This is a little longer than most of what I've seen on here. I also don't know if it's any good. XD

This is Your Life

“This is your life, and today is all you’ve got now…”

You roll over, slapping the off button of your blaring clock radio alarm before the popular Switchfoot song could continue any further. You’re already going to have it stuck in your head for hours, and all you heard was that one line.

Groaning, you roll over in bed, not wanting to get up yet. Burying into the pillow, you try to remember quickly fading dreams of familiar circumstances. All your dreams seem similar anymore, though all you remember is a collage of images: the wedding that you missed, the friend that left you on the highway, the building that you were kicked out of.

Half an hour later, you finally manage to roll out of bed, the sandman’s work holding the corners of your eyes together so that you see only a narrow image of the world. It’s enough to find some clothes to change into and pack your bag for work, though, so you complete the morning’s necessities in quick time.

Grabbing a brown paper bag, you walk to the refrigerator/freezer combo you share with four other people and locate Ziploc servings of various foods. Twelve pizza rolls in this one, three handfuls of frozen French fries here, and two bean and cheese burritos there. All fall into the brown bag for microwaving in the kitchen at work. You crouch before the refrigerator to grab a piece of American cheese, which you figure will go well on top of your burritos, but a spot of green mars the otherwise yellow dairy product. With a sigh, you throw out the rest of the only half-eaten package, figuring you can stop at the store to buy some more later.

You’re running fifteen minutes late for work, but no one could tell from your slow progress out of the apartment and down the stairs. You stuff your lunch/dinner bag into your work satchel as you go, barely managing to zip shut the overstuffed cause of your backaches of the past few weeks.

A train has just left when you arrive at the station, so you walk down to the far end, closest to the exit you need to take when you arrive at your stop, and kneel down to wait for the next one. Two pass going the other direction before yours arrives, and, once it’s there, you quickly locate an empty seat, managing to secure a coveted one beside a guardrail. You slip your bag between your legs, unzipping it and pulling out a notebook, bent on writing. However, after several minutes of shifting, you realize that you don’t have a pen or pencil. Sitting back and still holding your notebook, you decide to just spend the rest of the ride playing and replaying the one demo level of Ms. Pac-man you have on your cell phone.

You take the typical path to work today, milling with the crowds of people going the same direction as you. You tried different methods the past couple of days, but each time you ended up either in a hard to pass area or wandering through smells you’d rather not know the source of.

As you walk, you hum the chorus of that Switchfoot song a few times before trying to banish it from your head. However, your mind keeps repeating the line, “This is your life; are you who you want to be?”

You arrive at work late, but no one seems to notice. Taking out your laptop, you set it in the only empty slot. There are no computer chairs left, so you grab the broken green folding chair that the unfortunate last arrival has to use. Because it’s too low for you to comfortably type at the desk, you pull your laptop into your lap and work like that.

There’s a lot for you to do. Besides just writing websites for clients and creating the content for fictional brochures, you want to find some time to write a couple of pages of your latest novel and start editing for your only paid gig. The first thing you do, though, is open the online forum you frequent to check to see if you have any new messages. Upon arriving there, you reply to three friends and two role-play conversations, as well as quickly bump your thread back onto the first page. You minimize this window, figuring that it won’t be much of a distraction.

Next, you read a few comics, just trying to get into the mood to work. Then, you read a few more. Fifty comics later, you’ve run out of strips that you frequent, so you start wondering if you need to find a new strip.

Reminding yourself of the work you have to do, you minimize that window as well and finally open Word. You haven’t even plugged in the flash drive that holds all of the information you need to do your job yet. Searching through your bag, you finally locate it and stick it into the USB drive.

“This is your life; are you who you want to be?” you unconsciously sing under your breath. Catching yourself before you sing the next line, you decide that you need to listen to some music. This requires another search through the bag. Pulling out a burned CD one of your friends made for you the previous Christmas, you stick it into your computer. Next, you need to find some unused headphones. After a quick scan of the office, you stand up to grab the only free pair.

It’s hard for you to work while listening to music, though, so you go back to see if you have any new messages and reply to those while listening to the first couple of songs. You also realize that you haven’t checked your e-mail yet, so you go to both your hotmail and work accounts. Your boss has sent you yet another assignment, and he says this one is due within the week, just like the other five you have to do. You ignore it for now, opening the last assignment you worked on.

You’ve been at work for almost two hours now, and have yet to accomplish anything.

Your stomach growls, so you decide that it would be easier to concentrate if you ate something. Standing on your chair, you grab a plate and a package of eating utensils from the top shelf. Then, you take the two burritos to the kitchen to cook.

