If I Sang Out Of Tune

I'm seated on a meditation mat on the floor of my room, contemplating the mess that is my room, the mess that is my life. There are clothes strewn everywhere. The wastepaper basket is overflowing. Everything is covered in about an inch of dust. And there are unwieldy piles of books on the table, the side table, the floor, the bed. My bedsheet looks grotty.

Ugh.

Seriously.

Ugh.

Cleaning up my room will just take a little elbow grease.

The second, um, that's a little more complicated.

I want to quit my job. But now there are red flags being raised all over. By my mother (who is on her knees praying furiously that I don't make yet another colossal mistake in a life already peppered with colossal mistakes), my friends, who, brows furrowed in concern, ask me, are you sure, are you really sure about this, think very carefully, don't do anything rash...

What with the recession, the rising cost of fuel, the tremendous, tremendous fear that everything is going to hell in a wirebasket.

And all I want to do is slap on a backpack and take off to parts unknown. Where I will make friends, smoke some pot, sit around the fire and listen to stories from people I have never met who will be my new best friends for a couple of hours until I stand up, dust off my shorts and push on.

Where is it you want to go, child?

I don't know.

What do you want to do, child?

I don't know.

How are you going to support yourself?

I don't know.

Jai Guru Deva, nothing's gonna change my world, nothing's gonna change my world...

I'm so tired of being sensible. OK, not sensible exactly, but as sensible as I will ever get. In a job. With a desk. And business suits. Or at least Raoul shirts complete with cuff links, sensible corporate court shoes and dark trousers.

I hate structure. I hate bureaucracy. I hate being forced to write on demand for people I no longer care about. I hate turning my thoughts to what I don't want to turn them to, and trying to figure out solutions to problems I don't give a flying fuck about.

That drunk at Backyard was right. I AM a prostitute and the worst kind, at that.

If I died tomorrow is this what I would spend today doing? Writing an article about the fuel hike for a youth newspaper? Preaching to them about tightening the old belt?

Emphatically not.

Everyone I talk to these days mirrors my disillusion. There is a weariness in their eyes that I feel right down to my bones.

What happens now?

Another suitcase in another hall...