15 ways to know you should immediately quit your job. When…

1) You’ve scored above 1000 at Spider Solitaire on your office desktop.

2) Every time you commence work, you’re off on some unconscious journey of self-discovery.

3) You recall the most interesting part of your day as being the time you ordered Hardee's for lunch.

4) You instantly recoil into an upright position and stare intensely at the PC screen pretending to be analyzing something as you hear the voice of your supervisor approaching.

5) You often find yourself comparing between your secure but soul-sucking job V/S an un-secure but easy job.

6) You have 10 different nicknames given to you by 10 different colleagues, each reveling your individuality.

7) You’d snooze the alarm clock all the way into lunch time and the only reason you get out of bed is the deadline which reminds you that the project is yet to be initiated.

8) You slave 10 hours a day for a basic salary that withers away within the first few days and the only promises your superiors keep of better working environment are to those above them by littering more work unto you.

9) You’d rather be put behind bars for jumping your sociopath boss for calling out ‘What’s up champ?’ with that full-of-pep tone rather than smiling back and saying hello.

10) Your employer responds to your request for a vacation by reminding you that you’ve already taken it earlier, referring to the time you were on a sick leave.

11) Your health is in hazard and the fact that whenever you suffer from a headache only, it's a good day.

12) Your cubicle is decorated with an excess of family portraits and pictures of nights out with friends only to be reminiscent of a time when there still was a place for you in the universe outside the office.

13) You find listening to the automatic voice message that indicates your friend’s mobile is switched off more mentally stimulating than your action-items list.

14) You cry your eyes out whenever you read, hear about or watch Google’s work environment.

15) You hope for a fire drill during monthly review meetings or in fact, anytime during office hours (except lunch time of course).

Uncle Sam and I

Last night, while I was sweeping the minesweeper procrastinating from the 50 page thesis I had to prepare on Globalization, I felt that my eyes were strained and that I needed to get a little shut-eye. I passed out as soon as I hit the sheets. During the R.E.M. phase, I dreamt of an anomalous individual who introduced himself as Uncle Sam. We were conversing in a whimsical and poetic tone and he was very honest about his opinions. I’ll let you be the maestro but I must warn you, he was very honest:

Me: Who are you? You look familiar.

Uncle Sam: This is Uncle Sam, the American solicitor.

Me: How can you believe in the states that keep deceit, a sacred as a holy book, a fallacy as a need?

Uncle Sam: My my my… what have we here? Sounds like a rebel has finally appeared.

Me: Your empire's built on lies! Democracy it conspires!

Uncle Sam: Rome wasn’t built with kisses and flowers.

Me: So you impose restrictions on trade or force brutal blockades!? That is unnecessary, imagine a world as one!

Uncle Sam: Hegemony or nothing- the choice is made and done.

Me: Look at the strength of your corporations. The prerogative of their power has burned down nations!

Uncle Sam: We can’t compromise for less than perfection!

Me: Repression has never succeeded as far as my recollection. Your future’s foundation is void. The trouble went through is in vain.

Uncle Sam: That ain’t no problem sunny boy. If in trouble - we’ll invade. Success is measured with material means. It’s a culture we’ve preserved, tagged as the American Dream! The loftier the wallets, the more we’ve achieved.

Me: How can you possibly think you’ll get away?

Uncle Sam: With help from my peers, I don’t even have to fray: Rupert’s the illusionist, Dick’s the mastermind. Bush is the slapsticker who pulls it off with a smile and your countries are the donkeys we’re taking out for a ride.

Me: Are you insane? What if your countrymen discover?

Uncle Sam: That sure will happen when they awake from their slumber. But worse comes to worse, there’s always the sixth borough. A little help from the Jews for all the dollars that they’ve borrowed!

Me: Ok. Seriously, wtf?

Uncle Sam: WTF, WTO, GATT, IMF the UN. They’re all governed by America. No one is going to be able to stop us. We are the greatest country on this planet and there’s nothing you little piece of $h#$% can do to stop us now! Oh and by the way, we’ve tapped all our citizens’ phone lines so that we can spy on their conversations. Big brother is watching y'all!

Me: Ah George Orwell, I wouldn’t have thought you were into that kind of stuff.

Uncle Sam: Sometimes, you know when I get exhausted from holding a tense face on a poster and calling out for people to join the army….

And so it went. My day was ruined when I awoke. It was more of a revelation to me than anything else. I never would have guessed he’d heard of 1984.

Shut up and save the world

Most people are an expert on one subject or another and they never run out of things to mumble about. We’re social animals so I guess it serves us right.

Our ears, inclined to lose sight of all the commotion, has adjusted by creating a loop that flushes it all out and as a result, important things have become hard for us to process.

I’ve broken down the commotion into feasible categories: I’d say 50% of it is comprised of contemplation of that which makes no useful difference to anyone. That 50% is made up of; manufactured products (37 %), enquiry over who wants to eat and from where (11%), informative input on that new development taking place half way across the world (1.9%) and then the 0.1% work related conversation that arises ever so bitterly.

The other 50% randomly and predominantly consist of loud noises we make during metabolic processes such as defecation, flatulence, a tale of what happened when you went there that day and so on…

Ultimately we’re bound to lose track of our audibility and everything gets buffered out.

My numbness to words has become a comfortable part of me and just before bed time, I find myself asphyxiated in that violent mute of silence.

To escape it, I try to replace the noise with visual images that vainly fits my ordinary life and savor the possibility of its adaptation into reality every scene of the drowsy way. But then it’s 6am and people start their racketing again.

Of course, chances are you are one of those amps and also a victim of this common turmoil; aware of the continuous black mailing of time and the essence of ‘you’ fading in it and therefore, the dire need to communicate- to be heard.

Then one day, you meet the other half of you who completes you by complimenting the noises you make and making it sound like a duet to both your ears when it’s really, still, flatulence.

All the pollution we’ve caused just to cover up on our insecurities has only distorted our views and the crucial use of language. We struggle and aim to polish our ambassadors when in reality, it's a faulty projection of a very weak foundation; our-true-selves.

Why do we need to hide our-true-selves when the only way to develop is by willing to be placed in any circumstance completely naked of the ego and getting exposed to the forces that yield change?

The more the world’s current turn of events compels me into a silent observing trance, the more I wish everyone around me did the same. The anxiety that fills us up (or rather the ones we harbour) triggers a chain reaction that channels an alien set of responses which therefore leads us into the pit.

And that man-made pit is your life now.