Into the Rat Maze at 80 MPH

It’s Monday, 12:30am.

I just woke up from a brief nap on my couch before I go to my warehouse job.

Five hours of sleep in the afternoon, plus a 30-minute nap from 12am-12:30am…that’s all I get…at best.

I run my entire warehouse’s inventory system on 6 hours of sleep, max. I cook my lunch, take a shower, get dressed, and leave for work.

Mind you, I’ve already been awake since 6pm, spent time with my wife and daughter, and worked out at the gym for an hour before my nap. I try to sneak in a little time to write on Substack, that’s it.

The roads are completely clear of traffic, I go probably 80mph an hour. There’s always unpredictable road traffic, because the Florida DOT have random roads and highways shut down for road construction that has lasted years. Sometimes I feel like a rat trying to escape a cage just to get into another fucking cage…WORK!

It’s 1:50am now and I just got off the Turnpike. Fifteen minutes to make it before I’m late. Must hurry…

I dodge and evade the inevitable walking dead, i.e. random strangers who walk around, surround my car and sometimes knock on my driver-side window asking for water and money. Sometimes it feels like I’m in a zombie movie and my brain’s about to be eaten by some mentally deranged person.

Anyways, I have 8 minutes to spare before I’m late. Right on cue, I’m greeted by a sea of trucks and truck drivers that don’t give a shit whether I’m late for work or not. I weave in and out of truck traffic. After I park, I have 6 minutes to barely make it on time. Once I make it through security and run through the deadly obstacle course that we call a parking lot, I clock in with one minute to spare.

I print out same paperwork and drive down the same aisles that feel like a graveyard of crushed dreams. I find slots to assign where new items go. Like a mindless robot performing the same task day in and day out, I tell workers where to put products at so they can get shipped out.

I sit at my computer staring at the dreaded spreadsheets. The same 5 songs playing on loop for two fucking years now. Sometimes, I wonder, “am I a vampire?” Maybe that’s why I sometimes dress in red and black. I just own the night.

Finally, it’s 6am and it’s my lunch break. The one real time when I actually feel like I have a moment to myself. I read Goethe’s “Prometheus” poem and get a vision of being my own God and having my followers re-create the world in a more beautiful way than what it currently is. 6:30am and it’s back to work.

10:30am. I clock out. The sun, which I haven’t seen all morning, hits my eyes like a blow torch. I sit in my car, feeling beaten, battered, bloodied and bruised. My eyes adjust to the sunlight. 12 hours to go and it starts all over again.

That’s not power.

That’s the next shift…on auto-loop.

What keeps you going?