Life or death

September 2, 2014

I’ve been thinking a lot about my job lately. Not my work—that’s writing, and I love it. I’m talking about my job. My nine-to-five soul crushing job.

When it comes to fiction where the main characters are engaged in a life or death struggle, it’s easy to imagine that we would take the risks they do. Of course we would. The situation warrants it. We could die. We would all risk much to avoid an untimely death.

But what about when it comes to the mundane risk of wasting our lives doing work we hate? Not so much.

Yet that’s a life or death struggle as well. A life spent doing work you hate in order to afford to continue doing work you hate is not a life at all. It’s living death.

We ought to treat the decision of what we do with our lives like a life or death struggle. You can still make mistakes, but don’t take it lightly, and don’t settle. You only have one life. Live it.

Maybe soon I’ll start taking my own advice.