speeding ticket ever given out was in 2000 in Texas for going 242 mph in a 75 mph zone. In Finland the fine amount is correlated to your income. There are multiple instances of six figure fines. Chew on that for a while. We'd all like to think we have the tar to take that adrenaline rush to the limit, and 242 mph hour can surly get you there for that split second where you are face-to-face with your soul and however you want to look at it, I imagine you do some serious self-reflecting in such a moment. That boring, restrained life you left behind for the few seconds when your heart is pounding in your ears and the wind is blowing your cheeks into malleable claymation, eyes squinted and rectum puckered you dive head on into the most pure moment you have ever experienced since the moment you were born and as fast as you reached that euphoric utopia you are thrust back in to the reality of your life. And then you are desperate to return to that feeling, that place and you try the affair because it seems exciting but it really is nothing more than more baggage and an annoying set of personality quirks so you become buddy, buddy with a new brand of hootch which is great for the first week but then you find yourself regularly tired and impatient, prone to common colds and a cramping stomach. The movies you used to watch and interject yourself into in your head pretending that you were some kind of hero become stagnant and hard to get through. Sleep becomes a challenge, getting through work focused without messing up and getting chewed out by the boss is like trying to swim across the Atlantic. Nothing makes any sense anymore and what's worse, the whole world is going through some bizarre economic woe that the cost of living is through the roof so all the money you want to put aside for retirement which looks to be around age 92, is now non-existent and all you have to look forward to is pizza and porn on Friday night. Yippy. Do you know people like that? The kind you reason will end up in their office one morning armed to the teeth on an empty stomach battling an everclear hangover? You better believe they are out there and you may be one of them. That is why you want to stay on everyone's good side because you never know who is suffering from the Nine-to-five syndrome. There comes a time when it is time to pull it together and start figuring things out. What people fail to understand is that everyone has a talent, an ability to reach into themselves and fine tune some energy that is waiting to be set free. Most people either don't want to make the effort because it will take nearly everything out of you to get to that point where you are self-sufficient and able enough for others to believe in you, but it is there, it is alive in all of us only a few ever find it.

The more hectic it may seem to be becoming, the more progress you are making. The more people tell you that you are worthless, the more ground you are covering. The more hacks out there who tell you your query isn't for them, or the HR rep you says your GPA isn't good enough, or the coach says your too frail and short, or the girl says your not fun enough is all the more reason to get up earlier, work harder, run the gauntlet, take that risk and fail. Fail a thousand times to all the bobbling, laughing heads. Claw your way out of the slums, out of the trailer parks, out the mundane suburbs of expectation, out of the wood and mortar cabins and give the world something worth a damn. It doesn't matter where you came from, what you've gone through but what matters is what are made of and where you end up. Some don't even make it until after they are dead and gone but dammit they made it in the end. But understand the world needs the nine-to-fivers and there are many out there who are great at it and move up the ladder and find success and that should be paradise for them. And along the way they too will face the brutes and trolls of the the working world looking to denigrate anyone with promise, it is just the way of the world.

The real world is a cut throat land of scorn and ridicule, gritty knife fights produce winners and winners are promoted and then have to face off against the next batch of stinkers looking to bring them down but they find it within themselves to persevere through the storms and regular assaults on their work ethics and character. They aren't about just going into work, doing what has to be done and then going home. They are constantly learning as much as they can and moving forward. They aren't just sitting in the studio painting the same old paintings but they are experimenting and creating new mind blowing original works. They aren't just building the same old log cabins, but new glass homes with rivers running through them. Find inspiration in those that have forged a path through the mediocrity because they too faced off against the mediocre who are a ruthless bunch of vultures looking to feast on the weak. And the weak never make it. They cower and meekly give in to the brutal assaults that confront them daily. Embrace the competition, the struggle, the suffering, the early mornings and late nights. Find something and go at it as if the world is going to come to an end the following day. Get home at night so exhausted you can barely keep your head up and keep working until you fall asleep at your desk, easel, tool bench, or whatever pursuit you embrace. God gave us this life to make something of it, not just to live within it.

And above all, whether or not you are affluent or making a measly $10.00 an hour, you have to learn to save your money because the golden years are golden only for those you foresee such a conclusion to their lives. You don't have to be rich to be comfortable later on in life. I wasn't going to get into this tonight and I will hit on it again sometime in the future, but there are methods of living that can provide you with a comfortable life after the treacherous years of nine-to-five work is over. If you have the stomach for it, think about this for a moment. You get married young in your twenties, say 25 years old and both you and your spouse are working. Say you earn $10.00 an hour and your spouse earns more. If you can convince your spouse that all the money from all your checks from all your working life will go into a savings account and you will live only off the spouses salary, figure this. You work for thirty years which means by 55 you will be ready for retirement and say you never make more than $10.00 an hour which is unrealistic because you will be promoted and just by seniority alone your salary will increase but just for the state of the argument you remain at 10 bucks an hour for your whole working life which is 30 years. If you saved every penny, when 55 rolled around you'd have over $2 million dollars saved up and that is enough for both you and your spouse to retire and live out the remainder of your lives doing nothing but playing golf, bridge, sunning on the beach, etc. But people don't think like that, they don't save. They live in the moment and spend all their money on fun and then when 75 rolls around and they are still working or struggling to survive on social security they wonder what happened. Years ago I worked in a bank as a loan processor and my job was to dig through clients' financials and determine whether or not they were credit worthiness for a loan or a refinance and what I noticed was that people had many assets, houses, and boats and cars and time shares and this and that but when it came to their savings they had very little and some of the people were already in their 50s and 60s. I came across people who only had $10,000 saved up and it baffled me how they could go through their whole lives earning salaries in excess of $100,000 with nothing to show for it but a bunch of assets that didn't necessarily appreciate in value. What they suffered from was called the nine-to-five syndrome, living as if it was pay check to pay check, spending everything in sight trying to rationalize their miserable existences instead of being disciplined and focused and working towards something better. The difference between those who are happy and those who aren't is that some people exist and some people live. Those who live are the savers, the disciplined, who know what they want and are determined to get it. Those who exist are the majority of the population. The world really isn't that much of a mystery. The poor neighborhoods aren't so by accident. The struggling people out there are struggling because of some inequality though it may initially play a part. Don't buy all that rubbish, it's nothing but recycled gibberish that people in similar situations in ancient Rome, middle ages Finland, 3rd century Mongolia complained about. It's always been there, but there has always been a light at the end of the tunnel for those willing to search it out. Go out and become someone in your own little world because your own little world is all that matters. Be respectful of the grind, the struggle and before the dust of the gladiatorial match concludes you will see a positive response from the spectators. That is the real world people. I hope that analogy there made sense.