| The alarm strikes you at 6:20 a.m. in the morning, and for the third time you hit the snooze button. In disbelief, the first thing you notice is how dark your room is. It is so cold. "No." you think to yourself. You stare awhile at the ceiling. You roll over and stare at the wall. Fighting with all your might to lie in bed and close your eyes again, you rise from your sheets. The cold air overwhelms you as you enter your hallway. You shiver as you stumble towards the shower. You stand there almost helpless as the hot water runs through your hair and over your body, hoping and praying that it will wake you up to some extent. As you grab the towel, you wipe the steam from the mirror, and lean over the sink to look at your face. "I just took a shower and I still look like crap," you whisper to yourself. You think about the day to come, and almost wish that it never had. Even your first morning cigarette with you first cup of coffee doesn't instill the sense of awareness you'd hope for. You think the only thing that could ever possibly wake you up would be an eight-ball of some nicely cut powder, but you stopped that habit a long time ago. Instead you remain sitting on your sofa as groggy as ever, wishing you didn’t have to do anything, anywhere.
For a few minutes you sit there, staring blankly into space, until you realize that you're losing time. You quickly gather the papers that you have flung across your desk the night before, trying to find the ones that you need for today's meeting. Some are here, but then some aren't! You pause for a second, leaning on your desk wondering where those other papers can be. You start to feel your stomach tightening as your heart beat quickens. You grab your briefcase and shove anything you can into it, praying to whatever gods exist that you'll find them later. Standing in front of the mirror you try to correct yourself as much as you can; fixing your tie, tucking in your shirt, placing your hair ever so neatly to hide the fact that your balding at an early age. You take a look out the window, there is no sun, there is no warmth. Everybody looks so different than yesterday when it was 70 degrees. Stepping outside your apartment you realize that it's colder than it had looked from your window. "How could this be?" you say to yourself. "It's been so nice the past couple of days." The spring breeze has gone away, and in it's place is an almost freezing wind chill as your trenchcoat flails rapidly as you march down the hard sidewalk to the "L" stop. You continue to shiver, as you fix your tie once again. Rush hour with a train full of other people makes you wish that anarchy ruled the country, so that loading a shotgun would be considered nonchalant. Yet you grind your teeth and bear it, as you find yourself standing in the middle of a half dozen people with nothing to hold on to but your briefcase. Somebody smells like CK One. Someone else smells like Marshall Fields, and the hooded fellow next to you, whom you swear is inching closer to you by the second, smells like your garbage. It's still sitting underneath the sink, because your busy professional life hasn't allowed you the time to perform a simple task such as taking it out. You quickly shove an Altoids into your mouth hoping that no one sees you, or even worse, asks you for one. Eyes closed you rock back and forth, animals touching your sides. You think of your bed. "Why didn't I wear a hat?" you think to yourself as your hair is racing wildly like the winds that this city prides itself upon. You attempt to fix it and lay it flat, but only to fail. The air is so much colder down here, and your eyes begin to water. You wipe them, hoping nobody would see how pathetic you really feel. Three more blocks as you walk head-on into the winds. Your ears are burning as the winds force your body to disrupt the straight line that you so desperately try to keep walking. Through the revolving doorway you enter your building, and everything is quiet. You wipe your eyes one last time, your ears are warm and numb, and you heart is still beating faster than you can count. Today there is no sun, there is no warmth, the sky is gray. Such is the life of your "nine to five". You walk through the hallway, as shiny and golden as usual, towards the elevators. "Good morning!" he says as he holds the door for you. |