While you eat, you wander your online site some more, not doing anything significant, but taking time nonetheless. You finish the burritos, but your stomach still growls, so you cook the French fries as well, using a paper cup for their container.

When those are gone, you have no more excuses to not work, so you finally read over the last few lines you wrote on this assignment, your uncooperative mind barely registering any of the words.

Now, you’ve decided that you want a soda. You don’t drink soda; you don’t even like the taste of soda, but there’s a collection of free cokes and diet cokes in the office refrigerator that you wish to raid.

You decide that water is really enough for you and refill the cup at the water cooler. Back at your seat, you reread the last few sentences.

Unfortunately, this assignment is more work than you usually prefer to tell yourself. You begin researching the topic, turning your music back on as you read. Occasionally, you copy a sentence or two from one of the websites you visit into a word document for future reference, but mostly you just scan the information.

And you still want that soda. Or some skittles from the snack machine. Or an ice cream from down the street. You utterly refuse to spend money, though, and your only free choices are to eat your dinner much too early, get some more water, or break open a soda.

Grabbing a soda, you pull the tab with a familiar psssh. You sip the murky brown liquid, not liking it, as usual, but drinking the entire can. You throw it away as you finish, immediately finding yourself wanting another one.

Just as you start actually writing a few sentences for your assignment, your boss comes in. He’s loud, asking questions, yelling about incompetence, and holding in office interviews with more misshaped interns. It’s distracting, and you have a lot of difficulty writing with his continual noise, but you’re afraid to open any other windows because he might see. Every time you glance in his direction, he asks what you’re looking at and tells you to get back to work.

He says that he’s stepping out of the office for a bit but, in half an hour, a client’s going to arrive who he wants you to meet with. As such, you need to search the boxes of company t-shirts for one that fits you. None are your size, but you pick an unwrinkled specimen that’s close enough and take it to the bathroom to change.

When you arrive back, it’s almost time for the meeting. You stand in front of your computer, having lost your chair to one of the new arrivals, trying to type out a few sentences before it’s time to go.

The meeting lasts for two hours and, while you were only needed for about fifteen minutes of it, you have to stay the entire time. When it’s finally over, you go back to your computer to work. Luckily, your chair has been freed, so you have somewhere to sit again.

Within ten minutes of the actual progress that follows, your boss’s girlfriend, also the “chief editor,” as she calls herself, of one of his publications, comes in and asks you to move so she can sit where you are. You do so, transferring your laptop, bag, power cord, cell phone, papers, and headphones across the room to a desk recently abandoned by one of your coworkers.

By now, you have two hours left of work and are hungry again. You get your pizza rolls out of the refrigerator, grab a paper towel, and take your dinner to be cooked. Once finished, you carry them back to the office, softly singing, “This is your life; is it everything you dreamed that it would be?”

That song is back in your head. You turn on the music, mouthing the screamed words of one of your favorite bands while you eat and catch up on your messages.

You spend the next two hours actually working on your assignments, leaving the office half an hour late. At least you always end up working your entire shift, even if it’s not within the exact hours it’s supposed to be.

It’s dark by the time you exit the subway station back in your neighborhood. Your phone rings to tell you that you have a message, so you listen as you walk home. Back in your room, you call your parents, just to let them know you’ve survived another day. Your mom insists on talking for over half an hour, though, using up a good portion of what little free time you have each evening.

After a quick shower, you munch on tootsie rolls, sitting down at your laptop to write. You want to finish those two pages before going to bed. First, you check your messages again, reply, bump your thread, visit your kingdom in an online game you play, and see if any of your comics have updated early.

By the time you complete all of this, almost two hours have passed. You really don’t understand how time can sometimes move so quickly. You reopen the document, but the phone rings. Your best friend has just gotten off of work and wants to chat.

You really only mean to talk for ten minutes, maybe twenty. You still want to get at least a little written tonight. By the time you hang up, though, it’s been over an hour and you need to be getting to bed if you want to sleep a reasonable amount before work the next morning.

“This is your life; are you who you want to be?” you sing as you get ready for bed, not bothering to try expelling the song for now. It hasn’t been helping all day anyway.

As you crawl into bed, you swear that tomorrow you’ll do your work. Tomorrow you’ll write two pages. Tomorrow you’ll pursue your dreams. You won’t let friends, or family, or online sites distract you. Tomorrow will be different.

You fall asleep, mumbling off-key, “This is your life, and today is all you’ve got now. Yeah, and today is all you’ll ever have.”

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